Google have been saying for some time now that it was going to remove the 1 – 10 ranking given to websites on the internet. One might say that PageRank was one of the biggest factors that lead to Google’s growth and one of the biggest factors that have shaped the web. Despite PageRank being a dead metric for many years, it looks like Google are officially moving away from it.
This past Friday, webmasters from around the world commented on PageRank no longer appearing in Google’s Toolbar. Page Rank started in 2000 and has contributed not only to a lot of good, but unfortunately a lot of bad too. Just think of how many emails you’ve received saying you need a higher PageRank, think of all the link spam that has been generated because of this metric and think of how frustrated you feel when someone brings up PageRank as if it’s a factor you should be considering.
“No, this update does not change anything for webmasters or SEOs in how their sites show up in search. Webmasters can use Search Console to get details about their content’s presence in Google Search, including information about links pointing to their sites. As the Internet and our understanding of the Internet have grown in complexity, the Toolbar PageRank score has become less useful to users as a single isolated metric. Retiring the PageRank display from Toolbar helps avoid confusing users and webmasters about the significance of the metric.”
We’re pleased to see this move by Google. It’s about time that the metric was dropped and that people who aren’t in the know aren’t horribly mislead by a useless number. We look forward to people not focusing on isolated metrics and rather focusing on just doing great search engine optimisation that results in target audiences coming to your website for relevant information based on what they searched for.
Bye bye PageRank, may you RIP dear friend.
