Forget PageRank ?

On 3rd July I wrote about the “predicted date” of the PageRank update that was predicted on July 28 2007, but as always the predicted dates are not accurate enough (after all SEO experts predict those dates based on the previous pagerank updates so it is more than normal that the exact date can never be known) and today its July 30 2007, yet no pagerank update for my sites, but there are some movements, many big sites have actually had a PR update for their site, but yet nothing for the smaller sites which is more than normal.

During the pagerank update season not only the marketplace is on raise and on big movement, but also the rumours about the pagerank update. I notice at least 2 new threads daily opening on webmaster forums during this period with the title “When is the next pagerank” , “Did the pagerank update started” and so on. At a certain point you get tired of all these threads and the same discussion being repeated again and again, every time, every single time the pagerank is about to be updated.

All this pagerank update discussion actually pulls out the argument rather PageRank is important or not. Many webmasters claim that it is useless, some say it is just a number and even other claim the pagerank bark is just an entertainment for the newbie webmasters and those who are on the first steps to learn about search engine optimization. Indeed, pagerank is present only for Google search engine, while Yahoo search engine and MSN search engine do not rely on pagerank (which could make us think that the pagerank bar could be a entertainment toy for newbie webmasters). The fact is that Google search engine SERPs results relay on PageRank in many cases, it determines whether a website is a trustworthy or less, it is also well known that many web sites with a grey bar (PR0) have very good ranking for certain keywords.

But stating that PR is useless we are either calling Google a liar or we have no clue what we are talking about. PageRank is not useless, per Google’s own statements on their current, ©2007 page (http://www.google.com/technology/), quoted below:

“The heart of our software is PageRank™.”

“PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.”

“Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search.”

Some assert, “I’ll take SERPs any day over PageRank!” That is a colossal misconception. Again, unless Google is lying, their statement on PR is that it is very much involved in the search engine results pages (SERPs). To summarize the quotes above, Google says:

Page Rank plays a central (not minor or peripheral) role in many of their web search tools.

They use PR (remember, in “a central role”) to “find pages” related to your search.

Any thoughts? Any corrections?

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