The (Final Official) End of Google Toolbar PageRank

[djbaxter]

RIP Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web
by Danny Sullivan
March 9, 2016

PageRank ? the secret sauce that Google used to become the giant of the search world ? is no more. No more for the public, that is. Google?s numeric rating of how important it considers pages to be will soon no longer be accessible to the public.

Good riddance.

Ever gotten a crappy email asking for links? Blame PageRank.

Ever had garbage comments with link drops? Blame PageRank.

Ever had to ferret out the how and why you should make use of the nofollow attribute on links? Blame PageRank.

More appropriately, blame Google for ever making the PageRank score visible. When Google first started, PageRank was something it talked about as part of its research papers, press releases and technology pages to promote itself as a smarter search engine than well-established and bigger rivals at the time ? players like Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos, to name a few.

Read more...

 

[Steve Conrad]

There's a huge buzz about this PR suppression, but we all have tools to find out monthly traffic and backlinks to any website. I'm sure we don't need Google's help here anymore, so it's all cool

 

[djbaxter]

Ultimately, it's a positive step. Public or Toolbar PageRank hasn't meant anything for years now but it hasn't stopped people from trying to estimate it and manipulate it.

Now maybe we can get back to building and marketing websites for people again.

 

[fpforum]

RIP to PR. Thankfully it didn't take very long for other (what I consider better) tools to come along. It's all about Majestic now!