21 days after the last backlinks update, a new Google Dance has begun today. As the last time, the backlinks and the Google Directory have been updated. The PageRank indicator displayed in the has also been updated, so if your site is listed in this directory (via DMOZ), you may have an estimate of your PageRank (remember that ).

This is the 3rd Google Dance without any Google Toolbar PageRank update. Have you ever noticed that Google seems to have changed the "rules" at the same time as the Google Toolbar checksum algorithm has been hacked? The source code has been published all around the web, allowing anyone to automatically retrieve the PageRank of any page -- it was impossible to do it before that.

Do you think that Google will update the PageRank in the toolbar in the future?

Blog coverage:

• Google Blogoscoped
• Search Engine Roundtable

Thanks to John Battelle I discovered a new feature of : you can compare the results given by Google and Yahoo .

To know the PageRank value of a page you can download the OR you can find it through the .

Anyway, the Google directory shows PageRank on a different scale than the Google Toolbar.

• Google toolbar displays Google PageRank on a 0 - 10 type scale
• Google directory displays Google PageRank on a 1 - 8 type scale

The Directory scale is not easy to understand. The numbers 5-11-16-22-27-33-38 are the widths of the green bar measured in pixels. The sum of the widths of the green bar and the grey bar is always 40. If the green bar next to your site in the Google Directory is 22, then your Google Directory PageRank is 22/40=0.55

There are some exceptions: for example . It's very strange but Google has actually a Directory PageRank larger than the maximum!

Since a long time, the Google Directory is not updated as often as the Google index. The Directory PageRank used to be an old indicator of PageRank. Nevertheless, during the last backlinks update, the Google Directory PageRank has been updated whereas the Google Toolbar PageRank has not been updated since June...

To know the PageRank value of a list of web sites (or URL) you can use PR Weaver PageRank Checker. This feature allows you to retrieve the PageRank of all pages of your site ;-)

Does Google see underscores "_" and hyphens "-" as dividers ?

The answer is: Google sees hyphens as dividers in URLs and body text, and ignores underscores (underscore is not considered as a divider by Google).

Below are the tests we made:

Google Test 1 : Underscores or hyphens as dividers in URL The following URL: wagatukepo-sitynozfau-mazidipole_vukertalet.php contains 4 keywords separated by hyphens or underscores. Before we started our test we did search Google for each of these keywords: wagatukepo, sitynozfau, mazidipole and vukertalet and there were no Google results. Few days later once Google indexed our new URL we did the same search for each of these keywords.

Results: wagatukepo: 1 Google result sitynozfau: 1 Google result

mazidipole: No Google result vukertalet: No Google result

mazidipole_vukertalet: 1 Google result

Conclusion: Google sees hyphens as dividers in URLs and ignores underscores

Google Test 2 : Underscores or hyphens as dividers in Body text In wagatukepo-sitynozfau-mazidipole_vukertalet.php we did type keywords: bozaketerp-boujulanbi et vorismetapalu_terplamili As for Google test 1, we did search Google for each of these keywords: bozaketerp, boujulanbi, vorismetapalu and terplamili and there were no Google results. Few days later once Google indexed our new URL we did the same search for each of these keywords.

Results: bozaketerp: 1 Google result boujulanbi: 1 Google result

vorismetapalu: No Google result terplamili: No Google result

vorismetapalu_terplamili: 1 google result

Conclusion: Google sees hyphens as dividers in Body text and ignores underscores (underscore is not considered as a divider by Google)

Our test confirms what GoogleGuy said in WebmasterWorld:

Yah, I'd stick to hyphens, periods, or commas. Most people seem to prefer hyphens. If you use an underscore '_' character, then Google will combine the two words on either side into one word. So bla.com/kw1_kw2.html wouldn't show up by itself for kw1 or kw2. You'd have to search for kw1_kw2 as a query term to bring up that page.

Related articles and tools we have used for this test

• Ranking report is generated by Agent Web Ranking
• Should You Use Targeted Keywords in URL?
• Robotstats is a free application analysing the web robots on your site

Welcome to PR Weaver Blog!

You will find on our blog articles about Search Engine Optimization, specialized in Links Analysis and PageRank. We'll also give you fresh related news and the last features about our software.

The PR Weaver Team includes Stéphane Glasson, developer of Stats Reports (Mesure d'audience), Fabien Faceries and Antoine Chiarelli, creators of AgentWebRanking (Search Engines Ranking Software) and Olivier Duffez, SEO consultant in WebRankExpert (Consultant en référencement).