Internet Marketing Blog

Why Does My Pagerank Not Update?

Posted by peter on December 1, 2008 |

This is an extremely common question from newbie Webmasters (and alarmingly, sometimes more experienced ones too!).

The problem arises due to the lack of understanding on what Pagerank is, and how it works.

So often we see people in the webmaster forums asking questions like

• I’ve done so much promotion, why hasn’t my pagerank updated?
• HELP! I’ve got loads of backlinks, but no pagerank
• Is there a problem with pagerank? Mine hasn’t been updated in the last few weeks

More worrying is when you see statements like…

• I got a pagerank 2 after just 3 weeks!
• My new site went from 0 to PR 3 in a month, hope to get pr 5 next month!

So, back to the question, why isn’t your pagerank updated in the last few months, despite doing loads of promotion?

The answer is extremely simple:

Google only updates the pagerank that you see on the toolbar 3 or 4 times a year. That means if Google last updated their pagerank in April, and you started your site in May, you might not see an update until August or even September!

However, this pagerank that we see in the toolbar is a snapshot of what Google had several months ago. Their internal pagerank updates each day for all the pages on your site, but they don’t make this data public. Instead, they just export a ’snapshot’ a few times a year.

So, stop fretting over the fact that you don’t have that magic green stuff in the little bar yet. The next pagerank is just a few months away!