how long?
 

how long does it take for goolge to assign
rank to a page and how does it work?

Dave,

Any known rules about Google page rank have recently been thrown out the window! |pcsucks|

Guesses and Assumptions:

The first time you get spidered you will be assigned a Page Rank of 0(zero), and your site will appear in the google results.

Google will "assign' you page some sort of "value" and based o that will return to re-spider your page again and adjust the results.

It is unlikely you will see further Page Rank assigned to your page for at least a month .. maybe more..

The value of your page is based on many things...

content - text/pages/images/etc
incoming links from other sites
outgoing links to other sites
internal linking of your pages
text used within your page
relevance of content and page titles and image names etc

DD

Here's a good example of why you can throw it out the window - we opened in April with no rank:
May - 3
June - 5
July - 0
August - 5

Up & down like a cheap whore :)

how does that effect search engine traffic.

Toolbar PR does not affect rankings on the SERPs. Toolbar PR and real PR are out of sync. Don't waste your time with PR checking, it's useless. There are PR5 pages showing a grey bar, PR2 pages outranking PR6 pages, established high ranked pages showing a low or no PR since yesterday although the rankings on the SERPs didn't change ...

is their an accurate way to find your search engine position

Who knows! It seems to spider when it feels like it aat the moment. First of all we were first and then the next day we weren't even listed!

There is a way to check rankings:
Do a search for your targeted keywords and count the results before your position. Unfortunately the ie searches at Google are served from a strange index, so you don't get numbered results. Most SEs deliver 10 or 20 results per page (as long as you don't change it), so counting is not that hard.
Or check your referrer stats and click the links to SERPs. This is more effective, because you check the rankings for keywords surfers are using.
With all SEs except Google you can use automated ranking checkers.

today I got a search hit from google.
the searched strings was "krystal steal avi's free". I searched this exact phrase and i came up fifth on the first page. now that i know this what do i do with information.

You're kidding with me, eh? One fucking hit for an exotic search term gained by accident...

Go ahead and optimize your page for either "krystal steal" or "free avi's", whatever fits your content better. You can get #1 spots for both with ease. Do it today, before the gallery listing delivering the keywords phases out.

Without some static body text you'll never maintain any spots on SERPs. I guess small traffic trades are way more effective with this page. Don't bother with SEO.