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Yesterday, October 24th, 2007 marked the day when PageRank died. It became virtually useless or worthless. Why? What was the purpose of Google PageRank in the first place?

PageRank was revolutionary when it was introduced by Google. That’s why Google is where it is now: The leader in search. PageRank was determined by the number and “worth” of links. The more links and the better the links (a link by the New York Times is of course better than one by a small unknown website) the higher the PageRank.

At the beginning, a higher PageRank meant almost automatically a higher position in the search results. A site having a 7 would outrank a PR 6 website which would come before a PageRank 5 page. Logical isn’t it?

Soon Google added more and more so called ranking factors such as domain age. Thus a PageRank 7 site could be outranked by a PageRank 3 site if the latter was significantly older. Google itself claims to use about 200 “signals” in their ranking algorithm. Still PageRank was used to determine which pages have authority as it still measured the number and power of links.

Yesterday Google PageRank finally stopped to reflect the number and strength of of incoming links. Now it is determined in a way nobody can trust anymore. Let me explain:

First the good news: onreact.com still has PageRank 6. Hooray! But wait, now the bad news: The Washington Post has got just 5 and some of the most renown bloggers like Technorati #1, the world’s most linked weblog! Engadget (PageRank 5), Problogger (4) or marketing guru Andy Beard (3). So do you now really think I am more important than the Washington Post or the most popular blog on the globe? Do you really assume that I am 1/3 more important than the Problogger and twice as important as Andy Beard?

The bottom line is: Google PageRank is now meaningless, you can’t trust it anymore whatsoever!

Users who depended on the Google PageRank bar to determine the authority of a site can dump it now. Google PageRank is now only a means of intimidation of webmasters. Google is the new Microsoft. It will use their monopolistic market position to wield power over you.

Google is not the Internet though. Google is on the way downwards now. It’s time to sell your Google shares. China was just the beginning. They abused the Chinese people, now they abuse everyone else. Google alternatives like Lexxe will get stronger. Maybe Lexxe will become the Firefox of search soon?

So my PageRank 6 is as worthless as Andy Beard’s 3.

10 articles and discussions about the topic for further reading:

  1. Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms
  2. Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing
  3. Google’s PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?
  4. PageRank Drops for Many Sites
  5. The Great Google Bitch Slap
  6. 2nd Google PageRank in October 2007
  7. Google Drops PageRank For Many Sites : Paid Links or New Algorithm?
  8. Internet Hunger: “SEOs are shaking in their boots.”
  9. Google PageRank Update and It’s All Down | John Chow dot Com
  10. Google PageRank As Good As Dead | Everybody Go To

Social browsing will make search less and less important in the future anyways. Just try StumbleUpon.

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October, 2007 | You can follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback.

This thing has 21 Comments

  1. Posted October 25, 2007 at 6:08 pm | Permalink

    Great post Tad, I never really thought of the situation until now. PageRank is dead, Google is on the fritz, and who knows what’s coming next?

  2. Posted October 25, 2007 at 10:34 pm | Permalink

    I feel page rank shown by the tool bar is over rated. As long at the page is indexed and the anchor text is relevant, including relevant content, page rank as seen from the tool is not that important.

    Page rank is more as a tool for advertisers to charge more for links.

  3. Posted October 26, 2007 at 9:28 am | Permalink

    Tanner, thanks. I know: Social browsing, I told you ;-)

    David: Yes, that’s common ground by now. If you read SEO 2.0 closely you will notice that even still widely practiced methods of SEO are outdated…

  4. Posted October 26, 2007 at 10:18 am | Permalink

    Isn’t that was there always.The ranking of the pages never reflected how popular they where right from the earlier page ranking system.SO why is that the page ranking has to die yesterday?

  5. Posted October 26, 2007 at 6:19 pm | Permalink

    subbu, maybe we can call it the day page rank “officially” died.

  6. Posted October 27, 2007 at 4:48 am | Permalink

    Ever since I got a PR 6 just from distributing free WordPress themes with links back to me, I knew PR was bullshit.

  7. Posted October 27, 2007 at 12:54 pm | Permalink

    subbu: Page ranking in the search results and Google PageRank (displayed in the Google bar ) is not the same.

    david: Officially will be when it won’t be displayed anymore…

    Michael: Now you got 7, I guess your comments will go up…

  8. Posted October 27, 2007 at 10:31 pm | Permalink

    AMEN!!

    Great post Tad….you have made my day.

    You are absolutely correct in that ‘Google is the new Microsoft’…..unfortunately Google brings us about 10k visitors a day!

    -mb

  9. Posted October 28, 2007 at 1:01 am | Permalink

    Yeah, my website went from a PR4 to a PR3. It really doesn’t bother me as I don’t sell links (higher PR toolbar means the more you can charge). Also PR does not reflect on traffic really.

  10. Posted October 28, 2007 at 1:39 am | Permalink

    “The bottom line is: Google PageRank is now meaningless, you can’t trust it anymore whatsoever!”

    If you think you can see PageRank, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

    http://sphinn.com/story/10672

  11. Posted October 28, 2007 at 2:17 am | Permalink

    I totally agree. We have brand new blogs - not even 2 months old - that just got a PR4. The blogs don’t hold a candle to Andy’s or Problogger. So the PR is BS. All of us know rankings and traffic are the only thing that matters!

  12. Posted October 28, 2007 at 1:23 pm | Permalink

    Google literally has shot itself in its foot this time. Pagerank is dead…

    It was high time anyway to say Goodbye to one of the biggest BS of our time.

  13. Posted October 28, 2007 at 5:56 pm | Permalink

    Page Rank is not dead, it’s just transformed. And by the way, Problogger has a PR of 6, Andy Beard is 4.

  14. Posted October 28, 2007 at 10:09 pm | Permalink

    Well, “BigBucksBlogger” finally got a page rank–of 3. My knitting blog’s page rank dropped to 3 from 4. (It had a page rank of 5 last March.)

    It’s all a bit odd when I compare page ranks to other blogs. But, hey!

    The fact is: People outside advertising and SEO don’t generally check the rank at all. So, if it’s unlinked from search results, it doesn’t matter for anything but advertising.

    And does Google really want it to be a clear signal of how much linkjuice a page passes? That would be insane!

  15. Posted October 28, 2007 at 11:13 pm | Permalink

    I do not agree fully. Though some of my websites have gone from 0 to 4 or even 5, they are still worth it. But as always, quality and relevance will determine more…

  16. Nathan J. Yoder
    Posted November 3, 2007 at 9:02 am | Permalink

    What’s with the extreme hyperbole? PageRank has simply been made more strict; it’s not dead by an reasonable exaggeration of the facts. I wish SEO website would stop with the rabid anti-Google (classic anti-biggest-company phenomenon) sentiment that is based on speculation.

    It’s ironic that SEO professionals don’t want people to underestimate the difficulty of their job, but they continually underestimate (e.g. “they changed something to have bad results, they are so incompetent”) the much more complex algorithms worked on by Google’s experts.

    Google continually updates its algorithms in an attempt to, among other things, eliminate spam and search engine deception tactics. At worst, it’s a bad experiment in terms of tweaking (they have tweaked a lot) and at best, it’s making a little trade off to eliminate more spam.

    PageRank is hardly a panacea. A smart search engine will employ a variety of different methods. Moving beyond just PageRank isa good thing. While the current incarnation *might* be bad (there’s not much evidence of it–just cherry picking–no listing of how many spam sites it droppped), they are continual

    And the China thing? To say they abused the Chinese is absurd beyond belief. They were FORCED to censor their search results, and if they didn’t, no one in China would have access to their search engine at all. A boycott would not sway the very stubborn, controlling and fascists government–they’ll use their existing Chinese search engines instead. A boycott means that they have access to no Google, now THAT is abuse, if anything in this issue is.

  17. Posted November 3, 2007 at 12:56 pm | Permalink

    Thank you Nathan for your long explanation.

    Nonetheless I don’t like you. You’re anti-democratic to the core. I don’t know where you live or why else you’re for supporting dictatorships and large corporations wielding power over the average Joe, but this point of view is just too ugly to argue with, sorry.

    If you don’t like democracy go to Birma or North Korea.

    Google had to support the Chines regime, like IBM had to support the nazis! Get a history book pal. I lived once in a dictatorship and had to flee my country so don’t tell me about corporations having to support bloody regimes.

  18. Nathan J. Yoder
    Posted November 5, 2007 at 1:46 am | Permalink

    So I take it that you never buy products made in China? You better do some checking, lots of parts and complete products are made there. Better not be a hypocrite.

    Google only provides a service to China and the Chinese government itself could access Google in any country they wanted to (since they control the Great Firewall). In other words, they’re not providing anything the government didn’t already have. Also, it should be patently obvious that providing public services is not the same as providing special equipment.

    By refusing to go to China, the ONLY thing that the Chinese government doesn’t get is some money in taxes. They already get far, far more from the numerous businesses there that do imports/exports and other business with the U.S. and other countries.

  19. Posted November 5, 2007 at 12:33 pm | Permalink

    So you do not even deny being anti-democratic? Hey, I just insulted you! Didn’t you notice? There are always reasons why opportunists support deadly regimes.

    I am not living in a wood cabin myself so I certainly buy Chinese products, but I try to avoid them. Nonetheless it’s something completely different whether I as a person buy some cheap stuff at the super market or whether a huge multinational, one of the most powerful companies in the world supports a regime. Even if it’s just by sticking to the rules of the dictatorship.

  20. Nathan J. Yoder
    Posted November 5, 2007 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

    I find it amusing that you’ve continually managed to ignore the vast majority of my original argument and obsessed over the paragraph about China.

    “So you do not even deny being anti-democratic? ”

    I didn’t address it because it was a ludicrous, baseless and knee-jerk reaction to my comment. I didn’t think it was necessary to refute something so absurd. I hope that you don’t honestly think that people who think Google should be in China are automatically anti-democratic.

    If you’re suggesting that my previous silence established that I was anti-democratic, you’re engaging in a fallacy called an “argument from silence.”

    Google is an opportunist? Google provides their services to the entire world. The ability to do this since their inception has always existed. How could opportunism come into play here?

    Have you ever thought that Google *gasp* just wants to provide a search engine to EVERYONE?

    “Nonetheless it’s something completely different whether I as a person buy some cheap stuff at the super market or whether a huge multinational, one of the most powerful companies in the world supports a regime.”

    So you would be saying the same thing if you were buying products made in Nazi Germany? In aggregate, individual U.S. citizens give far, far more to China than Google does.

    And in what areas are they making money off Google? Lets see…uhm, taxes for their Chinese office and network infrastructure….that’s it.

    By the way, your proposition results in abuse of Chinese. Using your logic, no corporations should ever do business with China, thereby depriving them of a massive amount of important imports into their country.

  21. Posted January 15, 2008 at 1:50 am | Permalink

    You are too quick to jump to conclusions based on limited observations and data sets. Page Rank will continue to be important in the Google algorithm if for no other reason than its the biggest percieved differentiator for their search results for the investing public. Thank about. They built a search engine that was better than everyone elses based on an algorithm and no they are going to throw it away? After they are worth BILLIONS if not TRILLIONS of dollars? Think a little more logically man. Just because your successful using Web 2.0 for traffic dosen’t mean that search isn’t important anymore or that it can’t produce just as profitable results, IF your successful. And as someone who claims to be an expert in SEO, I can’t imagine you not being successful.

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