Google pagerank problem and communication issues

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Tue, 05/31/2005 - 2:40pm.

Google has wonderful technology. A main application of the technology is pagerank, which is a rough guesstimate of how well your page ranks in Google's eyes.

The pagerank ranges in value from 0 - 10, with a special grayed out option for those sites who don't have pagerank at all.

In the pagerank world they'll be more 0s than 1s, more 1s than 2s, etc. Pagerank 10 sites are few and far between.

Webmasters care about the pageranks for a few reasons:

Your prominence in the Google results are increased the higher pagerank you have.
People can tell the general quality of your site by pagerank. There are exceptions, but in most cases this is true.
Incoming links from higher pageranked sites to your site help increase your ranking with Google.

Since pagerank is what people focus on, a cottage industry has sprung up. You can find services that:

Promise to increase your pagerank.
Sell you a link from a higher pagerank.
Tell you which sites are rated high.

When the ability to see pagerank disappears the paranoia grows. Webmasters cannot use this tool in their toolbox.

This weekend was a three day weekend in the United States due to Memorial Day. At the beginning of the weekend the pagerank disappeared and no one knew what was happening.

It was curious over the weekend that Google didn't have any official release on the issue. While pagerank isn't a system that end users rely upon, it is a system that content creators care about.

Later in the weekend, GoogleGuy, who has often spoken for Google on forums and sites across the internet, solved the mystery:

I talked to a few people and there was some new infrastructure that was swapping in. They expect normal toolbar pagerank display to resume in a few hours--no need for concern.

Long weekends are a great time to handle large system work, but wouldn't it be better to let people know what's happening?

Google is a great company, but it's still a young company. eBay went through the same issues when it came to communication and I am sure Google will get better at it as they mature.