Google is asking for feedback on what they should do with the toolbar PageRank score.
Without being rude, I wanted to post my thoughts.
The whole link buying fiasco is built on PR. If Google removes the toolbar PR figure people will start to buy links from quality sites that rank well rather than any site that has PR6. Its pretty easy to build yourself a PR6 made for selling text links site but a lot harder to build a quality site that ranks well in Google. The key issue is that once you have a quality site that ranks well you don’t need to sell links to make money and the whole market falls down.
My initial thought was for Google to make up a score based on how well trusted the site is but then I realised that they actually already have this – its called the search results.
If you want to know how well trusted a site is, search for it on Google.
In my opinion the world would be a better place without toolbar PR. Shawn Hogan might disagree though, Digital Point would be pretty quiet without it…….
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Yep, DP would be lacking about 100 “When’s the next PR update” posts every week. I agree with you, I’ve become increasingly aggravated at the importance placed on PR.
~Adam
I totally agree, Google made this fiasco that is called “link buying” by giving out PR via their toolbar and now they’re complaining that people are buying links.
Frankly, I would be glad to see PR not updated and not shown anymore.
There isn’t any weight to that green bar anymore. But when i go to a site, i still look at it. I am not sure if they should get rid of the bar, but if they have so much money in the bank, maybe they should make it more sophisticated and make it update in realtime.
They shouldn’t remove it imho, people who want to sell links will still be kicking it with tools like page strength and so.
Plus i oftenly use pagerank as a ‘trust bar’.
So i vote don’t remove pagerank :-p.
Page rank is still useful to tell if I can trust a site or not. Sometimes people will start shady business sites, and I instantly know to avoid them just by seeing the green bar at 0.
I agree that PR should go away from the toolbar. It causes more problems than it tries to help.
I believe it’s ok with buy and sell text link ads if the nofollow attribute is used. Google’s fine with that too, actually.
It helps to drive traffic and earn income for bloggers.
http://www.wptextads.com/blog/2007/05/24/we-dont-hate-paid-links-says-googles-seo-strategist/
Alex
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