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

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 ;-)