scottybowl

Well, first of all, some bad news: iWebTools page rank prediction tool does not return a result that has anything to do with page rank, let alone future page rank.

After looking at the XML file generated by the search, and looking at Googles XML Reference I've discovered a few things:

The query to google simply returns the first 10 websites which contain the phrase "www.yourdomain.com". The numbers that are returned (1.1.5, 1.1.4, 1.1.6 etc) show the relevance of the page to the query (the 5, 4, 6) and do not relate to page rank in the slightest.

The tool is simply finding the average relevance of the first 10 pages to your website. So if their content is more relevant to the content on your website then your "predicted page rank" will be higher - but in reality, it just shows the people who talk about your website have similar content if your "page rank" is going up, and vice versa if it is going down.

I suppose it should be called the "Relevance of the first 10 websites to your website when you search for your domain name tool"

Hope that clears things up for everyone

EDIT: Ive written an article on this which explains it a lot better: http://www.web-designers.biz/2006/02/pagerank-prediction-exposed.html

kenni

Hey, great discovery. However:
I dont think it shows relevance of the top 10. It shows the "Current PageRank" for the top 10 results.

http://66.249.93.99/search?client=na...&features=Rank

If you take off the "&features=Rank" from the URL you can see the "Real Pagerank" of the websites in <RK></RK>. It follows that order.

I dont think i've explained myself clear enough but if anyone gets the picture, please elaborate for me.

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scottybowl

<RK></RK> doesnt stand for that....

If you look at http://code.google.com/gsa_apis/xml_reference.html RK stands for:

RK
Integer in the range 0-10
Definition: Provides a general rating of the relevance of the search result

indiangirl

I feel like something is wrong with iwebtool's Page Rank Prediction. I check my page rank with other site and I had deffrent result.

Anyway, I hope iwebtool will overlook at the matter and improve the performance of their tools.

Great Topic.

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scottybowl

the reason is that the Page Rank Prediction tool doesn't work and is not even looking at your page rank

I'll give you an example:

Look at this XML file: http://66.249.93.99/search?client=navclient-auto&ch=61508692&q=www.iwebtool.com

And in a new browser do a search in Google search at http://66.249.93.99 for "www.iwebtool.com" (including the " ")

To save you the trouble, the XML file contains the following sites in this order

1. http://www.iwebtool.com/
2. http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker
3. http://www.programmingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-21828.html
4. http://www.programmingtalk.com/search.php?do=finduser&userid=141567
5. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/archive/index.php/free-seo-tool-list-hits-100-tools/t-22262.html
6. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=37333
7. http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/viewtopic.php?p=81569
8. http://www.searchguild.com/printer/fm2/22319/
9. http://www.statbrain.com/www.iwebtool.com/
10. http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Protocols/DNS/Web_Tools/

And doing the search "www.iwebtool.com" in Google comes up with the following links in the top 10

1. http://www.iwebtool.com/
2. http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker
3. http://www.programmingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-21828.html
4. http://www.programmingtalk.com/search.php?do=finduser&userid=141567
5. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/archive/index.php/free-seo-tool-list-hits-100-tools/t-22262.html
6. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=37333
7. http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/viewtopic.php?p=81569
8. http://www.searchguild.com/printer/fm2/22319/
9. http://www.statbrain.com/www.iwebtool.com/
10. http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Protocols/DNS/Web_Tools/

So, now we know that all these sites mention http://www.iwebtool.com somewhere in the page, but does their page rank match the <RK></RK> tag in the XML file? Let's find out:

(format: link number. XML file <RK></RK> value | Actual Page Rank)

1. 6 | 4
2. 6 | 5
3. 2 | 2
4. 3 | 0
5. 5 | 0
6. 4 | 0
7. 4 | 0
8. 3 | 0
9. 3 | 1
10. 5 | 4

So... in case people had any doubt, the number in the <RK></RK> tag cleary does not show a web pages page rank. The IWeb Tool uses the numbers in the <RK></RK> tag to give you your predicted page rank (it works out the average). In other words, it is using data which has nothing to do with page rank to calculate your future page rank. It is equivalent to me wanting to find out how many apples will grow on my apple tree this year by going to count sheep in a field... utterly pointless

maxdoor

One bit of anecdotal evidence supporting iwebtools pr prediction tool:
My site, www.teakboat.com has been in the sandbox all year. Has been at the top of other search engines for a long time, and now finally gets good google serps. I notice that very lately, it is number #1 in the google directory in its dmoz topic, with a high directory pr (different scale, but predicts a high pr any way you look at it). iwebtool predicts a pr 7 now as well. Rustybrick still predicts a 3, like always.

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scottybowl

unfortunately, that isnt evidence as theres no proof to back it up...

munt

hmmm
i cant understand all this.. guess i will wait till PR update and see what my real PR will be

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maxdoor

That's what "anectdotal evidence" means ;-)

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microdude431

The predictor has always been right on the ball for me. I havent had any problems with it and I stand behind it.

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cdf

Well, thanks for the discovery scottybowl. I have speculated that these pr predictors worked something like that. The truth is that the only people that might know what your future pr are, is google themselves.

danny

i find it accurate

cdf

Actually, I think it would be more accurate if it showed the avg. of all your links listed in google instead of only the first 10.

This tool is used to give you an idea of what your pagerank might be but I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket based solely on it.

Dayo_UK

kenni

Yes, you are right the tool shows the <rk> value of the urls - none of this adding together and averaging out rubbish.

Whether the <rk> is current page rank or not is the question - if it is not current page rank (which personally I think it is) then <rk> it may be even more significant than page rank.

Problem with all the checking at the moment is that the Big Daddy DCs have totally different <rk> to the non-big daddy DCs - which has probably led to confusions in predicting and even with the current PR update people who checked when this PR was exported (which looks like the begining of the month) would not have checked if they were hitting the Big Daddy or Non-Big Daddy <rk> values.