It’s impossible to know your actual PageRank. Your actual PageRank is a numerical weight assigned to the varying pages of your website. What you’re probably used to seeing (and maybe talking about) is toolbar Page Rank (tPR). That is the number you see on Google’s toolbar and until recently also in Google Webmaster Tools. tPR is expressed as any of the numbers from 0 to 10 and is “derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale.”1
PageRank is updated constantly by Google as they make changes to their algorithms and the natural linking of the web changes. Toolbar PageRank is the whole number representation of actual PageRank, however, it is updated infrequently. As of the writing of this post, the last update of tPR was April 3, 2010. It’s now mid-August.
So, should I care?
In short, yes. Obviously PageRank is one of Google’s valuations of your web property and as such, you should care to nurture and build your PageRank with Google. Otherwise, why would you be reading SEO articles on AgentGenius?
However, as mentioned above, the only way you can guess at your PR is to know what your tPR is. And since it is updated only a few times a year at most and based on an unknown past point, my advice is, don’t dwell on your tPR number. It will fluctuate with Google’s algorithms and you have no way of knowing what your current, true PR is at any given moment.
A web page or site does not have to have tPR to rank in Google. « Understand this! Why you ask? PR is only one of the many many factors Google uses in their ranking algorithm(s).
Does Google have anything to say about tPR?
Why yes, yes they do-
We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true.
– Susan Moskwa, Google
And that my friends, is the final word.
