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Google is Finally Killing PageRank

posted on October 15, 2009


We are one step closer to never having to discuss Google’s PageRank again.

According to SER, the PageRank metric has been removed from Google Webmaster Tools, after the search engine realized it was talking out of both sides of its mouth, all the while it continued to display the infamous metric:

Susan Moskwa, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, explained the reason for the removal:

We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.  :-)

The problem is, Google’s not yet ready to remove the PageRank score from the toolbar installed on hundreds of millions of web browsers. This really leads you to conclude that role of PageRank has been reduced to nothing more than a comfort blanket for SEO noobs. I say this, with a high degree of confidence that most experienced SEOs pour over the data in Google Webmaster Tools, whereas those new to the industry likely let the toolbar be their only guiding light.

Having said all of that, I will admit that I still find the PageRank data useful. No I don’t use the Google Toolbar–I prefer the Firefox plugin called SearchStatus–but I do sometimes glance at the PageRank of a page. But, before you start pointing and laughing at me, know that I only use it as an early warning that a site is not behaving in Google’s index. Any green means “go.” No green, means there’s something to investigate.


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  • http://www.brianchappell.com Brian Chappell

    Toolbar PR is a garbage metric that only matters in the land of Digital Point Forums

    http://forums.digitalpoint.com/search.php?searchid=18442896

    • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

      LOL!

  • Jason

    Wow, it’s almost 2010 and we’re still talking about this? Google has been saying the same thing for years now. Toolbar PR doesn’t matter – it’s old, outdated data.

  • http://www.cleartag.com/blog/arabic-seo Arabic SEO

    It is a fun metric :)

  • http://joehall.me Joe Hall

    Whats PageRank? ;-)

    • Moe

      What’s Google?

  • http://www.dan-london.com Dan London

    Interesting…I’m sure some other “stat” will be the new one for people to obsess over now
    .-= Dan London´s last blog ..Does Your SEO Company Care About Your Business…Or Theirs? =-.

  • http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/ Vlad

    Long time overdue.
    .-= Vlad´s last blog ..Telling Google How Often To Crawl Your Site- Not A Good Idea After All. =-.

  • http://www.barretire.com Todd Hebert

    It’s one step to a better world as far as I am concerend. I get tired of heaqring abut pagerank. Honestly to many people are making money of the uninformed over that little green bar.

  • http://blog.livemercial.com/ finn @ livemercial

    and there was much rejoicing!!!
    .-= finn @ livemercial´s last blog ..Livemercial, Mathis Each Pick Up an Award =-.

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  • http://www.homewiththekids.com/blog/ Stephanie

    Oh thank goodness! One less thing to ignore.
    .-= Stephanie´s last blog ..If the Scams Are Frustrating You, Why Not Create Your Own Work at Home Opportunity? =-.

  • http://www.internationalwebsitebuilders.com Terry Van Horne

    They removed most of the link info you got from the Link: syntax didn’t make links any less important only meant google wasn’t going to help you screw with em. IMO, only a fool thinks PR is going anytime soon! It was removed for the same reasons as the supplemental label in results to stop people obsessing about things that mean diddly! Take PR out of it and ahoo! Bing and Google all pretty well have the same algo, that and the indented listings is what separates Google from those who covet their popularity! Google isn’t stupid they know it

  • Laura

    It’s been a simple way to compare one site to another when speaking to execs. They don’t get the detail mumbo jumbo for SEO pros and Google algorithms. I’ll now have to spend more time defining other comparisons.

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  • http://www.repossessedcarstore.com Cat Jarritt

    Kinda like adwords breakdown. They don’t want you to use it but you know they are gonna.
    .-= Cat Jarritt´s last blog ..How To Buy Repossessed Cars Easily Online =-.

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  • http://www.sogowear.com Mark L

    Great move of Google killing the page rank tool. That way small site owners won’t be misguided.

  • http://www.phifoundation.org Chuck

    Well they will always need a way to help them to determine how to list people in the search and page rank was part of that. That is the main reason for having page rank.

  • http://techcrunchies.com Anand Srinivasan

    I’m fine if Google kills it. But there should be some reliable metric from the Search Engine themselves that will tell webmasters how they are progressing. Alexa, Compete, Quantcast are all third party sites and none of them are on target.

    How do I know if what I have worked on is showing results? Don’t tell me organic results because that is not under complete control – Traffic falls 50% during Christmas time; not my site’s fault.
    .-= Anand Srinivasan´s last blog ..Change in Mobile Ad Revenue Constituents =-.

  • http://www.zurnachat.com zurna

    long time evertune…. very nice..

  • http://softwarecritics.info Mathdelane

    If this was really true, it has been long overdue. Now, what matters is getting found in search results especially on the first page. Blogs had been battling over this fact on who’s supreme but if this could be true, everyone is even. Battle for the SERPs is the game. PR sculpting is over.
    .-= Mathdelane´s last blog ..Wordpress 2.9 Beta Testers on Call =-.

  • http://www.freeinternetmarketinggift.com/ Free Internet Marketing Gift

    Hey Mate, I’ve read a couple of posts on your blog and I love your style. I am going to subscribe to your RSS feed :)

  • http://www.barbaraling.com Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach

    FINALLY! I never bother with page rank – it’s so easily a gamed metric.
    .-= Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach´s last blog ..Today’s Humor! Cute birdie meets jeep meets coyote! =-.

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  • http://www.kkti.com Jim Rudnick

    Same here, ie we haven’t paid any attention to PR now for over 3 years…and I love that this is “finally” bubbling up in the latest news from Google, eh!

    :-)

    Jim

    • http://techcrunchies.com Anand Srinivasan

      So what is the metric that you watch to see how your website is faring? I too knew about PR being irrelevant, but kept holding on to it since I didn’t have another metric to watch out for.
      .-= Anand Srinivasan´s last blog ..Change in Mobile Ad Revenue Constituents =-.

  • http://www.aweo.org/ Rucio

    It was mentioned in an earlier comment that Page Rank is relative to all the web pages in the world, so in that sense it is indeed useless, but in comparing sites competing for the same searches it remains a crude indicator. If my rival for the same keywords is ranked 5 and I’m only at 3, then it’s clear I need to work harder. On the other hand, if my site is unique it doesn’t matter if its PR is only 3.

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  • http://hackua.com/ ZEXEL

    Its saw bad… Why ?? i am cry
    .-= ZEXEL´s last blog ..Плачу гроші за реєстрацію на сайті =-.

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  • http://www.goodies4free.net Wii Fan

    I have been using a few webmaster forums where PageRank is the main statistic used when selling or buying text links and ad space. This has always caused me confusion because surely you are going to get more traffic and better reputation by using sites that have themselves built great reputation for themselves and great traffic.

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  • http://www.lcnskateshop.co.uk skate

    totalmente de acuerdo!

  • http://rutaweb.wordpress.com Jose Sanchez

    Well it seems that finally google decided kill the green bar, but now what? Maybe they will create a new factor to view the importance of a website?
    .-= Jose Sanchez´s last blog ..Google muestra el numero de visitas que hiciste a una página =-.

  • http://cookingsharp.blogspot.com/ Valerie@CookingSharp

    That’s a relief! I’m glad they’re telling people what is NOT important, like meta keywords and pagerank. Webmaster Tools seems focused on showing us how to really succeed. Now if they can only get the former Google Base settled back down, I’ll be happy.
    .-= Valerie@CookingSharp´s last blog ..Chess Pie Vintage Recipe =-.

  • http://www.strongwords.ca Jim

    I feel a bit stupid saying this after all the “it’s about time” posts here, but….

    Why do so many people still discuss PageRank as if it is important. And I mean people like Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin (not just site flippers, etc.) In Rand’s whiteboard on site architecture earlier this year (for one example) he went on about passing PageRank throughout a website as if PageRank was indeed critically important to think about. In the much-overblown discussion about sculpting PageRank on Matt Cutts’ blog earlier this year there was not one hint that PageRank was unimportant.

    To be sure, most of us know that Page Rank is secondary to trust rank as well as on page content and other factors (including site architecture) but does any reasonable SEO completely ignore PageRank all the time?

    It is not primarily important but it is not completely irrelevant, folks…..

    • http://techcrunchies.com Anand Srinivasan

      Your posts make a lot of sense, Jim..I just feel Google’s doing this to make the SEO’s job a bit redundant..
      .-= Anand Srinivasan´s last blog ..Change in Mobile Ad Revenue Constituents =-.

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  • http://www.seoworkers.com SEO Workers

    What doesn’t make sense to me is that they removed the PageRank values from the Webmaster Tools and not from the toolbar.

    And anyway, just because Google does not share anymore with the site owners the actual PageRank (via GWT), doesn’t suppose to mean that PageRank is dead or not important.

    I am not claiming that it is the most important factor, but let me ask you two questions: Can you rank without links? And what is PageRank about?

    If Google will officially tell that they removed PageRank from their algorithm, then obviously I will remove PageRank from my factors list.

    IMO, all these Google promo attempts about PageRank stink. On the one hand they are against paid links etc, and on the other hand they leave the toolbar there, which is the strongest promotion tool for buying links or building links in an unnatural way. Or did I miss something?

    So come on people. We are not that dumb, or?
    .-= SEO Workers´s last blog ..SEO Services & Budget =-.

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  • http://www.walidmrealtor.com walidmrealtor

    Interesting…it looks like Google is removing pr from direct line of sight and saying ignore it, but not saying they won’t keep it under consideration internally.

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  • http://www.redchery.com/index.php swasa

    Very Good now google is not focusing on the pagerank.Then what about the pagerank given to the old sites.And for the new sites.What is the solution.

  • Pingback: El Page Rank ha muerto | Posicionamiento Web

  • http://sihendri.com hendri

    god damn!!! i have build some new blogs for a few month.. i want to flipping it.. but now, what can i do with those blogs??
    .-= hendri´s last blog ..google page rank dihapus?? =-.

  • http://londoniscool.com William Wallace

    All those fucking geeks are not going to be having there wet dreams anymore now that Google has finally seen some sense. How could anybody take something that was only updated 3 or 4 times a year as being an accurate measurement as to how well a site is doing……bull shit!
    .-= William Wallace´s last blog ..Nottign Hill7 =-.

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  • http://stopdreamingstartaction.jogloabang.com suryaden

    so and always think a great content…
    .-= suryaden´s last blog ..nabi baru sebuah fenomena energi atau kerja keras =-.

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  • http://www.topchinawholesale.com Mouse

    PageRank is google’s heavy weapon!

  • http://www.tmdesigner.it Tmdesigner

    Ah.. finally! lets write good content!

    • http://techcrunchies.com Anand Srinivasan

      No wait…This is old news. Google announced a PR update this week..
      .-= Anand Srinivasan´s last blog ..Touchscreen Phone Growth and Market Share =-.

  • http://www.the-residence-seminyak.com Bali Accommodation

    My website PR downgraded from 3 to 2 know. But my deep pages get 1 PR.

  • http://www.travelonspy.com Milton

    Thank God. Now we can focus on what really matters.

    On the other hand, there have been beliefs that if you get inbound links from website that has high PR rank, chances are your site will be treasured more in Google. So how is this going to change this fact?
    .-= Milton´s last blog ..Empire State Of Mine: 7 Things To Do In New York On New Year’s Eve =-.

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  • http://www.2webvideo.com Partha Bhattacharya

    Ditto. PR will henceforth be for selective eyes. But going away for ever? I doubt.

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