There has been a lot of discussion and scare on Twitter and within the SEO forums that Google has disabled the Toolbar PageRank scores from working. The truth is, no they have not. As several sites have reported already, PageRank is still alive in the Toolbar, but Google changed the lookup URL. This change has prevented third-party tools that check PageRank from looking up a page's PageRank. If you use Internet Explorer and turn on the Google Toolbar, you will still be able to look up the Toolbar PageRank score. But you may not be able to do so if you use a third-party tool, not until they [...]

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Google: Toolbar

In a new Matt Cutts video, the Google engineer answers why webmasters are likely to see a toolbar PageRank drop for their site. He mentions three reasons: (1) You simply lose a link from a third party page that had a lot of high PageRank. (2) You have weird canonicalization issues with your site and domains that caused confusion. (3) The most common reason, Matt said, was because the site is selling links and thus Google will demote the PageRank of that site in order to remove the incentive from link buyers to purchase links from that site. Here is the video: Matt also expl [...]

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Google: Toolbar | Google: Web Search

Google has just released a new info discovery tool named Google Related that allows users to find and access content that's similar to what they're viewing in their web browser. Before the brief overview below, we need to point out that we're writing this post without having had an opportunity to actually use Google Related. In other words, we're reporting on what we saw in a demo and in screenshots. How Google Related Works If related material (websites, videos, products for sale, maps, etc.) is available (as determined by an algorithm) it can be viewed in a toolbar found at the bott [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: Toolbar | Top News

Google has announced the end of supporting the Google Toolbar for Firefox. Google said the Google Toolbar works in versions of Firefox 4 or younger, but not the new version 5 of Firefox. Google explained, "many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser." So Google has decided the toolbar doesn't offer enough of a value-add on Firefox and thus is no longer supporting it. The Google Toolbar was first introduced over years ago for Firefox. Then later came to Internet Explorer. As you know, Google has their own browser, Chrome, [...]

Related Topics: Google: Toolbar | Toolbars & Add-Ons: Firefox Browser | Top News

Google announced they have launched a new URL shortener just for official Google use. The new URL is g.co. Google said this URL will only be used to link to official Google properties, explaining it is reserved "just for Google websites." Google explained that "you can trust that it will always take you to a Google product or service." Back in December 2009, Google launched a URL shortening service at goo.gl for public use. Google said that non-Google properties can be linked to using the goog.gl URL shortener but g.co is only for Google use. TechCrunch says that single letter .co [...]

Related Topics: Google: Toolbar | Search Engines: Social Search Engines