stoned said:
Hey everyone, Whats up with the new trend of pagerank websites?
Google it. You'll find that in late September, a group of people discovered how to determine Google's latest adjustments to the "pagerank" feature of the Google toolbar. They collaborated on a forum much like this one, and at the very end, rubber stamped the results "OPEN SOURCE", and released it into the wild. And like any formula Hollywood flick, the story ends with "--and chaos insued." I don't think its fair to discuss this in someone's "sales" thread, but the fact of the matter is that the code is "free", and being quickly translated into a number of languages. The "complicated" aspect of this task is determine what is called the "checksum", which is a number that relates to the request itself... that is computed by means of a tricky algorithm.
Once the checksum is determined for your request... you can actually browse to a XML formatted page via your browser that retrieves the pagerank of any website. This is the whole "trick". Displaying it in any format is just a matter of retrieving this information, and formatting it on a page.
In the wake of "The Great Dessemination", many people have discovered 1 of 2 things.
#1.) They can sell a quickie "pagerank" website solution/script, to people without the time or talent to make one of their own.
#2.) They can create a pagerank portal, and try to quickly amass traffic by displaying this feature (with or without value added) for what it is... a very useful indicator of search engine status.
Where is the code/script? Where is the original thread discussing it? Where are the free scripts? Google them. Many of them change from day to day. The original website was hosted off of someone's computer, and had since gone down. It's out there though. I think anyone interested should check into it further for more information.
As Stevey notes, Google may elect to alter its PageRank "checksum" algorithym at any time. The problem with this however, is that all existing toolbars will STOP WORKING, and its users will need to download NEW ones to have the feature work again. As well, with the code in the public domain, it would no doubt delight someone to re-figure the new checksum, and release the code.
~ Nexus