google pagerank update 2011 toolbar, info carnivoreA very interesting thread started this third of January on Google’s webmaster central help forum. For those that have been curious about Page Rank updates and why the toolbar hasn’t been updated for about eight months (globally), this thread could answer all your questions.

I previously discussed the rumor, “is google ditching page rank?” on this blog, and it was met with a lot of response. Many comments revealed that google has been updating toolbar Page Rank incrementally throughout the past year and that numerous sites have seen a PR increase. Though the updates had not been global. Conspiracy theorists (and those like myself who just want to write a good article), jumped on the Page Rank is dead band wagon and began assuming that perhaps there would be no more public toolbar Page Rank updates.

I wasn’t convinced, and now we know that rumor is (apparently) just not true.

Toolbar PageRank has not been updated for some time now

Stefan2011 essentially asks Google directly a number of questions and mentions how “the visible green bar from Google toolbar, have not been updated from some time now.

John Mu replies in length but with some key statements that we’ve all been waiting to hear.

The first response came on January 4th, 2011:

Internal PageRank is continuously updated

“The PageRank which we use internally is continuously updated, so even if you’re not seeing a PageRank in your Toolbar, rest assured that we’ll be treating your site accordingly regardless, and will crawl, index and rank your websites appropriately. We do update the Toolbar PageRank regularly, even if that’s not as regularly as some of you wish. I agree that it would be nice to have it updated more frequently. Given the time since the last update, I imagine you’ll start seeing another one in the near future.”

The entire thread a conversation between stefan2011 and John Mu a google employee can be read here.

Global Toolbar PageRank Update 2011

So now we wait and see, when will this happen. Or does it really matter? Google has aggressively downplayed the importance of PageRank for sometime. What do you think, is this a relief for you, or are you no longer putting the same emphasis on PageRank as you once did?