Okay, some of you know that I’ve been managing the ProBlogger 3rd Birthday Bash Giveaway. Today, our first giveaway required readers to post in the comments section of that one post, “I LOVE SEO!”

Well, aside from the astounding 750+ comments we received, and apart from the first 200 of them happening within the first 70 minutes of launch, something truly amazing happened.

That post got ranked #7 in Google for the phrase within 20 minutes!

(click on thumbnail to view full size image)

Now before you go crying “Google Bombers!” at us, please understand a few things:

• Neither Darren or myself were intending for this to happen by requiring people to comment using that term. I actually didn’t think anything of it, and neither did he, other than that it gave entrants an explicit “task” to qualify for the prize, and that it would help us search for valid entries that had gotten caught up in Akismet’s spam filters.
• The effect happened likely because you’re looking at over 100 comments per hour for 7 hours. This would normally be considered “gaming” the search engines if it happened in any other location than the comments section.
• We sure didn’t expect that many comments to occur in that 7 hour timespan!
• The effect, though humorous, is likely quite temporary. This is because ProBlogger isn’t about SEO, it’s about blogging professionally. There are millions of other places on the web that are either solely or at least majorly devoted entirely to SEO, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Darren’s post falls off the front page within a few days, if not sooner.
• “Google bombing” is much different, involving links and negative phrases to “target” a web site’s rank in Google for that specific term - and Google’s got an algo in place for stopping it. For more information, check out Matt Cutts’ explanation.

The purpose of this post is to help illustrate the truth that Google IS updating on a consistent, frequent basis (ie. 24/7). It’ll be quite interesting to watch that search query for the next few days to see how the post slinks back down in the SERPs.

Popularity: 40% [?]

It happens, two guys sit down and come up with an idea, things get really hyped up, Good Morning America starts having “daily” features from your site/company, and BAM! Google buys ya up.

Here’s what the YouTube founders have to say. I’m sure their laughter is caused by nothing more than pure giddiness at the humung-o check they just got, but there you have it.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Okay, you’ll very often hear me stating that I don’t put a lot of focus on PageRank. And seriously, I don’t. There have been times when it’s been more than a year since PR had been updated, although it appears as though Google’s gone back to quarterly or semi-annual PR updates.

Quickly, I’ll get into some details about GPR and at the bottom of this post will be a tool you can use to check your own “Future Google PageRank” (provided by DevShed and SEO Chat).

What is Google PageRank?

To keep it short and sweet, PR is at it’s most basic, a rating scale of 0-10 provided by Google as to what they think of the site/page. It’s loosely based on link popularity, but also takes into account the quality of the links, as opposed to just sheer volume. Very few sites in the world have a PR of 10 (last I checked, there were less than 30 total URLs with a PR 10, and most belong to Apple, Adobe, and of course, Google), and it might as well be considered impossible for your average business to obtain that ranking from the big “G”.

Here’s what Google says about it:

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

So while yes, PR can be a good indicator as to whether or not you should obtain a link from another site, flat out, relevance matters much more.

With a higher PageRank, will my site rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)?

Nope. Your PR has nothing to do with your keywords, your URL (gone are the days of www.keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com having any value whatsoever), or the relation of your keywords to the searches for them. PageRank simply tells you how “popular” a site is for the niche it appears to be in.

Google uses top-secret algorithms to rank pages in the search results. No one can really be sure how much, if any, weight PageRank holds, but it’s highly likely that it’s miniscule.

All that said, it’s still exciting to see your PR jump, and it does let you know if your linking efforts are working for you. If you ever find your site with a PR of N/A - it’s high time you check to see if Google’s even listing your site at all, and if you find a site that’s got a “grey bar” - run fast and far from any kind of linking arrangements with them.

Here’s where you can go to get the Google Toolbar for your browser, so you can check your own (or any other site’s) PageRank:

| For IE

And now - check your site’s “Future Google PageRank” here!

Future PageRank Tool © SEO Chat™ URL Valid URL

Popularity: 50% [?]