Google PageRank removed from WebMasters Accounts

Did you notice that two weeks ago the PageRank distribution feature, once found in Google WebMasters accounts on the crawl stats section under “Diagnostics”  was removed? Although it was removed from WebMmasters accounts it still appears on the Google toolbar and this had led to a lot of discussion.

We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. –  Susan Moskwa (Google Employee)

Here are more details on why not to obsess over PageRank.

As PageRank can still be found on the Google toolbar,  and as a toolbar PageRank  update has just been completed, the weird thing about this removal from Google WebMasters accounts is why they haven’t removed it from the Google toolbar. The Toolbar still displays page by page PageRank score, despite the fact that Google shows out dated PageRank data in the Toolbar.

Removing it from Webmaster Tools does make a statement to webmasters, but as long as they keep it in the Google Toolbar, it makes a stronger statement to searchers. — Google Removes PageRank Data From Webmaster Tools

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