Longest time without PR update - official*

*According to http://www.mcdar.net/Q-Check/datatool.asp Thought this was interesting.

nice post, looks like we have to wait till end of july for next update. we never know for sure.

Why is it taking Google longer and longer to do these updates?

It doesn't really make any diffference anyway.. By the time you know your page rank it's 4 months out of date. Google have thier own internal PR and it is updated continuously, But we dont get to see that.

I think google take longer and longer to update public PR because they want to reduce the amount of importance webmasters attach to it... Within a couple of years PR will be gone, or at least how we know it will be gone..
With the growth of the google toolbar (which will be in FF by default) PR will become more like alexa rank (which is also stupid and pointless)

I knew you'd chip in with your usual anti-PR blurb

lol i can't help it.

It's interesting that this is the longest time sinse the last public PR update though, It looks as though something is going on behind the scenes.

It could be the fact that PR is now going to be measured more like the Alexa rank as you said than websites linking to each other.

There is tagging, blogging, website linking, surfing habbits etc etc etc ... so PR may be moving the same way as the Alexa Rank and that is why google have delayed updating it because it has shifted the emphasis.

They will still have their ranking internal PR that is updated constantly, but the next PR will more reflect visited sites on other things like visitor returning rates.

If people return often to a website, obviously they value that websites content - whereas a site may have 100,000 inbound links, but rarely if ever gets returning visitors... the site that gets the returning visitors may only have 100 inbound links.

So while the old PR ranked more on links, the FF PR may be ranking on return factors ... especially since linking by spammers has virtually made the old style PR low value in a lot of webmasters eyes ... like Meman

That really sucks especially when you are trying to sell links.

yes, or when you worked hard to get a good pr for a new site and you have to wait months to see how you did. damn google

Do you not have visitor stats then?

No way !

This is only my view:

Google originally wanted PR to be measure by links and link quality. The falldown was obvious to spammers posting tonnes of links and therefore devaluing what google was trying to do - rank webpages by authority as such.

Since PR was originally rolled out there have been many advances in the internet and the associated technologies - notably tagging and tracking scripts focussing on browsing habits.

It is my opinion that google may well be looking at shifting the emphasis of their *PUBLIC* PR to focus more on browsing habbits and therefore taking away the emphasis on spammed links and consequently in theory would make spamming by link building a laborious and futile task for promoting a website.

If focussing on browsing habbits - in terms of real people, not bots - the PR reflected to the public would show up more based on return visits and various other criteria. This would also enable PR to be updated effectively in real time and therefore no 4 month delay beteen updates.

A site that is popular today would have a high PR, but in 3 months the novelty of the site may have gone, and as such the PR would fall correspondingly ... it may also be able to bring more dynamic SERPS that would more accurately display what is popular and relevant to search strings and keywords today, rather than returning old, obsolete sites that no longer get updated or are outdated reference sites etc.

On the other hand, google may just have scrapped their PR system altogether and are working on something else

Who really knows the mind of google?

This last update stoped only in April. And all others were only 1-2 weeks long. So we have only 3 monthes without update.

So when does everyone think the next update is?

There's actually one going on right now.