Google PageRank Updates: January 2007

For those who don't know, Google maintains a numeral rank for each website it indexes. This rank is called the Google PageRank, and is often refered to as the PR of a site. According to Google's toolbar, PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of a page. In fact, a PageRank was one of the very first measures of trust for a website. More often than not, web surfers armed with a PageRank enabled Google toolbar in their browser would not trust a site which reported that the website they were visiting had a Pagerank any lower than 3. Some sites won't even link to another website with a PR of less than 4. It's all pretty paranoid, really.

When we started hearing that Google had updated its PageRank values for websites on about January 7th, 2007, we were getting excited that ours should update soon, as well. As time marched on our PR did not update, and this was making me and my boss more and more nervous (and frustrated). Our main website at Syd's Eastside Auto Parts has been trapped in the Google Sandbox with a lowly PageRank of 1 (on a scale of 0 to 10) for over 6 months, now. I was starting to think of the Google Sandbox as a sandpit filled with only quicksand.

Apparently, we are pretty far down on the list of websites for Google to update. Then, on January 25th, 2007, Google finally showed us a new PageRank of 4 for our website. I was so releived, as we had been fighting for a decent PR value for well over 6 months, and the strain on our business seemed intolerable. I was actually quite happy, having thought we would have to struggle another 3 months, until the next update, without any recognition of our hard work and effort in building the website, our brand, and for our considerable online marketing efforts.

But, Google wasn't done, yet. On Monday I came to work to find that our local shopping, tourism & business listings directory for Southeastern South Dakota, Yankton Shopping, had also been updated to a PR of 3 (from 0). To top this off, today I found that our Automotive Search Network and this blog (which you are reading now), were both among the websites further updated with Google PageRanks of 3 (each, they had both previously been rated 0).

Now, we hope that Google will take into account our last few pages that we put up recently durring the next Google PR Update... Our SydsEastside homepage at Google Pages, and our new Autos & Automotive group at Google Groups. ;)

If you are interested in joining our automotive and motorsports related group, Autos & Automotive, please be sure to check out our Group Welcome Page. We are very interested in signing-up automotive industry professionals, auto enthusiasts, car clubs and motorsports related members!

Look for further announcements concerning our group in the near future!

One thing I should mention, before I close this entry, is that Google's PageRank has not yet updated on all of Google's web servers. In fact, in the course of a day, I will notice that the Google toolbar will report a PR1 and later a PR4 and then flip-flop between the two throughout the day. Once Google updates all of it's servers that serve the Google Toolbar's PageRank, the PR should remain steady throughout the day. Let's hope that it won't take another Google update for the PR to be distributed to all such web servers. Hopefully, Google will address this in the future.

We hope you have a great day/night ahead of you! ;)
- Syd's Eastside Auto Parts

New Automotive Articles Online

Syd's Eastside Auto is proud to announce that over the past month we have been adding articles to the website, in the new Articles section.

We have started this section with 3 articles about vehicle maintenance and preparation:

• Winterization discusses how to prepare your vehicle for the winter, as well as preparing yourself for cold weather roadside emergencies.
• Coolant Change illustrates the mechanics and positive affects of changing and maintaining your coolant levels.
• Spark Plugs explains the basic knowledge required behind changing your spark plugs and wires. This is actually quite a good article since spark plugs usually are a tell-tale sign of exactly how your engine is performing. We plan to expand on this article in the future.

We hope that you will find these articles helpful. We are planning on adding even more automotive articles and mechanical tutorials in the near future.

Syd's Eastside Auto has also added more online contact web forms to make it easier for our customers to contact us and to direct specific comments or requests to the correct department or person. This should help expedite email based assistance for our customers. Our physical address and telephone contact information will also be found at the bottom of each of these web forms incase you would like to contact us more directly.

We will continue improving the website and invite everyone to offer thier own suggestions and feedback concerning our website, as well. In fact, the Site Feedback web form is also online to facilitate any such comments criticsm about the website.

We hope that you enjoyed a HAPPY HOLIDAYS and will have a GREAT NEW YEAR!