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Early this morning, Google pushed out a Google Toolbar PageRank update. This update shocked webmasters because no one expected it, at least not in 2013.
As you may remember, the last Toolbar PageRank update was over 10 months ago on February 4th. As I said at the six-month point, it was unusually for Google not to push out a PageRank update quarterly. Then Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, told us there won't be a PageRank update before 2014 - or at least he thought so.
Today, December 6th, the Google Toolbar PageRank values have been updated. I guess the upper management, executives, or Larry Page, didn't want PageRank to go away after all.
This makes me sad, as I am sure it makes many Googlers sad. Why? Because SEOs and Webmasters obsess about Toolbar PageRank, to the fault of Google. And as I said time after time:
Despite PageRank still being part of the algorithm, SEOs know that toolbar PageRank is often outdated and not that useful. In addition, there are many other factors part of the algorithm that may or may not be as important as PageRank.
Anyway, I do hope your green pixel dust improved since February.
Here is a useful video from Matt on this:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Black Hat World, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.
Update: Matt Cutts confirmed it on Twitter, seemed like an afterthought:
A rare PageRank update: http://t.co/qMKGOd1UlP Team was fixing a different backend service and did a PR update along the way.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 6, 2013
