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After my post about how people really want to find Matt Cutts, Matt kindly poked in on things at DigitalPoint Forums. In the thread, he is quoted as saying that you should not expect any PageRank updates:
As far as the toolbar PageRank, I definitely wouldn't expect to see it in the next few days. Probably not even in the next couple weeks, if I had to guess.
This thread was picked up by the MarketFederation blog and has become a topic of discussion on Sphinn.
The response is overwhelmingly unanimous to remove PageRank altogether. Some members are just totally overwhelmed by the amount of PageRank updates; they want it to cease existing so that they don't have to hear about it anymore.
This isn't surprising. Maybe Google is listening to the PageRank removal feedback and is secretly seeking out PageRank alternatives. That doesn't sound like a bad idea.
Forum discussion continues on Sphinn. Additional coverage on related topics (Google banning directories) has also been discussed.
This post was written on September 10th and was scheduled for publication on September 14th. Yes, September 14th is Friday. Unfortunately, we won't have a Search Buzz Roundup this week. Tune in next week and read about what has happened in the last two weeks of search!
Comments:
JLH
09/14/2007 02:24 pm
Removing PageRank is all well and good for us who understand it's use, but can you imagine the millions of confused people that don't read seoroundtable every day clammering for their PageRank back on their home grown sites? Being a big supporter of Google's webmaster help group, it would get buried with the thousands of people all asking the same question. The link: operator has been broke for ages now and yet Google has yet put an automatic message on the top of the screen when people use it saying, "this operator is purposely broke." So I don't have a lot of confidence that they would do the right thing and let people know why their site lost PageRank. Believe it or not, the vast majority of site owners don't go to SEM conferences to chum up with the Google reps and get this information first hand.
william
09/14/2007 02:45 pm
Here is the problem - if it does nothing, why have it? Yet, if they are only going to replace it with something similar or or useless, why change it?? after all, whatever they do, if they change it, it starts the whole cycle over again.... instead of watching the green bar it's something else....
Chris Beasley
09/15/2007 02:23 am
Anyone who thinks PageRank is meaningless needs to leave this industry and go work in another field. PageRank is just Google's proprietary link weight algorithm, it is the cornerstone of their ranking system, and MSN, ASK, & Yahoo all use something similar as well. You can't just get rid of it. If you're merely referring to the PageRank score the toolbar displays, then you should indicate that. Otherwise you look foolish. Of course what the toolbar displays is less than useful, it is purposefully old data, it is an estimate, it gives you no information on context, and as a pure numerical representation it is only at all useful in comparisons to equally optimized sites within the same niche. That, and it is an indicator to the total weight of your incoming links. PageRank existed before the Google toolbar, and it would still if the toolbar were altered or turned off. Also, the toolbar is only updated a few times a year now, Google does internal PageRank updates daily though.
Ward
09/17/2007 04:03 am
The only one who seriously thought that we were talking about removing googles page quality analysis and ranking system is you Chris. Hence the foolishness that you speak of is visited upon you. Ta-ta
Rome
09/17/2007 06:02 am
Personally I think that PageRank is a gratification of the personal effort done and the satisfaction for obtain it...why destroy it?
Tia Martyn
09/17/2007 07:52 am
Is pagerank the only method for gratification? Isn't ranking or keywords an important factor? Either make PR usefull or destroy it if it can't be made better. Regards
GeorgeB
09/17/2007 12:49 pm
Haters.....
sjl
09/17/2007 04:37 pm
This page has a pagerank of "0" on my Google toolbar.
Yaniv
09/18/2007 02:27 am
The removal of pagerank will probably hurt the "link" industry. This will surely not be able to stop people from purchasing links though. People have come to overvalue PageRank but quite frankly I don't think many SEM's could live without it.