google PR, or PageRank, updated a few hours ago.

for those who’s wondering what is PR, it stands for PageRank. it’s the way that google measures how popular or important a web site is. it’s determined by how many other web sites linking to the site in question and how important the incoming link is.

note, PageRank is not the rank of a page, the name came from founder of Google.

all my sites increased one notch in this PR update. got 3 PR6. sweet.

unfortunately PR gain does not translate to higher search engine ranking directly. of course, PR has always been one of the most important factors to rank web pages, however the weight given to PR seems dropped a lot recently.

the original logic was, the more sites linking to you, your site must be more important and useful, otherwise, why those sites link to you? the problem is, if you have a large network of web sites, PR can be increased easily by linking to your own sites, it does not mean you have a useful informational web site at all. and if you have a PR8 web site, you can get a few PR7 without any effort, just link to the new site from PR8 page, but it does not mean you have a relevant web site.

PR worked perfectly as most important element in Google’s algorithm for a few years. now with more and more spamers trying to fool Google, they have put in much more things to consider. therefore Google PR is becoming less and less important.

having said that, it’s great to see longer green bar in Google toolbar, it indicates hardworks i’ve done.