If there is non Google dancing, then the next obvious question from the webmasters is that, "When are backlinks and Pagerank then processed by Google?".
The backlinks are calculated when your site is being indexed by Google. Google will be able to track the new incoming links whenever you add one to your site. Once identified, Google will credit those boosting points to your site in the search engine rankings. This should then tell that tracking of new backlinks and crediting of points are almost simultaneous.
Even under normal circumstances, the links will be displayed not before three or four updates. Though the average appearance time of links is two backlink updates, you should not be surprised to see your incoming links displayed just for one update.
This inconsistency from the part of Google, some suspect might be even intentional. Leaving things to the hands of unpredictability and uncertainty works out to the advantage of Google, as it leaves little room for manipulation of the timing of backlink displays. This intentional inconsistency from Google keeps the webmasters and SEO professionals off balance.
As a website owner you should be aware that not the whole array of incoming links to a website be displayed. As far as Google is concerned, the display is just a sampling of backlinks. Sometimes not even the strongest backlink seem to be displayed.
SEO professionals seem to be engaging in all sorts of speculations on how Google decides on the display of the backlinks. All these speculations are because there is such an amount of unpredictability. Normally the incoming links that are displayed are of those with PR 4 or higher but in some instances you will also find a PR3 page displayed. This triggers the speculation that Google also filters backlinks based on the amount of pagerank being passed on to the receiving pages. If this assumption is to be true, then links gained from content relevant pages and from pages with fewer outgoing links should gain greater significance.
Ongoing calculation process like for incoming links applies for Google pagerank as well. No one for sure knows the exact pagerank number of page as the pagerank indicator in Google toolbar is just an approximation of possible pagerank and certainly not an accurate figure.
Moreover from the pagerank indicator, as there are no gradations on pagerank toolbar, one cannot really tell whether if a PR5 is a high PR5 and proximate to PR6 or to PR4. One easy way of finding your real position is to compare your PR factor with your internal web pages. If the pagerank is somewhat similar to the main feeder page, then you can guess that your pagerank would fall on the higher end of the scale for that level. |