Google PageRank Checksum Algorithm

[funzie]

For one thing, the checkers don't offer or accept a Google cookie. It's true that someone could have Google cookies blocked on Explorer and the toolbar would most likely behave the same way, but it's also true that blocked cookies are relatively rare. That's a clue right there, if Google is looking for clues.

Which is why I am waiting for a Perl port. You can use LWP to accept the cookies and create your own user agent, that way it will make it just one more step harder for google to track you. I guess i'll have to learn PHP, ive already made the LWP script, all I need is the checksum calculator. I have done it by having the Perl script run the PHP checksum and then getting the checksum from the PHP script and then getting the PR from google. The only problem is that its terribly slow since to access the PHP script it needs to access it using an HTTP request.

[dharana]

I am investigating why but the same script that works (traB's latest) with php 5.0.1 breaks with php 5.0.2.

[doctorow]

Google Toolbar 2.0.114.5 has been released. I didn't bother downloading it, but did anyone notice any difference in the pagerank algorithm again?

Originally Posted by doctorow

Yep, since there are still lots of people who have not upgraded to the latest toolbar. How should google differentiate between those running an older toolbar and those running an older PR checker with the older checksum?

OK, but I thought that, beacuse the toolbar auto-updates itself, there would quickly be few toolbars with the old checksum. Correct?

Hi Guys

Have a look at this string

/search?client=navclient-auto&googleip=O;875&ch=61598694189&freshness_check =45x6esDcU2KZ49zX6SJ31&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank&q=info:http%3A%2F%2Fcommunity%2Ewe bshots%2Ecom%2Fphoto%2F189573646%2F189573646tQkGwb

It uses something like a freshness check

any clue's

[doctorow]

Where is that from, Raj? Are you using the updated Google Toolbar that was just released (2.0.114.5)?

[doctorow]

Btw, freshness_check was used a long time ago in older versions of the toolbar, but then disappeared.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

OK, but I thought that, beacuse the toolbar auto-updates itself, there would quickly be few toolbars with the old checksum. Correct?

Doc or someone else, can you field the above question? I appreciate your help!

[doctorow]

I am not sure since I am not using the original toolbar... but are you sure it is always auto-updating itself? Is there no switch or something where you can disable it? I would be rather upset if any kind of software auto-updates itself on my computer without the option to turn it off.

i was under the impression you couldnt turn it off my self

Theres no reason why the PR lookup cant be 100% undetectable on Google's end. It's true not everything has been done to fly under googles radar yet, and theres only one real way to garuntee that your not detected, and thats a distributed PR lookup system that hooks into the GoogleToolbar and reports back to a central server the PRs of requested URLs.

That way even when google update the toolbar, you get the right result. And its easy to automate because requests can be made to a central server which then requests the PR of a URL from all the participating nodes. The latency of such a request might be a tad high, but it shouldnt be too bad. Of course if the system got used too much and there where not enough seperate nodes, google could work out what all the nodes where and block them. Simply limiting the number of requests based on the node count would stop that though.

In fact, this idea seems reasonbly plausible if we can work out a way to hook into the toolbar its self.

Originally Posted by doctorow

I am not sure since I am not using the original toolbar... but are you sure it is always auto-updating itself? Is there no switch or something where you can disable it? I would be rather upset if any kind of software auto-updates itself on my computer without the option to turn it off.

This is why I said what I did: This thread discusses the controversy about the toolbar's self-updating functionality.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum80/457.htm

So, my conclusion is that toolbars using the old checksum might even already be largely retired. Any other thoughts?

Originally Posted by doctorow

Sure it would be. You can actually compile the assembler stub above as an .obj and then easily link it in any c application (I've been doing this already, actually).

But it would be much more interesting to have above's code in .php, allowing for various web applications!

Doctorow, will you be willing to share more details on linking to C code as you did ? Say, the assembler to use, the header and C function signiture and how the check sum value is returned from the function etc.

Thanks and good work with open source.

Originally Posted by dharana

I am investigating why but the same script that works (traB's latest) with php 5.0.1 breaks with php 5.0.2.

Have you figured it out yet? I'm having the issue too. The checksum value is invalid as of 5.0.2.

Originally Posted by ZeNiTRaM

My PageRank Calculator gets back.. but with a new name and new features.
Now it's GoogleGetInfo and gets PageRank and 10 parameters more.

Check it at http://dhost.info/zeni/google-info

It gets all the parameters from Google in XML and returns them in an array with those parameters:

//0: URL
//1: Title
//2: PageRank. The Most Wanted!
//3: Last Crawled Date. Syntax: " 31 Aug 2004". Note the first space, use trim() to remove it.
//4: Page Text that appears in Google
//5: Language of the page (2 letters)
//6: URL in the Directory. Get to http://www.google.com/<this> to see it.
//7: Title in the Directory.
//8: Description in the Directory.
//9: File Size. Ex: "59k"
//10: Looks like a checksum of the page, not sure

Read googlegetinfo.php comments for info.

How exactly would one use this on their site, I am not exactly the best at php..I have downloaded and installed in my server, but I cannot get it to work..Would someone please help me on this....

Maybe I just need the right query string...

Thanks