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A WebmasterWorld thread asks just how accurate is the table in Google Webmaster Tools that shows the details of "Your page with the highest PageRank." It is found under "Statistics" and then under "Crawl stats" at the bottom of the page.
Here is a picture of mine:
Yes, no data available for December. In fact, I checked four sites really quickly, and they all said the same thing. Maybe it is a bug for me, or a temporary issue. But that is for another blog post.
Most SEOs that I know take very little stock into this report. It seems to be often outdated and often wrong. One webmaster said, "I think this information is nonsense." But other members think that if the report looks bad, then it is a sign of a penalty or a sign of an indexing issue.
Should webmasters take this report seriously? I am honestly not sure - my gut tells me no, they should not. I have too often seen the reports in Google Webmaster Tools to be flat out wrong, due to many reasons.
What do you think? Take the poll:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Jonathan Nelson
01/06/2009 03:28 pm
no way barry. i agree, this report has always seemed to be worthless to me. false indicator IMO.
Rob
01/07/2009 07:21 am
Completely useless. Does it reflect what it's going to be, what it is, what is was a month ago? Why does it show only 4 different levels of rank when their are there are ten? Does it reflect the same data on my toolbar?
Rob Abdul
01/07/2009 09:59 am
It is not a false indicator. It does what is says on the tin, so to speak. The issue is that is has no intrinsic meaningful value due to the fact that it takes Google 4 to 8 weeks at times to show this . By which time, of course it is already a given, a know fact.