Do you remember Google’s PageRank named after co-founder Larry Page?
It was the original Google algorithm and also a prominent metric.
Maybe you have seen the little green bar in the Google toolbar?
For many years that bar represented PageRank on a scale from 1 to 10.
October 24th, 2007 marked the day when PageRank died. Why?
(Yet it took almost another decade to finally remove it on May 7th, 2016.)
It became virtually useless. “High PR sites” were “the holy grail” until then.
What to measure when “toolbar PageRank” is gone and the Google algorithm also relies on more complexity?
The history of visible “toolbar” PageRank and ranking algorithm
What was the purpose of Google PageRank in the first place?
PageRank was revolutionary when it was introduced by Google.
That’s why Google is where it is now: the leader in search.
PageRank was determined by the number and “value” of links.
The more links and the better the links the higher the PageRank.
A link by the Washington Post is of course better than one by a once popular blog like mine.
Yet a link on some dead X/Twitter account is even less valuable.
So until 2016 you could see which links were “better” by looking up PageRank on a toolbar.
Reminiscing the good old days when PageRank meant something
In the beginning, a higher PageRank meant almost automatically a higher position in the organic Google search results.
Nowadays you mostly see ads on top and organic ranking depend on a huge number of factors.
The simple math was an invitation to abuse though. The global PageRank trade began.
People would buy and sell links for profit. “Gaming Google” became a big business.
A site having a 7 would outrank a PR 6 website which would come before a PageRank 5 page.
Logical isn’t it? Over the years the algorithm became increasingly complex though.
Google added more and more so called ranking factors.
Thus a PageRank 7 site could be outranked by a PageRank 3 site!
When? In case the latter was significantly more relevant to the search query.
Google itself claimed to use “about “more than 200 signals” in their search ranking algorithm for years
By now we know they are more like 14k of them.
Still PageRank was used to determine which pages had authority as it still measured the number and power of links.
How PageRank became a random vanity metric
Then Google PageRank finally stopped to reflect the number and strength of of incoming links.
Since 2007 it is determined in a way nobody can trust anymore. Let me explain:
One day my business card website onreact.com got PageRank 6. Hooray!
Wait. Something went wrong on the same day. The Washington Post just got 5!
Some of the most popular bloggers like the world’s most linked weblog – Engadget – got PageRank 5 too. Problogger got 4 and marketing guru Andy Beard 3.
- Do you really think I am more important than the Washington Post?
- Do you really think that the most popular tech gadget blog back then was less valuable than my site?
- Do you really assume that I am 1/3 more important than industry leader Problogger?
The bottom line is: Google PageRank became meaningless as a metric as far back as in 2007.
People who depended on the Google PageRank bar to determine the authority of a site were fed manipulated numbers.
Google PageRank became only a means of intimidation of webmasters.
Google also used it to “penalize” sites suspected of wrongdoing.
Google is the new Microsoft. It uses their monopolistic market position to wield power over you.
Google is not the Internet though. It’s one of the most powerful corporations in the world.
Yet people and lawmakers are increasingly tired of Google.
The PageRank metric is by now officially dead. Hooray. For me it died in 2007 already.
Thus Google finally stopped showing it. PageRank is still part of the overall algorithm.
Yet it does not suffice to show up on top off organic results.
Links still count but less and less over the years.
How to measure the impact of an online presence?
What to measure to determine website authority then?
Some tools mimicked PageRank with Domain Authority and similar scores.
Those usually were measured on a scale from 0 to 100.
Yet even those were just insufficient approximations.
By 2024 there are way better metrics beyond websites:
- brand sentiment
- daily active users
- engagement rate
- share of voice.
These allow you to measure the impact, importance and image of your brand across the Web.
You are also not merely dependent on Google this way. They are cross-platform.
You can track authority on the Internet as a whole.
Some additional articles and discussions about the topic for further reading from 2007: