I noticed my backlinks were updated yesterday and PR the previous week (as noted in another thread). If everything falls in line, I would expect to SERP changes on or around 1/17.

debauchery

I take it from your post that you believe that the order google work in is PR Update, Back Link Update, SERPs update?

If so are you saying that the from your point of view that the only major changes we see in the serps are only after the quarter updates?.

Some web masters tell me their own site moves in the index more regular.

In my own commercial category the first 50 listed in SERPS change very little, my own site i believe has many pages still sandboxed so i think once a quarter for an adjustment is perhaps right, although i havent benefited myself yet from an update in the SERPS.

I hope your right with your guess of 17th - Anything to move the index my site is in is great by me!

Its not that PR is ot updated but if I can make a guess its updated on a daily basis and the point is we cant see it in Toolbar or other sites. PR was updated 3rd Jan and so dont expect the SERP's will change and they dont depend on toolbar PR but depends on internal PR of the site which is updated more regularly.

I generally don't worry about PR too much, so I don't bother tracking updates - I take the approach that it is what it is. I typically bounce between PR 5-6. I do pay attention to backlinks as I have experienced strange behavior in the past. Twice last year my backlinks dropped to 0 - the first time I freaked out, sent a message to Google askng them if I was being penalized for some reason. I was surprised when they actually responded, said I wasn't penalized, that rankings change, and to wait and see. The backlinks re-appeared in 3 weeks, and traffic came back shortly thereafter (to even higher levels).

The second time the same thing happened - right before Christmas on 12-17. My backlinks re-apperaed a few days ago, so I expect to see traffic bounce back on or about 1-17. I've since been scouring forums to find out how to prevent this from happening and really haven't come up with anything concrete (everyone has theories), except to use a 301 redirect so the site is consistently referenced with the www. prefix (was showing different backlink numbers)

Man, that would be real nice.. bring it on!