Is there a G Toolbar for dummies post?

I've spent close to an hour looking for answers that must be common knoledge, but no dice. I want to understand how the google toolbar determines what pr to show me. I don't like that it shows me different PR when I view backlinks and click to it than when I copy and paste it. Saw a mention that the page that took you to it could affect it. If the post exists on this, show me the way.

I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this:grin:

no, the page that took you to do doesn't affect it at all.

it's determined by the url, and solely by the url. if you saw a change, it must've been some sort of odd fluke or you were just mistaken.

if it was a fluke, chances are it was just related to it request the information from a different dataserver.

Thanks disgust...I'm still searching for a more definitive answer though.

I rule out fluke, as it's repeatable, day after day for me.
I doubt it's different datacenter info, but just becuase it's so consistant. I may be wrong, please correct me if so
I know I wasn't mistaken becuase, well, as I said I can repeat it.

I've listed below the steps I used to create this discrepancy. If others experience the same thing, then this unexpected behavior needs explaining. If I'm the only one, then smear by body with jam & tie me to an ant hill.

1)
Copy & Paste the following URL into address bar:
http://www.games-for-less.com/category.asp?id=4
Enter, Page loads, PR0.

2)
I then click the drop down menu from the google toolbar and select 'backward links'.
I see the first 9 of 30 linking to it. The first result is the page itself.
========
Party Games from Games-for-less.com. Same Day Shipping
Click here to see ratings. Information collected during checkout is encrypted
with industry leading 128 Bit SSL issued by Verisign. Party Games. ...
www.games-for-less.com/category.asp?id=4 - 19k - Cached - Similar pages
========

3)
I click on the result set link (listed above).
Voila, page loads, it's PR3.
I copy the existing url(PR3) from the address bar and paste it into notepad, yep it's the same as my first url.
http://www.games-for-less.com/category.asp?id=4

4)
I hit crtl+refresh, and it reloads, still PR3

5)
I click to my home page (logo); it loads PR5 as expected.
Then I paste the previously copied url (http://www.games-for-less.com/category.asp?id=4) back into the address bar and hit enter. It stays at PR3.

6)
Then I close my browser, and open a fresh instance, and paste in the same url. Guess what? It's PR0 again.

From this crude however repeatable process I assume that whatever changed the PR from 0 to 3 lives with that link while the session (in the google tb) is in tact.

To state that it's completely the URL, is clearly inconstant with my experience. I'm sure there is a logical reason for this, and I know there are some bright bulbs in this forum who can explain it to me.
If not, I'll get the jam...

Might be some kind of safeguard for "?" in urls, I remember reading that google does not (or not always) look up PR of pages with a "?" in them, however, if you follow a link to such a page, google may calculate it after all, knowing that the page does exist.

PR sometimes gets messed up if you go to a dynamic page right away. conqi is correct. I see it all the time.

Thanks conqi & pk.

I'm not 100% sure how it works as I can't reproduce this affect on the seo-guy.com site when pasting different or unique urls/querystring combos...but I've spent enough time looking into it. In the end, it's not that important I guess. I'll just use tools that report the correct PR, focus my time on getting more customers