Is Google's PageRank Indicators in Webmaster Tools Useless?

Jan 6, 2009 - 9:19 am 3 by
Filed Under Google Updates

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:

page with the highest pagerank

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 It seems to be often outdated and often wrong.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.

 

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