It was a busy weekend for SEO consultants, and SEO forums. Friday (27th of May) I have read the thread “There is not a PR update going on” at DigitalPoint Forums and found out that many sites started showing grey on the Google Toolbar PR check.
There were very early comments with the shock of the news by several forum members. One DP member joeychgo has stated “This is the end of Google Pagerank as we know it”, and many others agreed. I think it was an early assumption to make.
PR was not a major impact on my websites, but it was still an important indicator for many webmasters. As myself having a few web directories, I have understood that many webmasters still care about visual PR more than other factors.
I didn’t give it a deep thought, and I started checking by Google. I haven’t seen any official announcements nor press releases about the PR topic. Then I have started checking authority sites in SEO business, and could not find any proof that announced the end of visual Google PR.
Then I have answered the thread at DigitalPoint Forums by this sentence:
I don’t care about the future of PR but I’d hesitate before making certain assumptions without a scientific proof or actual announcement from google.
PR migt be gone for good, but I don’t like it when people make certain assumptions without any proof. It might even be a temporary glitch.
I had a chance to write about the updates here at the topic “Is Google Toolbar PR History?” . It is not a big deal at all, but I have received a few emails saying I was the first (maybe one of the first) blogger who wrote about it, and a few sites mentioned Daily-SEO about this blog entry such as this one .
As predicted by many Google PR was back and I have blogged “Google Visual Page Rank is Back” today.
Everything seems calmed down for now, we will wait and see if Google will have new surprises about the Toolbar PR.
Is toolbar PR important or not? Many webmasters discuss this question. I will write a detailed article about this topic this week.
This was a short summary of what happened with Google Toolbar PR this weekend.
