There are so many important aspects these days that needs to maintain and improve constantly when running an online business- Creating quality content, social media integration, proper monetization, marketing, design and more. Focusing on Google PageRank is NOT one of them, as it has almost has non-value at all!

Apparently, in the tradition of an update every three months or so, there was a PageRank update in the last few hours and sadly, the main reason i know that (even without checking it myself) is because all of the many reports in SEO and internet marketing forums (for example in Digital Point forum).

I say sadly because instead of trying to discuss on real important optimization or marketing issues, lots of webmasters are discussing about PageRank like it is has some major connection to their rankings and traffic. So for all of you who are a bit surprised from this statement, let me explain furthermore why not.

The Rise and The Fall

Once upon a time (back in late 2000 if you insist), a young and rapidly gaining popularity search engine called Google, has released its first Toolbar. One of the features on the Toolbar was a PageRank bar that rates pages online at a scale of 0 to 10. Back then, it reflected the importance of the page on the web.

Just until few years ago, there was some correlation between a site’s PageRank to its search rankings and while it was the only transparent search signal from Google, it considered as highly valuable. However, in the last few years, as Google improved its algorithm, it gradually lost its relevancy and prestigious.

If two years ago, the PageRank could still say something about a website in terms of rankings and traffic, now, it is barely saying that. Today, you can find many PageRank 2-3 sites that receives much better rankings from PageRank 5-6 sites at the same keywords!

Panda Killed Completely The Dying PageRank

I think that what killed completely the already dying PageRank was the Panda algorithm which first launched in February 2011 and getting updated periodically since then (last Panda update was about two weeks ago). The Panda has changed the whole rankings calculation by basically granting pages content much more significance.

Therefore, while the whole search algorithm “priorities” have changed, the PageRank remained as it was before. Meaning, it became less relevant then ever with almost not any actual affect. The only exceptions are in extreme cases, such as a manual penalty against a site when Google is dropping the site’s PageRank to 0 (like when they demote Chrome homepage).

For conclusion, as the headline: “Yes there was a PageRank update, but who really cares?”