PageRank returns, then leaves again

When I woke up yesterday Google PageRank had returned. This post was meant to be a news announcement that it was back but Google, for whatever reason, switched it off again. Is this some big practical joke? Is it technical problems? Or a sign that PageRank is leaving or changing dramatically? If only Google had some form of internal news about issues like these, but somehow I think if we were meant to know they would tell us.

A few of the webmasters I have spoken to lately have been a little nervous regarding the lack of PageRank. The idea of web business without PageRank certainly would impact how things are done now. Of course life would go on without PageRank, the SEO industry would adjust, perhaps a competing service like the Alexa Toolbar and Alexa Rankings would rise to greater prominence.

Spare a thought for those businesses that rely on PageRank for sales. In particular text link selling/buying services that allow you to purchase a link from a high PageRank site in the hope that your PageRank will improve. The metric used to price links in this case has completely disappeared. Companies in this industry may have to simply revert to selling links based on traffic, not PageRank. Of course the reason why people do this is to place higher in search results and at the end of the day that’s where the demand is, it just won’t be as easy (or simple) to “see” results without PageRank.

Of course this is probably all moot. It’s probably just a brief hiccup and PageRank will be back up by the time I post this entry…

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Or not!

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit Manager – English Proofreading