Last year Google kicked off the New Year with a major update to its toolbar and many of us who pay close attention to Pagerank were hoping for the same in 2011. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any Pagerank update and the last time we had a major update was almost 9 months ago (April 3, 2010).
The big buzz lately is about Google losing exclusive rights to PageRank in 2011: The fact is Stanford University actually owns the patent to “PageRank”, and Google has exclusive licensing rights to it- but only until 2011.
Form 10-k (2009) filed with United States Securities and Exchange Commission
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Google_(GOOG)/Filing/10-K/2009/F1931284
On page 15 it states in October 2003, we extended our exclusivity period to this patent through 2011, at which point our license will become non-exclusive. Read more…
There are rumors flying around like O’Hare airport about the update coming in the first week of the New Year, but again, it’s only rumors. I wouldn’t hold my breath as I think one day that little green bar will vanish altogether.
As I stated in previous Pagerank articles; there’s a possibility that Google may never update Pagerank again, because they’re focusing on more important things, such as improving search, Adsense, Google Earth, etc.
Keep writing quality content and concentrate on more important aspects on how to drive traffic to your website, blog, etc.
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o well… Google is doing the rankings just fine without the tiny Google Bar, still it is so much fun! I would miss it… something will replace it in the end, not?
I didn’t know that the PR patent belongs to Standford. In such a case, I doubt that Google will update it anytime soon. Indeed it has bigger fish to take care of.
Will be nice if they do drop pagerank so that I can get rid of one more firefox addon. I think that you may be right about them not doing any more updates.
James,
You will still probably look even when it’s gone, it is a habit forming.
Frank,
That’s true. Even though Google places less importance on pager rank, I still find myself checking it more than i would like to admit. I am pleased though that they don’t take so long to update serps.
On a different topic, are you familiar with the gopro and tachyon headmount cameras? I am thinking of getting one for my metal detecting excursions, but am torn on which way to go.
I didn’t find a post on your site about them, but I am interested in your opinion?
James,
I tend to take time to get rid of old habits as well. I am not familiar with gopro and tachyon headmount cameras.
Just when i was thinking of having my website ranked for the first time in it’s existence.
It’s all about traffic that comes from SERP.
Google I think has realized that link selling is based upon pagerank . If you want to kill off link selling kill off pagerank
It may need killing off, but leaving the indicator in the toolbar and updating a small handful of pages every month seems kind of like a dumb way to go about doing that.
Honestly In the last year I didnt really pay much attention to the google page rank till today I figure I would check it out. I noticed that all my websites this year did not have any page rank, but was ranking high rankings on all there keyword searches. So thats when I found this article. Good to know that google page rank is not updating and glad it is not impacting my websites lol
So, will we have multiple pageranks now? – one from Google, one from Yahoo, one from MSN and so on..
Only one rank is discussed here and it’s the Google Toolbar also known as Pagerank.
As recently as two weeks ago, Matt Cutts was still talking about pagerank, i think rumours of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
Google do appear to be having problems with content scrapers affecting their search results though, i do wonder if this is part of their strategy t deal with them.
Its still important,,, just not as much as it used to be! SEO’s no longer obsess over it as it doesn’t guarantee results in the SERPS! page rank will remain, but alongside everything else, domain name/age alt tags, anchors txt etc etc, and content, which will always be key!
I like what you are saying here, and I do agree… one day PageRank may cease to exist… but not yet! Though there hasn’t been an update for 9 months, google hasn’t declared PR is dead (yet)… also it is known that PR is updated internally on a regular basis, just the public toolbar update that is done occasionally. Google kept to a schedule in years past, but now has gone off that schedule. I recently wrote an article quoting a google employee about an upcoming global toolbar PR update… you can find the article at infocarnivore.com if you search “pagerank 2011”
Nah i think this issue was exaggerated. As i noticed Google pagerank is still alive.
The same way they killed the pagerank checker.
But I don’t think Google will kill pagerank since other search engines haven’t yet rid of their pageranks.
2011 Jan 21st, my website got PR 3….
What should be the criteria then? Alexa rank is also considered to be the inaccurate one and page rank also losing its value. Now what should be the standard and accurate scale?