PageRank Update: So What?

Yep, there was a PageRank update last week for all of you who noticed. Although a more apt reaction to said news should be: who cares?

Unfortunately, the obsessive behavior over Google's PageRank continues to light up message boards and blogs even in 2008. There used to be a time when PageRank had a purpose, but that day has passed. It determined if a link exchange was good; it gave monetary value when buying and selling links wasn't taboo; and most of all, PageRank updates coincided with an actual change in Google rankings. Today, there is no semblance of a blip in the SERP's (search engine result pages) after the latest PR update in late April, 2008.

It's interesting to see how far PageRank has come since the little green bar was included in the Google Toolbar in 2002, but all it is now is "merely" advertising for Google. It gets their name out there and it's been part of their web browser toolbar for years, so why mess with it? A wise business move it is to still include it in the highly popular Toolbar add-on, but one has to wonder what will become of it when PageRank really does become obsolete?

As I've mentioned, its main use is to give value to link exchanges and paid links. But as more web people educate themselves and notice how PR does not directly correlate to page quality or rankings anymore, one must think the time will come when Google finally pulls it from public view. An obsolete graphic will only serve to confuse rather than inform web users.

So why not pull it now? We all know what Google thinks of paid links. If they tampered with the most popular method of assigning value to pages people sell links from, wouldn't that help their cause? Would it not also let people know that Google means business? Since MSN Live search and Yahoo! currently do not support Google's stance on paid links, many webmasters and SEO's still incorporate link buying for clients into their campaigns. I'd guess that many SEO's still buy links because they think they can still get away with it. Google made it clear they can't fight the problem on their own when they introduced a paid link reporting form. They urged others within the industry to inform them when they suspected a web site was either selling or buying text links for the purpose of passing PageRank to increase rankings.

Although I doubt Google will abolish PageRank anytime soon, I'd be interested to see what methods people turn to to value links.