Google does not officially announce the date it releases the next round of Google pagerank updates, but in the past we’ve been pretty great about guessing it and it tends to appear at roughly the same time every three months, so I think it’s pretty safe to say that sometime in the next two or three days Google will release its next round of pagerank numbers to the public. Our personal guess is May 8th, but I wouldn’t be too surprised by May 9th.
EDIT: May 10th an still no update yet. This is pretty late by Google standards. If it doesn’t happen by the 14th, something has changed.
EDIT 2: Still no update. But there’s likely a reason – another Google Penguin update is going to be rolled out soon, and chances are once it does it will affect pageranks too much. So the issue is moot. Wait until Penguin 2, and there’s a good chance the next Google update will be not long after.
This is as good a time as any to share a few quick reminders of what the Google pagerank update means for your website:
- Your Google Pagerank Means Nothing – Improving your Google pagerank is always a great goal. But in the end the pagerank is meaningless. Google has its own internal rankings that have nothing to do with an arbitrary number they release for your site, and that internal pagerank gets updated every day, not every 3 months. Many pagerank 3 sites get more hits than pagerank 2 sites, and individual pages within your site can often rank higher than others, even if your overall pagerank is low. So while this May pagerank is interesting, there’s no reason to read too much into it.
- Your Google Pagerank Means Something – That said, you always want your website to be improving, and a higher pagerank is a pretty good indicator of whether or not your marketing methods are working, especially if you’re a site that has been around a while that has a pagerank of 2 or less. Your website’s hits determine your success, and in some cases a low pagerank is a sign of that success. So if you find that your pagerank is lower than you want, taking action now is the best way to improve it.
- Measure Hits, Not Pagerank – In the end, however, you want to be measuring hits. Monitor whether or not your website is seeing an improvement in visitors, and whether or not those visitors are staying on the page and/or converting. The reason a higher pagerank should be your goal is that it implies that the marketing work you’re doing is having an effect on visitors. But you can monitor the same thing by simply clicking into your analytics and ensuring that you’re seeing an improvement in results.
Keep this information in mind. After the May 2013 Pagerank Update is completed, look at that information and either smile and nod or consider it a motivational tool to take action, but don’t obsess over it. The number is interesting, but it’s not necessarily meaningful. What is meaningful is whether your site is seeing an increase in hits and whether there is anything you can do to improve it.
