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Google Toolbar PageRank Lives On With The First Update In Over 10 Months

Barry Schwartz on December 6, 2013 at 9:00 am

Google has updated the Toolbar PageRank values this morning, despite Google’s Matt Cutts implying the update would not happen again within 2013.

The SEO community, discussion forums and social media outlets are lighting up with the news that Google has actually updated the Toolbar PageRank values. Why?

(1) The SEO industry always lights up when the most visible indicator and easiest to see metric of Google linkage data changes.

(2) Because no one expected a Toolbar PageRank update this year.

The last Toolbar PageRank update was over 10 months ago and I predicted, wrongly, that Toolbar PageRank was dead. I was wrong, Google updated it today, 10+ months later and well before anyone thought there would be an update.

Google has implied over the years that toolbar PageRank would go away and has slowly dropped support for the feature in several browsers over the years. Although, Google did tell us Toolbar PageRank wouldn’t fully go away, at least not on older browsers that support it.

For more on the importance, or lack-there-of, Toolbar PageRank see our guide on PageRank.

Here is the latest video from Matt Cutts on Google PageRank:

Update: Matt Cutts confirmed the update on Twitter saying the “team was fixing a different backend service and did a PR update along the way.”

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.