Google Officially Discontinues Toolbar PageRank

Since it’s data removal from Google Webmaster Tools back in 2009, and the lack of updates since late 2013, the removal of PageRank has not come as a surprise to us in the SEO industry. However it will have an impact on how we evaluate websites when building upon and refining the backlink profiles of our clients’ websites.

Developed at Stanford University, PageRank valued the internet’s ages from the number of pages linked to it and the PageRank of those pages. It scored websites on a scale of 1 to 10, publically displaying the website’s ranking. Although the Toolvar PageRank scores have been removed, the system is still used internally by Google – along with some 200 other ranking factors.

It was confirmed in March that links are one of the three most important factors that affect website ranking. Therefore having a good selection of high quality backlinks still remains important.
However with the lack of updates seen lately, the value of PageRank’s data has diminished meaning the it has not been relied upon.

With Google increasingly making efforts to change how links shape the web, the roll out of Google Penguin, an algorithm used to evaluate websites and penalise domains with poor quality backlink profiles, is set to have dramatic effects running in real time rather than the current manual refreshes. Watch this space.