Google has been fairly sloppy in updating its Page Rank in the last two years or so, leading many to believe the Page Rank bar (that little green bar that you’d see if Google Toolbar was enabled) was broken.
It seems that they have now updated the PR bar again after only two months. If they keep this up, who knows, the PR bar might even become useful again!
For those of you new to the SEO scene, Google’s PR bar revolutionised SEO. It was the first time that people could see the PageRank algorithm in action. Most Search Engine Optimisers swore by it… That was until Google started going longer and longer between updating the bar (it doesn’t seem to be dynamic), leading many to believe that “it was broken”. The PR bar is now seen as a bit of an indicator of how Google looks at the page, though it’s not really seen as important whether your page is a PR 3 or 1 now.
If Google gets back on track updating the bar regularly or even *gasp* making it dynamic, perhaps it will become useful again. As it is, it’s just a bit of a gimmick which doesn’t really mean anything. Kind of like the Alexa toolbar was, until they updated their engine.
Mike – the last PR export was quite some time ago, traditionally, PR exports (in the toolbar) according to Matt Cutts, is only every three months or so.