Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the Open PageRank initiative?
Google released the PageRank toolbar in 2000 and made it very easy for webmasters to check the PageRank of their websites. Over time this became the industry standard to gauge the link equity value of domains in the domaining & internet marketing industry. In mid-2016 Google shut off the toolbar and since then, it has become impossible for anyone to figure out the PageRank for any website. This left a void in the industry and no other metric has been able to fill the void. The Open PageRank initiative was created to bring back Page Rank metrics so that different domains could easily be compared.

2. Why not simply use metrics from Moz, Majestic or Ahrefs?
Once the PageRank toolbar was shut down, none of the metrics from the top backlink providers were able to fill the void. This might have been due to access to fact that you had to pay for an API to get these metrics. Additionally, the source for the metrics was closed. The Open PageRank initiative was created to create an alternative that could fill the Page Rank void, that would be completely free and available to all and that would be built from Open source data. The Open PageRank is created from the data provided by Common Crawl and is free for everyone. Additionally, the metric goes from 0 to 10, much like the original Page Rank and therefore can easily replace the old metric.

3. Can we get Page Rank data for all domains and URLs?
Currently, we only support Page Rank data for domains. We hope to add this data for URLs in the next six months.

4. Will you start charging for the API once this becomes an industry standard?
Definitely not. All the Page Rank data we have is derived from Open source data provided by Common Crawl and Common Search. Anyone can use the same data and process it to create their own Page Rank data and give it away for free. We promise to keep this data free forever.

5. How often is the data updated?
The data is updated once every three months or so. The last date of refresh will always be shown at the bottom right in the footer of this website.

6. My website is now showing a lower PR after the recent update, even though it has not lost any links. Why?
Our data is refreshed once every 3 months. As all websites gain more links over time, the PR needs to be adjusted so as to always be between 0 and 10. If all the other sites have gained better links at a faster rate in the last three months than your website, then you might see your PR fall in relation to the others.