The State of Google's PageRank

As of September 15, 2004, Google hasn't updated PageRank on its toolbar in 84 days. Many of us in the SEO community are trying to out what this could mean. Has Google done away with PageRank? Is Google changing its Algorithm? Is Google trying to dissuade people from manipulating PageRank? Only time will tell what Google has in store for us. Until then here is what we know:

PageRank Checksum & The New Google Toolbar

In late June 2004, the PR checksum code was leaked onto the Web. This code allowed web developers to get the PageRank of a page without using the toolbar and allowed little insight into the workings of PR. Coincidently, Google stopped updating the toolbar PR and since May has come out with 4 versions of the toolbar.

version 2.0.111 : 2004-05-14

version 2.0.112 : 2004-07-15

version 2.0.113 : 2004-07-30

version 2.0.114 : 2004-09-09

With the new toolbar, Google has changed the checksum algorithm. Google has also enhanced security by making the software update automatically. Perhaps we will not know when changes occur to the checksum algorithm.

Google misleading Internet Marketing

The idea of Google misguiding anyone trying to get a jump on their SERPS is nothing new. Many SEOs have believed for a long time that the PageRank displayed on the toolbar is not the real PageRank. Years ago, PageRank seemed to play more of a role in the SERPS. Pages that had a higher PR always beat out pages with a lower PR. So the optimization game became who could get the most backlinks. What optimizers realized was that the more high PR pages that link back to your site, the better your own PageRank was. This resulted in an explosion of Automated Linking Generation Programs, websites selling links on high PageRank pages and Google Bombing (link bombing).

Developers and marketers were now able to manipulate the SERPS by almost links alone. Since then a higher PageRank doesn't mean that you will beat out a lower PageRank. Recently Google has targeted links and link bombing. The link text has been depreciated and with Google trying to determine what is SPAM, it is now weighing the amount of links that have the same duplicate elements (URL + anchor text). This should cause some a shift in the SERPS where ranking was dependent on backlinks.

Google had always limited the public from seeing just how many sites were linking to a site. Google provided commands to be entered into the search field to display information about their index. Typing in the command "site:www.domainname.com" (without quotes) would display all the pages linked to a website. Google for a long time would only show pages that had a PageRank 4 or higher. It became the mantra of link generators to only look for pages with a PageRank 4 or higher to link with. However, a couple months we also saw the backlinks change quite a bit. What we realized was that Google was now displaying a random group of linked pages, this included pages with a PageRank of 0 - 10. This threw off the public even more by not even letting it be known accurately how many pages are linked to a site. Fortunately for us, with other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN displaying linking data, we are able to get a good idea how many pages are linking to sites.

Conclusion

As stated before only time will tell. In my own opinion, Google is still using PageRank as an important factor in the SERPs. I think that we will see a return of the regularly updated PageRank. However, I would not trust Google to be giving the most accurate information. I would even go so far as to say that the PageRank we saw all along was not the PageRank used to determine SERPs. They are in the business of protecting their search engine from being able to be manipulated. With the advent of their IPO, they should be more serious than ever about keeping the secrets of Google a secret.

Yahoo! has been Beta testing their own WebRank to rival Google's PageRank. A select few people were able to download a Beta Yahoo! toolbar that displayed the WebRank. It will be interesting to see just how Yahoo! rates websites compared to Google.

Whatever is in store for us, we will continue to pursuing good optimization techniques, site structure & content, and quality linking techniques - for this strategy is still the basis for creating powerful websites.

Sources:
http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.php
http://www.prweaver.com/blog/2004/09/09/10-toolbar-checksum-algorithm