April Fools Google PageRank Update

Yesterday, as well as today, I spotted dozens of threads on Google updating their site's toolbar PageRank scores. I didn't want to post the details until today, simply because it was April Fools. But the PageRank update seems to be here and like always, too many people care.

We have threads at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums (dozens there), and HighRankings Forum.

Yes, it seems like Google did push out a toolbar update. I will quote one post from all of these threads. The post is from Googler, JohnMu in the Google Webmasters Help thread:

I'm pretty sure we'll have another Toolbar PR update this year. However, as touched upon by the others, this is generally not something you need to worry about.

Enough said.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and HighRankings Forum.

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posted rustybrick in Google PageRank/SERP Updates at April 2, 2009 8:06 AM Comments (12)

Comments

so, if it's "generally not something you need to worry about" why bother Google? I for one, could not care less about a PR udpate. When are we going to rid ourselves of this pretending to be concerned about something that we shouldn't be?

Posted by jt at April 2, 2009 12:45

Yeah, page rank is pretty much useless in terms of rankings. I have seen many page rank 4 sites out rank sites that have a PR of 7.

Getting a link from a related site with high page rank, good link partners and at the top of the page does help though. :)

Posted by No Name at April 2, 2009 16:54

Pagerank will continue to be important because it's the only tangible thing we have to look at and instantly tell the approximate value of the site in Google's eyes. It's how SEOs show their value to customers that don't understand anything about trust and SERPS. Nobody would believe me if I told them - uhm, I got you two out of ten slots in the SERPS for "mcse training", but your pagerank is 0 - and pagerank doesn't matter. Who's buying that? No client I have.

PR is an instant idea of the quality of the site - for SEOs and for anybody. Until we get some other instant indication of whether Google likes the site - it's important.

The alternative we have right now is to do an in-depth analysis on different keywords we think the site should rank for - and see how it does in the SERPS. Who wants to do that for every site? Nobody. If your page rank drops from 5 to 1, is it important to you today? I'll bet you don't feel so good - regardless what your ranking on keywords is.

Posted by Vern at April 2, 2009 19:57

Pagerank update is real.. MY blog also got a PR update!

Posted by Mahesh at April 3, 2009 08:47

Is there any official sign of google that they have finished their PR Update?

Posted by Carlo Schüller at April 4, 2009 05:47

If you thought that the update was Google's April Fool surprise, head over HERE to read the April Fool that google played off me in this update. Its quite an interesting episode.

Posted by Rahul Kumar at April 4, 2009 20:09

Page Rank is important because of how people will perceive the value of your site. For blogs, the higher it is the more people will think it's worthy to leave their comments with a link to their site so they could get a higher Page Rank. This method will increase your site's popularity because people will keep going there to leave comments, thereby increasing your traffic. So having a high Page Rank will help you get more visitors, whether it's all that important to the search engines or not.

Posted by Catherina at April 5, 2009 22:04

Page rank will be great if Google also panalize sites that link to useless web site to raise their PR. My Site has PR4 and it has always been so however few years back it was 6 but vistors were lot less but now its 4 for past some years but its doing great.

Posted by Jamal Panhwar at April 8, 2009 12:24

I just given PR2 in the last update
But now when I check it on some PR checker site it shows 0
Anybody knows what's going on??

Posted by Adi at April 10, 2009 01:08

Many of sites PR get updated, got increase and decrease, and remaining till now. then how can say the PR update was April fool.

Posted by Suresh at April 20, 2009 06:12

Goggle PR testing season is every year same time:first trimester beetween jan 13 and jan 29;the next one is july 6 to july 22;the last is at dec 1

Posted by Weraares at June 15, 2009 19:25

when is the next pr update?

Posted by kenshin at July 31, 2009 00:07