PageRank Indicator For Linux And Mac OS X

HackWire writes "Google's PageRank has only been available in your web-browser by installing the toolbar restricting use to Windows and Internet Explorer. Nick Stallman has created a module for Firefox to show PageRank from within the browser, within three easy steps Linux and Mac (even Windows) users can now see PageRank without being restricted to a OS or browser."

Comments

...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[headshrinker]

It's a Firefox browser plugin, right? Surely that means you are restricted to a browser - Firefox? Or am I missing something obvious?

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[canadianjoe]

Not really. I think what he meant was that you're not restricted to IE anymore.

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[The Ogre]

It's working fine for me under Mozilla 1.7b (windows version, ack)

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[stefanlasiewski]

users can now see PageRank without being restricted to a OS or browser.

The plugin is restricted to a browser.

Pagerank is a Google product. Thanks to this plugin, it is restricted to a single browser.

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[stefanlasiewski]

it is restricted to a single browser

I mean, it is no longer restricted to a single browser.

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[Feztaa]

Well, the plugin is restricted to firefox, but since pagerank is now available between this plugin AND the google toolbar, you get to choose between IE and firefox, so no, you are not restricted to a browser anymore.

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[deep2k]

Opera uses Mozilla plugins. When you install opera, it creates a netscape plugins key in the registry.

Re:...without being restricted to a ... browser?

[eatjello]

three browsers if you count Mozilla...

Does it work?

[platipusrc]

I just installed the toolbar from the page linked, and there is a blank spot in the middle of the toolbar that displays "PageRank" when I hover over it with the cursor. I visited several pages, and no number has shown up there yet. I'm using FreeBSD, but should that present a problem? There were no errors on install and the toolbar seems like it showed up ok...

Re:Does it work?

[Ivan the Terrible]

Apparently not. I too have "a blank spot in the middle of the toolbar that displays "PageRank" when I hover over it with the cursor" but otherwise, nothing.

I assume that it only works when you select a site that's a result of a Google search.

Re:Does it work?

[platipusrc]

It doesn't appear to work when clicking on a result of a Google search, either. I tried searching from within the toolbar and clicking on a link and searching in the textbox on Google, and nothing. Oh well, maybe it will be fixed in the next revision!

Re:Does it work?

[roll_w.it]

Hmmm - I don't even see that. Doesn't seem like it did anything

Re:Does it work?

[Nasarius]

Same for FireFox 0.9RC on Windows.

Re:Does it work?

[lylonius]

tcpdump -s0 -X 'dst net (216.239/16 or 66.102/16) or dst host (nickstallman.net or www.nickstallman.net or seo.nickstallman.net)

outputs nothing.

If that's too noisy for your network segment, here are all of the google VIPs:

Domain IP Address
www-ex.google.com 216.239.33.100
www-sj.google.com 216.239.35.100
www-va.google.com 216.239.37.100
www-dc.google.com 216.239.39.100
www-ab.google.com 216.239.51.100
www-in.google.com 216.239.53.100
www-zu.google.com 216.239.55.100
www-cw.google.com 216.239.57.100
www-fi.google.com 216.239.41.100
www-gv.google.com 216.239.59.100
www-kr.google.com 66.102.11.100
www-mc.google.com 66.102.7.100
www-lm.google.com 66.102.9.100

Re:Does it work?

[lylonius]

taken from http://dance.efactory.de/

Most webmasters are interested in ranking changes for their website during the Google Dance. But, besides that, many also want to know about their new PageRank values. Normally, the Google Toolbar fetches the PageRank values from the data center that is specified by its IP address in the actual DNS record for www.google.com. Hence, when the Google Dance begins, the Toolbar usually displays the old PageRank values.

Google submits PageRank values in simple text files to the Toolbar. In former times, this happened via XML. The switch to text files occured in August 2002. The PageRank files can be requested directly from the domain www.google.com. Basically, the URLs for those files look like follows (without line breaks):

http://www.google.com/search?
client=navclient- auto&
ch=0123456789&
features=Rank&
q=info:http ://www.domain.com/

There is only one line of text in the PageRank files. The last cipher in this line is PageRank.

The parameters incorporated in the above shown URL are inevitable for the display of the PageRank files in a browser. The value "navclient-auto" for the parameter "client" identifies the Toolbar. Via the parameter "q" the URL is submitted. The value "Rank" for the parameter "features" determines that the PageRank files are requested. If it is omitted, Google's servers still transmit XML files. The parameter "ch" transfers a checksum for the URL to Google, whereby this checksum can only change when the Toolbar version is updated by Google.

The PageRank files that are requested by the Google Toolbar are cached by the Internet Explorer. So, their URLs and the checksums can simply been found out by having a look at the folder Temporary Internet Files. Knowing the checksums of your URLs, you can view the PageRank files in your browser. Since the PageRank files are kept in the browser cache and, thus, are clearly visible, and as long as requests are not automated, watching the PageRank files in a browser should not be a violation of Google's Terms of Service. However, you should be cautious. The Toolbar submits its own User-Agent to Google. It is:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; GoogleToolbar 1.1.60-deleon; OS SE 4.10)

1.1.60-deleon is a Toolbar version which may of course change. OS is the operating system that you have installed. So, Google is able to identify requests by browsers, if they do not go out via a proxy and if the User-Agent is not modified accordingly.

Now, let's see how we can get the new PageRank values. Taking a look at IE's cache, you will notice that the PageRank files are not requested from the domain www.google.com but from IP addresses like 216.239.33.102. Additionally, the PageRank files' URLs often contain a parameter "failedip" that is set to values like "216.239.35.102;1111" (Its function is not absolutely clear). However, it is pretty easy to get the new PageRank values. Simply modify the IP addresses in the URL so that the request goes to one of the data centers that already has the new index. The necessary information is given above.

Re:Does it work?

[Random Web Developer]

If i try that url you posted (even with another domain than domain.com) google gives me a forbidden message.

Does anyone have that working?

Re:Does it work?

[lylonius]

what did you use as your checksum? sniffing the wire from any IE googlebar session with give you the URI parameters in the GET request. the checksum algorithm used is the proprietary secret.

Re:Does it work?

[cheater512]

Nick here. That would have been when my server went down. I have a new server now and a better version so go get it. I should have 99.9% uptime.

Yes, but...

[Chris Brewer]

Does it work for Firefox 0.9RC?

Re:Yes, but...

[gavinroy]

Yes, I'm using it right now.

Who gives a F?

[chris_mahan]

Honestly, pagerank is not high on my priority of things to look at (to put it mildly).

It's a nice gimmick, granted, to look at it, but since I'm not trying to play the google game, I couldn't really care less.

Re:Who gives a F?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

And yet you cared enought to let us all know you couldn't care less!

My day is brighter for having shared in your pessimism. Thanks!

Re:Who gives a F?

[BortQ]

I give a f. As an online business PageRank can greatly affect how much $$$ I have in my pocket. Thus it is nice to be able to check it without booting up the old windows 98 computer.

Re:Who gives a F?

[chris_mahan]

Exactly.

You are a business owner => You worry about pagerank.
I am a business owner => I don't.

Now, for the long answer:

Pagerank is a technology over which you have no control. It is in the hnads of google and wheneveer they feel like, they can change the algorithm. They have done so in the past, to the great ire of all the Me! Me! Me! crowd. I am nearly certain that they will do so in the future again. I am fairly sure that improvements to the pagerank algorithm are happening more subtly on a monthly basis.

This means you the business owner have absolutely no say on how the PageRank game is played. You just find out the rules of the month, and play the game. Like in Vegas. And the House always wins.

Google is hooking millions of people on their PageRank game. People go around and ask: You have a website? What's your pagerank?" Not: What is your site about...

I had a guy once tell me my personal site gets a five, and he asked me how I did it. I said: I guess because I use valid XHTML and CSS. He looked at me and asked: "That's it?"

I replied that I didn't even know I had a five.

Now, my site is a vanity site essentially, with stuff for me and my wife and my friends.

Now, I do run a business: consulting. I build web sites and other sundry magical things like that. My customers all go nuts with Google Ranking. I tell them that the best form of advertising is word of mouth. Always has been, always will be. Spend your time working on that, making sure your customers are ecstatic with your services, and you won't be firing up the old Win98 to see your page rank because you won't care: You'll be too busy taking care of your exsting customers.

Re:Who gives a F?

[cheater512]

While you may not there are a awfull lot of people who do. I created this so people previously restricted to IE can now choose a new browser.

googlebar?

[whiteSanjuro]

the firefox/mozilla plug-in googlebar will probably integrate this soon. it is already very equivalent to the IE toolbar provided by google, in terms of its google-related functionality. although i don't find the information useful, it is good to see this progress.

Re:googlebar?

[neglige]

Actually, probably not. From the googlebar FAQ:

The Internet Explorer version has feature X (like pagerank). Why don't you?

The Googlebar project is an independent organization [...] and some features, such as pagerank, appear to be proprietary; [...] We currently have no plans to implement pagerank or the voting buttons due to their proprietary nature (ie, we'd get sued!!).

Legal Issues?

[rmohr02]

AFAIK, PageRank has not been included in the Googlebar yet because it infringes on one of Google's patents.

How does it work? Can it scale?

[peterdaly]

I am guessing this has been done without google's permission. That being said, I wonder if he is doing a "native" call to google on his server to get the reading, or if it's some type of hack to a win32 toolbar.

I heave already heard the reading is really a graphic that comes off of Nick's site, and not a direct call to Google from the toolbar. If it's a Win32/IE toolbar reader hack, it may have scalability problems...not to mention Nick's bandwith and server being a bottleneck.

Anyone know if these things have been taken into account? I'm worried this is still a beta/hack level project that is about to get a slashdotting of it's own.

-Pete

Re:How does it work? Can it scale?

[lylonius]

Good point.

The URI that google uses to phone home was reverse engineered in the past and google promptly changed its algorithm.

This is fairly easy to do since the google toolbar phones home for updates as well. and, well, you can't block the request since it defeats the functionality of having the pagerank feature enabled to begin with.

Though, otoh, I don't see any good reason for google preventing this functionality to spread to other browsers/os since they most likely value the surfing habits of more users more than any value from locking the pagerank to IE only.

Slow, and not accurate.

[iamsure]

I tested side-by-side with a number of sites, and its not reporting the same thing that the IE googlebar does.

On many sites, it takes a LONG time to get it, and then it simply displays "10", which needless to say is inaccurate.

Even does it on sourceforge.net.

I'm guessing its not scaling well, and the slashdot effect is messing it up.

Re:Slow, and not accurate.

[rf0]

Hell it gives a PR of 10 on www.mylittlepony.com/

Rus

Re:Slow, and not accurate.

[cheater512]

That was a bug. Its now fixed. It is 100% accurate now and very speedy due to the new server.

Toolbar checksum

[JamesDotCom]

The problem with the Google toolbar/Pagerank display in the past has been that along with each request sent to Google it was accompanied by a checksum from the toolbar.

Every so often Google would change the checksum and notify the toolbars, and as a result would break the 3rd party applications. The catch was however, that if your pagerank request contained an old/invalid checksum instead of returning and invalid response, Google would return a bogus pagerank for that page.

At least that's what it was doing approximately 2/3 years ago when I was employed to do SEO and decided to take a look. I'm not sure if that has changed, or the method that is being used for this toolbar.

I have to ask...

[mshiltonj]

Nick Stallman, Richard Stallman... Any relations?

Site not coming up now.

Re:I have to ask...

[bigsteve@dstc]

Why? Did the devil make you do it?

And yes, I'm sure that both Nick Stallman and Richard Stallman have relations, though not necessarily common ones.

Here is a mirror...

[nuba]

Since it is already going a little slow... here is a mirror of the xpi for download. http://wush.net/~mkc/0_8a.xpi

Re:Here is a mirror...

[nuba]

Oops forgot to preview, I'll make it clicky
Clicky!

Re:How does it work? Can it scale?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Why would you want a piece of software that 'calls home' on your computer?

Isn't that why you got away from Windows in the first place?

Re:How does it work? Can it scale?

[Nasarius]

It's not really "calling home". It's requesting specific information from Google.

PageRank doesn't work and default action setting?

[thedillybar]

First of all, there's a spot for PageRank on the toolbar but it's always blank. So this damn thing doesn't work.

Secondly, when I type some search terms and hit Enter, it assumes I want to do "I'm Feeling Lucky" and not a regular search. Can I change this somewhere?

I'm not impressed.

Re:PageRank doesn't work and default action settin

[sirdude]

Yep same blank patch here...

The search box works fine for me.. perhaps look under the googlebar options bit on the extreme left?

Search Engine Optimization as a profession

[sirdude]

How is this viewed by everyone? What do these guys actually do?

From what I can tell they just go around posting link after link all over the Internet to boost a website's pagerank.. And I've noticed a lot of them like to bombard wikis and newsgroups/fora with random links etc.

Is that pretty much it?

Re:Search Engine Optimization as a profession

[Anonymous Coward]

No.. SE spam is just the most visible part. Yes, it is mostly about incoming links, however google is now pretty smart to determine site/page "themes", so creating links from random places is not the most effective method (but popular nevertheless..), IMO SEO is about analyzis and creation of "legitimate" relevant incoming links (oh, and also keyword optimization, of course).

The google search box is the best, though

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's just me ( feel free to point out any RTFM-ish error, if you feel it is appropriate ) , but this is the first time I've had a dedicated google search box readily accessable in moz.
The program goes through an impressive-looking install procedure if you use the 'install' button on the linked page. I assume it installes the commonly-used images during this process, though I've yet to confirm it. Such is my faith in the developers. Long live Software Libre, comrad.

Re:The google search box is the best, though

[Dave2 Wickham]

The Googlebar's been around for Mozilla for quite a while now; I think I first used it back in 2002. See its site for more info.

It downloads images from nickstallman.net

[adelton]

A quick grep through the source shows that the functionality of the plugin can be summarized as

http://toolbar.nickstallman.net/toolbar.php?url= ht tp://www.asdf.com/

returning PNG. So yes, it works by using processing on toolbar.nickstallman.net and you can easily call the functionality from any browser you like, however, it will be easy for Google to close access for him when they see fit, so it does not look like a long-term solution.

On the other hand, this was the first time that I saw PageRank for some of my pages, so it is a nice toy.

Re:It downloads images from nickstallman.net

[miklernout]

Yep, and I think we slashdotted his site and thus... the plugin :-)

Nick Stallman?

[motown]

Any relation?

Re:Nick Stallman?

[cheater512]

I'm Nick the creator. AFAIK both our familys came from Germany. Some went to Australia where I am and some went to the U.S. so there could be a (faint) connection.

Re:PageRank doesn't work and default action settin

[thedillybar]

Googlebar options
Keyboard shortcuts
+Enter in box to search: Default

Re:How does it work? Can it scale?

[Shimmer]

Then it seems to me that the new platform-agnostic utility could request the same info from Google, thereby eliminating the problem. No?