Has Google Abandoned PageRank?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The time in between Google PageRank has now reached a record of 120 days. In and of itself, this wouldn’t be a particularly significant event. But with no PageRank being updated and comments made by certain Google employees, there could be a reason to think that maybe Google isn’t that interested in updating their green bar. PageRank has always been important to Google and webmasters, so it would be surprising if Google was moving on, but there could be reasons they might consider.

Google has been preaching against paid links for many months now

Google has spent a great deal of their time preaching against the evil of paid links (aka advertising where they don’t get paid), and they probably have deciphered that PageRank tends to be the main indicator of the value of a “paid link”, no matter how wrong-headed of an idea that might be. Google is the most important driver of traffic to nearly every website, so they fact they post a numeric representation of the “relative value” of a page gives people a rough estimate of what that page is worth. This is especially true, barring any alternative. So, for better or worse, the Google PageRank ToolBar has become the de facto standard upon which link mavens have determined whether a certain page is “worthy.”

Long delays between PageRank updates tend to throw a wrench in the works

With a four month delay in between updates of the visible PageRank, it’s hard for many people to get excited about the idea of buying PageRank. It takes a ton of internal fortitude and patience to pay for links diligently each month without seeing some sort of tangible benefit. The “eye candy” of the ToolBar seems to actually make a lot of webmasters happy. Others have been in the same camp that I’ve been in for quite some time: that’s where we think that SERPs and the amount of visitors are all you can judge a website by. But for some there’s an ego boost for having a higher PageRank than others. And for people selling links, it’s an economic reality that the higher the number of your PageRank, the more you can charge for links. For this reason, Google may have decided to massively slow down the frequency of updates.

This could just be a screw up, too

Exporting the toolbar PageRank may be delayed based on a screwup or technical glitch too. From my standpoint, I don’t see Google abandoning the ToolBar altogether. It’s an example of the type of free marketing that built the company. It keeps people talking and guessing. As long as PageRank is a part of their internal ranking system, they will probably maintain an extremely outdated and nearly in-accurate “snapshot” to at least placate those who want some re-assurance of the relative rank of their website.

There are some negative consequences from their decision to not update often

Firstly, I think the idea that the PageRank on the toolbar is never updated lends credence to the idea that the whole system is wonky, and means little. No one likes to rely on crusty old information, especially on the internet which has become the primary place to receive up to date information. But there are two areas where I feel the outdated values do hurt webmasters.

1) Webmasters with brand new websites are put in a position of thinking and having others think that their websites are “worthless”. This is not the case. They’re just new. There are sites that very worthy that are many months old that do not show PR and it has to be frustrating for those site owners.
2) Unscrupulous people who manipulated PR on the last update don’t get found out for a long, long time. People who purchase dropped domains get to keep the toolbar PR until an update. They also get to sell links the whole time to those who don’t know a drop is probably coming.

All in all, I’d have to say I don’t feel that Google has abandoned PageRank. I do feel they’ve lost their commitment to doing updates of the exported ToolBar values in a timely fashion.

What are your thoughts about the subject?

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to the Sootle RSS feed!.