Many advertisers considered Google Pagerank as the most reliable metric to measure a website’s authority, but they would possible need to find another one because we’ve seen the death of Google PageRank today.
The green bar on Google Toolbar was often updated a few times a year and webmasters always expected the next updates to see how their websites are progressing. However, if you are checking the PageRank with any plugin or online tool, you can see that they are showing PageRank: N/A for all websites. My site had a PR2 yesterday but now it has gone to N/A, I tried with the most popular websites like Facebook or YouTube and the results are still the same.
Why PageRank Should be Killed
There were some opinions saying that this is just temporary, Google is maybe updating PageRank again or stopped displaying PageRank to make a condolence to Steve Jobs’ death but I don’t think so. This is a suitable time to get rid of PageRank as its role is not as important as before. It has become an outdated metric due to the long period updates, last year witnessed the longest interval of over 9 months and advertisers shouldn’t believe in the metric anymore.
Moreover, as the ranking is influenced by incoming links and some other criteria, many webmasters are manipulating it using frowned-upon techniques like buying links or link-based advertisements from higher PR sites. This has led to the distort in the natural balance of the web and affected Google’s search result pages.
Your Thoughts
I myself had a few PR2 and PR3 websites but I totally agree with Google in this decision. It’s time for advertisers to look at more accurate metrics like Google Analytics’ stats like visit, conversion rate or return of investment. What do you think about the change? Will you be worried if Google really stopped showing PageRank?
Update: It seems like Pagerank isn’t disabled. Google updated the URL which is used to query the PR and it caused all plugins, toolbars and websites to stop reporting the number. Go to the site PageRank Updates to check your PageRank, it has been updated with new script to display PR properly.
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James says
Dude, you should inform yourself before publishing anything. Google has not (and will never) disable Page Rank. They just changed the API which causes all tools that do not adapt to reply with pr n/a or 0…. seriously, read some news feeds before publishing anything…
Tuan Do says
Of course I know what is happening. I just said Google PR disappeared and possibly could die. Have you read my post and the update?
ravi shrivastav says
it toolbar url is changed, seo is still alive.
[NAME]=Google pagerank
toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch={gchecksum}&features=Rank&q=info:{url|encode}
[REGEXP]=Rank_.*?:.*?:(d+)
Mushfique says
Don’t know if it should be killed or not, but it’s true that many webmasters are manipulating it and gaining high PR. If Google PR is killed, where will the advertisers look to ? Alexa ?
Tuan Do says
I think advertisers should look at the real quality of those sites, not any ranking system. Analytics stats will be great metrics as they provide accurately the traffic, targeted visitors or conversion rate. Why should they care about PageRank as it has no meaning at all.
Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com says
I agree.. too many website are exploiting the ranking system and trying not to leak our rankings here and there is just too much of a headache where we should be just focusing on the quality of our contents :)
Mohit says
My website also had pr 2 yesterday and today its NA. I heard that they have just changed the pagerank query URL. does anybody have any information?
Tuan Do says
Yeah, you are right. You can check out the update and comments to get more information.
Tom Shivers says
Hi Tuan,
Great post. I’ve always wondered why Google has kept the green pixels in the toolbar for so so long. No professional SEO uses the PR number because it’s almost meaningless. About the only thing that matters is if the page is indexed and the cache date.
Tuan Do says
You are welcome, Tom.
The bad news is Google PR is still alive as they have just changed the URL query. So, many advertisers and webmasters still look at the meaningless metric to valuate a website.
Cahaya says
I hoped “the killing” would not have happened a long time. :D
Justin Germino says
I don’t pay much attention to PR anymore, my site had a PR4 in June and when it was penalized to a PR0 at end of the month it had 0 decrease in traffic from search visits, also when it was back to a PR2 there were no traffic drops. Clearly it doesn’t impact traffic much for my site.
Tuan Do says
Yeah sure the PR being publicized has nothing to do with ranking on Google search, so it can’t affect the traffic of our sites. I hope advertisers would forget it and give the price based on other more accurate metrics.
Justin Germino says
This is one reason I like SocialSpark they read your GA metrics and all their advertiser links are nofollow anyway so they strictly are more interested in traffic and readership, not PageRank of a blog.
Justin Germino says
This is one reason I like SocialSpark they read your GA metrics and all their advertiser links are nofollow anyway so they strictly are more interested in traffic and readership, not PageRank of a blog.
amassine says
Thank you, I hope this will work
Thiago says
The New URL Is This –
toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=SITECHECKSUM&q=info:SITENAME.com
prem says
I read somwhere it is change of url:
Old URL:
toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]
New URL:
toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]
Sonny Lanorias says
Great post! Thanks for sharing this one. I myself was surprised when my blog’s PR has gone from 3 to N/A. Thats why this article really helped and shed some light.
In my own point of view, this new improvement is better and good for everyone involved. Thanks again and keep up the great work.
`Sonny
BIAP says
Hello Tuan,
good article. I agree with you that the pagerank is now nearly meaningless, but of course still working (but I have to update my seoquake, because it always display n/a). Which are now the most important factors to get a good ranking ? Unique content, related backlinks, ….?
Tuan Do says
Yeah, I wonder why people are caring too much about PR whereas Google always says we should forget about it. Google suggested that we should concentrate on metrics that have meaningful gains for our website, those are Conversion rate, Bounce rate and Clickthrough rate (CTR).
seazel says
I hoped “the killing” would not have happened a long time and Google will soon allow the Ranking tool to show off the Google PR checker tool.
Sally Brown says
Thanks for keeping us updated & I like the ‘update’ you ended with on this post. I’m going to check out SocialSpark that Justin mentioned. Thanks Tuan
Tuan Do says
Yeah Sally,
SocialSpark has many sponsored post offers and I’ve received many for my new blogs, even they have PR0 or PR1. The PageRank system has no meaning there.
I’m glad that you like the post, have a great weekend. :)
Heroselohim says
Even if Google killed the “Visible” Pagerank, SEO practices for ranking didn’t changed so much. Linkbuilding, content, site size, traffic, CTR, social impact (new), etc.
In fact, Linkbuilding is still one of the top ranking techniques.
I’m measuring internal rank (domain) update when multiple pages (sections/links) change position. Maybe I’m wrong.
Google mentioned that they would update “visible” PR with a delay. So… How can it be a SEO tool ?
Tuan Do says
I think the visible Google Pagerank has no meaning, it can’t be considered as a factor to valuate the ranking and authority of a website. In the last update, my 1 month old website has got PR4 even it has just a few posts and incoming links whereas this blog gets PR2 only. How can we say it is an accurate metric.
ivin@comrehensive online services says
I worked my butt off the get it to where it is now. Luckily it hasn’t disappeared. And I don’t think it means nothing, maybe not for advertising and traffic, but for people commenting and guest posters it means a LOT! And therefore is important to me to maintain (and improve)
That site you gave me isn’t very on point, it’s correct with PR and Alexa but the rest is off.
Tuan Do says
Sorry for the Pagerank site, that is mine and I don’t have much time to fix the script. I will spend my weekend to do the job. Let me know if you want to see any more metric or ranking system there, I want to add some more as well.
I don’t think PR is that important in guest posting, what will the guest bloggers benefit if your site has high PR but no traffic? Is it compelling enough?
Naser @ Tech Blog says
Happy to hear that PR is still alive. Hope Google gives PR a long life :)
Josh Dufer says
I don’t think Google will ever get rid of the Page Rank System. Thats there way of sorting sites. There are to many sites out there to sort everything by analytics page views and what not. The Page rank is more or less a popularity check by how many ways Google can access it and how important the content is to the world.
ajmal says
I’m still waiting for the new google pagerank updates in 2012. All websites,bloggers are waiting for that also