WebProNews

Tag: Google Toolbar

  • Google Toolbar PageRank Lives (For Now)

    Just when you thought you were out, they’ve pulled you back in.

    Google has updated its data for Toolbar PageRank, after giving indication that it likely wouldn’t happen before the end of the year, if at all. Many of us assumed that it was pretty much going away because it has been so long since it has been updated, after years of regularity.

    Google’s Matt Cutts tells us it came as the result of an update to a backend service that “handles dupes and equivalent names,” and that while he’d hesitate to says he’d be surprised if regular updates like before started happening, in general, he’d “expect PR updates to be less of a priority.”

    Are you glad to see a PageRank update? How did you do? Let us know in the comments.

    Reactions to the update are mixed. Some are happy to see the new(er) data, while others wish it would just go away once and for all. As those in the SEO industry have known for years, the data simply isn’t that useful as a day-to-day tool, mainly due to the time that passes between updates, yet others obsess about it.

    Here’s a real time look at what people are saying about the update on Twitter:


    This is the first time Google has updated PageRank since February. Historically, they’ve updated it every thee or four months. Cutts tweeted in October that he’d be surprised if there was another PR update before 2014.

    Shortly after that, he discussed the topic in a Webmaster Help video:

    “Over time, the Toolbar PageRank is getting less usage just because recent versions of Internet Explorer don’t really let you install toolbars as easily, and Chrome doesn’t have the toolbar so over time, the PageRank indicator will probably start to go away a little bit,” he said.

    In another video earlier in the year, he said, “Maybe it will go away on its own or eventually we’ll reach the point where we say, ‘Okay, maintaining this is not worth the amount of work.

    On Twitter, Cutts acknowledged the update, which perhaps did come as a surprise to him, as it came by the hands of a different team at Google.

    He also mentioned on Twitter that it wasn’t an accident, but “was just easier for them to push the new PR data rather than keep the old data.”

    Cutts tells us:

    Sounds like we’re probably not going to get the frequency of years past.

    Should Google continue to update Toolbar PR in the future? Let us know what you think.

  • Matt Cutts Tells You Why Your Site’s PageRank Isn’t Changing (Kind Of)

    The question of whether or not Google Toolbar PageRank is dead has come back around, as Google’s Matt Cutts indicated the other day that we’re not likely to see an update before the end of the year.

    This Twitter exchange occurred on Sunday (via Barry Schwartz):

    Google hasn’t updated it since February, after historically updating it every three or four months.

    The latest Webmaster Help video from Google has come out, and it just happens to talk about Google Toolbar PageRank. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really tell us anything new. It’s pretty much the same thing Cutts said last time he did a video on it.

    He says, “The thing to remind yourself about is that the Google Toolbar PageRank, number one, it’s only updated periodically, so, you know, for a while, we would update it relatively often. Now, we’ll update it a few times a year. Over time, the Toolbar PageRank is getting less usage just because recent versions of Internet Explorer don’t really let you install toolbars as easily, and Chrome doesn’t have the toolbar so over time, the PageRank indicator will probably start to go away a little bit.”

    “But it’s also the case that we only update this information every few months, so it does take time in order to show up,” he says.

    The messaging here is a little odd considering, again, that there hasn’t been an update since February, and we shouldn’t expect to see one before the end of the year.

    Update: Cutts notes that the video was recorded several months ago:

    Image: Google

  • Google Pushes New Toolbar PageRank Update

    Google updates toolbar PageRank about four times a year. They updated it in August, and now they’ve updated it again. As you would expect, some sites are going up, and some are going down, but in both cases, webmasters are noticing.

    As usual, people are taking to Twitter to voice their “excitement”.

    This toolbar mythbusting article from 2010 by SEOBullshit has gotten a couple of tweets. Search Engine Roundtable points to some forum threads where the update is being discussed.

    Toolbar PageRank doesn’t mean a lot, but people still like to monitor it. Here’s the obligatory Matt Cutts video in which he talks about toolbar PageRank:

  • Google Toolbar PageRank Gets An Update

    For those of you still keeping track of your Google Toolbar PageRank, you might be happy to know that Google has updated it.

    Hat tip to Barry Schwartz for spotting discussion about this on the forums and Twitter. Here’s some of the Twitter excitement:

    @_asheridan
    Andy Sheridan    #Google #Pagerank update today was fairly kind to me http://t.co/2FmmZLHO No homepage hikes but a few internal pages got a +1 #seo 7 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @ron5reedcp
    Ron Reed    Google PageRank Update: May 2012: Hold on to your seats – there is a Google PageRank Toolbar update happening ri… http://t.co/ZmpVdECV 6 hours ago via twitterfeed ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @christomjones
    Chris Jones     There appears to have been a #Google #Pagerank update today, has anybody else noticed any changes? 6 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @TristanHigbee
    Tristan Higbee    Looks like there was another PageRank update. Several of my blogs saw increases, 1 saw a decrease. How did yours fare? 6 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @SEOCoaches
    Bruce Jackson    Google toolbar PageRank updated… nice 6 hours ago via Plume for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @kevingoerner
    Kevin Görner    Pagerank 7, thanks Google 🙂 4 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @ajnabiicom
    Blogging Tips    I’m very happy my blog got Pagerank #2 http://t.co/6T2yKpSn – If you are happy with me please RT 🙂 4 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @keshabraj
    Keshab Raj Adhikari    One more tweet today 🙂 : Google rolled out the PageRank Update. if you wanna check live Pagerank check here. http://t.co/MxVO1JlC 27 minutes ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    If your PR dropped, here’s a video from Google’s Matt Cutts explaining why this may have happened:

    “The information that you get from the Google Toolbar is updated about 3 or 4 times a year, and the reason we don’t provide it every single day is because we don’t want webmasters to get obsessed with the green in the Google Toolbar, and not pay the attention that should be spent on titles and accessibility, and good content, and all those kinds of things,” he said in the video (from last year). “A lot of people, if you show them just the PageRank and update it every day, they’re just going to focus on that. So we didn’t want that kind of obsession or backlink obsession to take hold where people would only pay attention to the PageRank in the toolbar.”

    “Then, the question of ‘how can I identify the causes of a PageRank drop’ – well, if the only PageRank that you had, for example, was from one very reputable link, and that site stopped linking to you, that could lead to a drop in PageRank,” he continues. “If you’ve done something really weird with your internal linking, and you canonicalization is very strange, so we don’t know – maybe there’s a completely different site on www vs non-www – so you know, those kinds of canonicalization issues, that can also lead to a PageRank drop.”

    According to Schwartz, the last update was in February.

  • Reasons Why Google Toolbar PageRank Would Drop, According to Google

    Google’s Matt Cutts posted one of his webmaster help videos discussing Google Toolbar PageRank, why it’s only updated a few times a year, and why webmasters might see their PageRank drop. He also talks about how to get back in Google’s good graces if this happened because you were selling links.

    Typically in these videos, Cutts is responding to a user-submitted question, and that is the case here. The question was: “I use the Google Toolbar to monitor PageRank. I read on the Internet that it gives old and quite unreliable data. Can I have reliable realtime PageRank information about the sites I administer? And how can I idenity causes of a PageRank drop?”

    “The information that you get from the Google Toolbar is updated about 3 or 4 times a year, and the reason we don’t provide it every single day is because we don’t want webmasters to get obsessed with the green in the Google Toolbar, and not pay the attention that should be spent on titles and accessibility, and good content, and all those kinds of things,” says Cutts. “A lot of people, if you show them just the PageRank and update it every day, they’re just going to focus on that. So we didn’t want that kind of obsession or backlink obsession to take hold where people would only pay attention to the PageRank in the toolbar.”

    This is not the first time we’ve seen Google de-emphasize the need for webmasters to focus on PageRank. Ultimately, while it may be a strong signal used by Google in determining search result ranking, there are over 200 other ones, and the formula changes every single day. Social and location factors have certainly played bigger roles in recent memory. You can bet that Google’s +1s are going to continue to play a strong role.

    “The question that it’s ‘quite unreliable’ – it’s not unreliable, it’s just rounded to a zero to ten sort of scale, so there’s nothing unreliable about that necessarily,” says Cutts.

    “Then, the question of ‘how can I identify the causes of a PageRank drop’ – well, if the only PageRank that you had, for example, was from one very reputable link, and that site stopped linking to you, that could lead to a drop in PageRank,” he continues. “If you’ve done something really weird with your internal linking, and you canonicalization is very strange, so we don’t know – maybe there’s a completely different site on www vs non-www – so you know, those kinds of canonicalization issues, that can also lead to a PageRank drop.”

    “But one of the most common reasons we see for a PageRank drop, at least in the Google Toolbar, is if a site is selling links, and so if your PageRank dropped 30% all of a sudden, and you were selling links that passed PageRank, the reason for that is selling links that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines,” he says. “And if you think about it, it’s a pretty understandable thing. It’s a lot like payola, in the sense that you pay somebody money and that you get a mention, and it’s not adequately disclosed to the search engine. If some site is doing that, that can account for a drop in the Toolbar PageRank.”

    “So if that’s what might have happened, all you have to do is remove the links that you were selling, and then do a reconsideration request, and say, ‘Hey, I was selling links, they passed PageRank, I saw my PageRank dropped, and so I’ve removed those links, you can verify it, and please let me regain my trust with Google.’ And so if we see that things look good, and it looks like there’s a good faith effort there, and we’re reasonably convinced the selling of PageRank won’t happen again for example, then often times your PageRank will return.”

    You can find the reconsideration request form here.

  • Google Toolbar 7 Gives Internet Explorer Google Instant

    Google launched a new version of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Google Toolbar 7 brings Google Instant and some new personalization features to the table.

    “If you’ve used Instant on google.com or in Chrome, you’ll be right at home with Toolbar Instant,” says Google’s Allen Huang, Associate Product Manager on the Toolbar. “Just start typing in the search box and search predictions and results will appear instantly as you type, getting you the results you want faster.”

    As a Chrome user, I can honestly say that I can hardly remember what it was like before Google Instant from the browser, even though it’s not been available for that long. Most people seem to like it.

    “This new version of Toolbar is simpler, cleaner and emphasizes what’s important to you. The tools that you use most will remain visible on the toolbar, while buttons that you haven’t used recently will be moved to the new ‘More’ button,” says Huang. “s you discover and use particular tools that help your browsing experience, like Share or Translate, they’ll automatically appear on the toolbar, making your most relevant tools easy to access. This personalization is stored only on your computer, so no information is sent to Google unless your usage statistics are enabled.”

    The toolbar also comes with new privacy settings accessible from a single menu, where you can adjust your preferences for things like PageRank, spell check, and SideWiki.

    Google Toolbar Privacy Settings

    The toolbar is available in English only, but will be available in other languages in the future. Current Toolbar users will be automatically upgraded over the coming weeks.

  • Google Yet Again: We Don’t Use Bing Data to Influence Our Search Results

    I thought this was already made fairly clear, but Google has said again that it does not use Bing data to influence its search results, the way Bing apparently uses Google data to influence it’s search results. 

    Danny Sullivan has dug into this topic again, and got some new quotes from Google fellow Amit Singhal, who oversees Google’s ranking algorithm and who wrote a post slamming Bing for its practices after the whole debacle went down. 

    "Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation," he said.

    Singhal told Sullivan, "We absolutely do not use search activity on other search engines to influence our search  results."

    That doesn’t mean Google doesn’t see what’s happening on Bing and other search engines, as Sullivan points out, but Google is sticking to its story of not using that information to influence search ranking. 

    Google will evidently be making improvements to its disclosure process, which is somewhat ironic, considering that was a big part of Matt Cutts’ argument when he and Bing’s Harry Shum argued about the whole thing on stage at a recent search event.