The real Google Page Rank is neither what you see nor what you can calculate

I mean it. Really.

Vanessa Fox (ex-googler) explains why there are two Page Ranks, and why the real page rank is not what you see on the toolbar, and why the toolbar PR is irrelevant at least when calculating your SERPs positions.

The two pageranks are –
1 – The toolbar PR (what you and me are allowed to see) and
2 – The internal Google PR (which seems to be more a mystery)

Okay, I know that both you and me knew about this, but let’s discuss this now.
Because as we get more explanations from googlers and ex-googlers on this, things are only getting more intriguing.

Image courtesy – Hongkiat

Question – If there are two page ranks and the toolbar page rank is not the real page rank, why is it there out in public, in the first place?

Possible answer from Google – Because we have a algorithm in place which calculates the authority and link value of a website purely based on the number of inlinks it has.

My reply (possibly) – Fine – But why don’t you simply put the “real pagerank” on the toolbar ? Wouldn’t that help the webmasters and public both equally in “grading” websites? And since the real pagerank isn’t completely based on links, there is no question of SEO’s becoming successful in manipulating it, even if they try.

I’m inclined to believe that the “real pagerank” is non-existent. Of course, we all know that Google has it’s n-number of factors that helps it in “grading” a website, but that isn’t anything close to page rank, it’s an algo more complex.

Google pagerank, if I’m not mistaken is best described as below.

PageRank reflects Google’s view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

So…..I don’t think there should be even be a case of internal/toolbar pagerank.

If there is at all a Page Rank, why can’t it be public ?

Note: I’m not implying that Google Page Rank is the sole reason for a websites SERPs rank, but trying to clear the ambiguity here between the different versions of Page Ranks and the reasons to why they exist.