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It is now over 8 months since the last Google Toolbar PageRank update, which happened on February 4, 2013. At the six month point, Google told us a "no comment" on why there has not been a PageRank update.
@NielsBoschh asked Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, if there would be a PageRank update before 2014 and Matt Cutts said "I would be surprised if that happened."
So for all those waiting for a PageRank update this year, I wouldn't wait. In fact, I'd be surprised if we see another PageRank update in early 2014. Maybe they will do one yearly now or maybe Google will quietly want it to go away and not do anymore updates?
Here is Matt's tweet:
@NielsBoschh I would be surprised if that happened.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 6, 2013
Here is a video from this afternoon from Matt Cutts:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Comments:
Praveen Sharma
10/07/2013 12:30 pm
It's better if it goes for forever. It doesn't even add any value to the user, but keep many webmasters running for higher PR.
Gaurav Srivastava
10/07/2013 12:34 pm
Nobody knows it effects on rank or not. But we have to concentrate on every small attribute. If Matt Cutt says, it doesn't effect, means it works. He just want to remove spammer.
Gaurav Srivastava
10/07/2013 12:35 pm
Nobody knows it works or not. But Google still consider it.
Rock Hillbilly (*Patriot*)
10/07/2013 03:46 pm
They should update it on a regular schedule or let it die. Being so haphazard with it is just plain silly, and frustrates people for no reason.
graves46
10/07/2013 04:10 pm
This is a clear move to slow down the link buying and selling market, something that they have been trying to do for a long time, so you can expect this to be a regular thing moving forward. The fact that there has been no update and it has not been pronounced dead yet is that they are likely to move to annual updates to keep things there for those users that Matt Cutts claimed used the metric to establish authority, but it will be switched off in coming years/months. In their wide efforts to kill link networks, this is just one piece that they needed to sort out to prevent the birth of new networks from appearing overnight, putting a stop to people being able to mass create sites over a short period of time, wait for an update (that used to be once every 3 months) and then sell as many links out of them as they could before leaving them to rot. No matter what anyone else who believes PageRank is the magic sauce... This is the best move that Google have made in a long, long, long time. Now links are about the relevancy, authority and strength rather than the little green bar that was too easily manipulated with redirect, rel canonicals and link schemes.
graves46
10/07/2013 04:13 pm
Your wrong on so many levels with this comment and the fact that you feel that you need to call Praveen out on his observation seems to be comical and biased on the fact that you clearly like PR as your methodology. If you want proof that PR doesn't help you rank, can you explain to us why sites that have PR0, N/A or anything lower than their competitiors are taking number one organic rankings? I have seen examples of sites holding rankings for years with PR1 while others have been caught up in the PR craze and ended up with PR5 while the top ranking site is sat on a boat, counting his well earned money!
tbsolutions PR domains
10/07/2013 05:02 pm
So does he basically confirming that PR is still alive?!
marc
10/07/2013 05:29 pm
Because PR isn't the only ranking factor. And the reason you see PR0 and N/A at number one rankings is because that is not their actual PR. It hasn't been updated in 8 months and at the point it was updated, it was already old information. I would love to see your proof of N/A sites showing up at #1 for competitive keywords before 2013. There is still value to PR, it just isn't much. Think of it this way, you maybe build links to your sites yet Google doesn't catch all of them. PR is a tool for webmasters to see if they are doing things correctly on building authority to their site. Kind of like Google "proof" of value for their website. But I do agree, either update it regularly or just completely take it away.
Ashish Ahuja
10/07/2013 06:48 pm
So tactically google is admitting that their algo can be manipulated by using PR links
Ashish Ahuja
10/07/2013 06:49 pm
the "Page" in pagerank is not webpage but Larry Page, do you think google will abandon anything named after its founder and btw, pagerank is alive and calculated internally its just google is not bringing any public update
Ashish Ahuja
10/07/2013 06:55 pm
PR is always alive and used internally for rank purposes they are not declaring it publicly to beat link sellers
Fedor
10/07/2013 07:40 pm
Probably won't be an update in PR until they are satisfied with panda/penguin. They must feel that PR would reveal too much about what's happening. To me, it looks like he's saying expect more from the animal kingdom.
Alex
10/07/2013 08:54 pm
Marc, there are thousands of fake PR sites out there that are linking into thousands of others so saying that webmasters use the metric as proof they are building right is flawed as regardless of the 10% that actually check the PR is supported, the other 90% take it on face value. You are right in that the toolbar PR is not that of the site at that given point as Google never give up to the minute information in relation to their algorithm, hell even webmaster tools is behind what it should be to allow people to manage their site correctly. The whole PR being used to correlate the selling and buying market is a complete waste of time and anyone that is still following that has lost focus of what Google are actually looking for, albeit with good reason as they still fail to devalue sites propped up on social bookmarks, scrapers and other spam. They are getting there slowly but in the meantime legitimate sites will have to wait in line to get the real assessment that they are fighting to maintain, in the meantime the blackhat techniques are cashing in and they are leading Google on a wide game of cat and mouse.
Alberto M. Rubio
10/07/2013 09:35 pm
Ashin, ofcourse they algo can be manipulated with PR and with other signals, has always been and will always be no matter what they´ll do. is like a cat vs mouse game all the time between SEO, BH, PRogrammers VS Google and big corporations... and money is not the main factor that encourages the first ones to crack it, some times is a matter of I WANT TO DOIT. So start to believe becouse is as true as that for every hot chick out there, there is one man that is tired to see his face every morning... ofcourse the guy is not just an other guy and that chick is not available to just anyone...
Alberto M. Rubio
10/07/2013 09:38 pm
Page is not a kid anymore he has grown up, the idea was nice on the university paper... but today is just obsolete
Praveen Sharma
10/08/2013 04:21 am
You missed my point. I said it doesn't add any value to the user. There are millions of people who make use of Google for searching, but how many of them consider PR to chose websites for their desired results. May be negligible. Only SEOs and webmasters are aware of this PR thing, no one else gives shit about it. This is stupid to run for high PR websites for getting links, it only increases unnatural link building and gives a chance to the webmasters (with high PR websites) to sell links.
Gaurav Srivastava
10/08/2013 05:03 am
Good to see your comment. But have you read my comment seriously before posting you feedback. I never admit above PR doesn't work. I say every small attribute works together to build website rank in Google. Hope, you will better get this time.
Bharathi
10/08/2013 05:22 am
I appreciate the googler who gives techniques like this, to direct the customers towards subscribe Adwords.
Jitendra Vaswani
10/08/2013 06:06 am
Ashish how u ca say that ?
Ashish Ahuja
10/08/2013 07:15 am
Pagerank is the basis of google search engine and it is definitely used for ranking websites here is it straight from horse's mouth http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/JMpMQ186SpI/TQ-b99exfZIJ
Jitendra Vaswani
10/08/2013 08:10 am
Thnxx ashish, but for guest posts many consider page rank imp
Jitendra Vaswani
10/08/2013 08:12 am
I had seen many websites that are not being updated, and not having single piece of content no home page or about us page. Still it have page rank of 2. Can anyone explain me how it got page rank of 2. This domain is for sale still got page rank 2 http://seopune.in/
Praveen Sharma
10/08/2013 08:18 am
The toolbar PR depends on number (and quality) of backlinks, not content. This domain is available for sale, not expired.
Sundar Rawat
10/08/2013 08:59 am
It was never for general users in any case. But, many Link Building Professionals take this parameter to generate more links to a website. Ashish is right, PR is alive and it will be always as this is one of the more important factors for getting rank on SEs along with content freshness and quality etc... Making unnatural links and PR are connected and I agree but, it can be manipulated. The PR encourages to us for getting link from a particular page but, that is in our hand that how we approach it? So overall, it can't be ignored.
Harsh Agrawal
10/08/2013 09:52 am
That's pretty sad... :|
Praveen Sharma
10/08/2013 10:10 am
Well. I don't agree here. Time will only tell whether it lives for forever or goes out of our lives soon. As far as Google is concerned, they used to use it for ranking purpose in its early days as that time it was a strong parameter, but now Google is not what it used to be and it consider content's quality and freshness and yes backlinks. But a link from high PR website doesn't mean high benefits in rankings. Toolbar PR has nothing to do with the content of the page.
Niels Bosch
10/08/2013 10:27 am
Thanks for linking to my Twitter profile, awesome article :P
Sundar Rawat
10/08/2013 10:27 am
You are going out of the topic by mentioning 'Toolbar PR' or 'link from a PR Page'. Main discussion above is - Is that countable and how does a page (with PR) treated in SEO industry as per current trends? I just would like to say that Backlinks are and will be always one of the important factors to get rank on SEs as PR is completely a 'Link Analysis Alogrithm' - I would suggest you to please google 'wikipedia page' once. You would really get lot of information over this topic.
Jitendra Vaswani
10/08/2013 10:43 am
Do u think that this domain would be having backlinks ? It have but no quality of domains .
Praveen Sharma
10/08/2013 10:45 am
I am not going anywhere out of the topic. From very beginning I am talking about toolbar PR of a page only. And on a personal note, I don't take it seriously for my rankings. It's useless to run before websites with high PR, it's better to go for sites with high credibility and traffic.
Praveen Sharma
10/08/2013 10:47 am
I haven't checked it's PR, but if it has then for sure it has backlinks. As we know, a page can have its PR value only when it has links from pages with high PR.
Sundar Rawat
10/08/2013 10:58 am
What parameters do you consider for a site with high credibility and high authority?
Praveen Sharma
10/08/2013 11:14 am
It's not same for all. Like for blogs, I consider content freshness, quality, traffic and reader's engagement, eg. SER blog. For corporate websites, we check authority from various tools (use OSE tool from Moz for that).
Sundar Rawat
10/08/2013 11:38 am
Yes, its not about all. Everybody has different-2 parameters like different IP, domain authority on the basis of content originality, relevant to the business, users and subscribers database etc... Moz, Ahrefs, MajesticSEO and such all tools give a rank to back link source. Have you ever been tried to find, how do they give rank to a page? That rank calculated by such tools on the basis of 'social signals', 'back links to that particular page' and 'Google PR to the that particular page' along with some of their own parameters. So only thing comes out is - PR still exist and its one of the major factors. It don't find anywhere that it doesn't in demand as it was earlier (as per your comment above). Also, the sites you find and look for getting backlink - always check their link - they also would be creating some backlink surely. Well, this comment is going to insightful for you surely. Here we take an example - Let us say, we identified a website (Note: Domain PR is 5) after filtering with all parameters to take backlinks. That website is good and has 2 pages: 1) Testimonials - PR 0 2) Feebacks - PR 2 Your vendor says that he wants your comments about his services from your company and he will give dofollow backlink to you and he has two options (pages) as cited above. Now which page you will opt? and why?
Baby Angie
10/08/2013 11:44 am
Thanks for sharing the great update.
Jitendra Vaswani
10/08/2013 12:55 pm
SOmetimes Google do make mistakes by issuing PR to useless domains. We are helpless & cant do anything
Jitendra Vaswani
10/08/2013 01:04 pm
Yes they are frustrating webmasters too much
Don Sturgill
10/08/2013 01:38 pm
The flash bar is absolutely annoying, and the title is inaccurate. Otherwise, thanks for letting us know what you and Matt would find surprising, Barry. Now I feel better prepared to face the day :)
Yogita Aggarwal
10/08/2013 03:21 pm
Thanks Matt for clearing our doubt :) Atleast now we would not expect this update before 2014. Also now we have sufficient time to create some quality back-links for our site.
Ashish Ahuja
10/08/2013 07:54 pm
PR depends on many factors I have seen domains getting good PR just based on the no of indexed pages of good quality content they have
Gary Lee
10/08/2013 11:48 pm
My site lost all internal pagerank on the toolbar about 4 months back, I was told by John Mueller that its still there. Everyone I have asked about it says there seems to be a serious problem. Who can I trust considering my site just tanked on the last Penguin Update despite having a penalty revoked in June. More BS, more lies.
Graciousstore
10/09/2013 04:53 am
I guess Google may be delaying pagerank to have enough time to leash assaults on websites with more updates
Saifi Rizvi
10/09/2013 05:48 am
Well let me explain you in simple way - Page Rank is calculated by various algorithms made by search engines in simple words, Page Rank is calculated upon the number of links on your site; these links Include: Backlinks. Inbound links. Internal links. External links. No-Follow links. Do-Follow links.
Jitendra Vaswani
10/09/2013 06:30 am
I knw Saifi, but Soemtimes Google gives PR to those who dont any backlinks, good blogs dont get PR easily
Jitendra Vaswani
10/09/2013 06:57 am
yogita dont expect anything from google, They can blow any update anytime so keep watching
Jitendra Vaswani
10/09/2013 06:58 am
Neil U r lucky , U will get now many followers lucky guy
Nathon Jacob
10/09/2013 08:09 am
U never know, There might be update before 2014, in remaining few months of 2013.
Yogita Aggarwal
10/09/2013 09:20 am
No Doubt. they can do anything :)
Saifi Rizvi
10/09/2013 11:14 am
Well might be it is possible but majority of times it won't happen. PR depends upon those factors which are known as valuable source for boost up the site. I never think of google updates a sin if you are doing your work ethically then your web automatically gain high PR gain visibility in search engine.
trifid010
10/09/2013 11:16 am
i did not understand, what want google with us..
Jitendra Vaswani
10/09/2013 11:55 am
Yes they are God of SEO
Saifi Rizvi
10/10/2013 05:39 am
Well if you are good at your terms then no update will effect your work a lot. Yeah i would say there ld be a slight effect due to update but if you have done quality work then you will rule the digital world.
ISUCKATGOLF
10/10/2013 10:51 pm
Is it possible that Google has decided that it doesn't want other sites to have high page rank (or any) since it sells ads and wants website owners using adsense on their sites and not selling ads directly?
Talal
10/11/2013 12:44 am
I am sure Google is going to dump pagerank system. They are doing this on purpose so that webmasters could not steal pagerank from other websites. Google is focusing majorly on quality of contents no matter from which website it is emerging, contents must be useful for users.
Shell Harris
10/11/2013 06:26 pm
I would love for that to happen, please kill PR. It is overly emphasized. But until it is removed, people still base their SEO plan on it, which is silly. So either update it regularly or kill it altogether now!
RezoanHaider
10/14/2013 05:01 pm
Well, dear Big G, either update PR frequently in order to keep things fresh or please kill it forever numerous webmasters are being misguided through these. :(
Helen Smith
10/16/2013 10:59 am
My website currently doesn't have any page rank. Does this news mean that there is no chance of increasing my page rank in the coming year?
Maifa Janthapan
10/21/2013 06:32 am
It could of had backlinks 12 months ago when it got its PR2, and then had zero links since... In fact, its got 79 domains linking to it, with a citation score of 22, which is most likely PR1
Maifa Janthapan
10/21/2013 06:36 am
But the question is how much does pagerank effect serps? Thats why webmasters are fooled into thinking high PR is king
Maifa Janthapan
10/21/2013 06:59 am
It annoys me because i use link spam schemes and when my link bait sites are still showing PR0 instead of what they should be, PR2, its difficult to get links because the rest of the spammers that I trade with are stupid and only want PR links. I get hundreds of links from low OBL PR0 sites every week that actual have a good link profile, and give high OBL PR1 or PR2 in exchange, the other spammers love my PR2 sites and think they are getting a good deal, but they are too stupid to check them and see they don't have any incoming links and have hundreds of OBL's. When its nearer update time I'll just spam the PR2's again so they maintain PR, then drop all the links and they'll be good for another years trading. My sites do really well with my link building strategy.
Cindy Fahnestock-Schafer
10/29/2013 03:08 am
This kills me I guess I am old school and used to page rank but it sort of proved to me I was doing a good job w relevant content n all. I wish I had an update
Editors
11/18/2013 04:40 am
That hurts... Newbies like me who worked hard and waiting patiently for PR to see if the SEO effort they put up was adequate enough to get decent organic traffic are at total loss now. I have no idea if I should be doing something more (except backlinks building) or if my first effort is at least okay if not decent... http://www.blueplanetjournal.com/
István Ujj-Mészáros
12/06/2013 10:14 am
It seems that there was a pagerank update today (at least for my site - it is a relatively new site started in February and was stucked with PR0).
umer
12/06/2013 10:25 am
my website pr updated today
Tom Weyers
12/06/2013 12:27 pm
It seems like Google is rolling out a Pagerank update today (6 December 2013). Have been monitoring a dataset of a few hundred URL's and seen changes across the board
Dilip
12/06/2013 01:23 pm
Yes...Today google update pagerank. Now, Matt cutts would be surprised. He once again speak lie with us. How they miss guide the people.
Rasik
12/08/2013 02:28 am
Matt Cutt is a big cheater. Never ever believe him. He is misusing his position. Matt Cutt is only guessing things to make him popular. Matt Cutts, you are a cheater. And I hate cheaters.
Ratna
12/08/2013 02:34 am
Matt Cutt is a big cheater. He told there won’t be any PR update this year. He is a BIG A S S H O L E .
Jeffery Dilegge
01/19/2014 07:33 pm
He runs the spam division. The only thing he has power over is saying what constitutes spammy links. Everyone puts too much faith in him as the "all knowing Google God".
Christy Garrett
01/24/2014 01:05 pm
I was disappointed that my main domain didn't receive a page rank update; however, I did see some changes on a few of my inner pages. Have you heard if Google is going to update page rank again in the first quarter of 2014?
Mega Sena
02/03/2014 08:01 pm
chupe