Janric Website Design

What would happen if, one day in the future, Google decided never again to update the PageRank value it displays in the Toolbar? Yes, it would upset many people, but what would the overall effect be?

Picture the scenario. One day we all log on to our computers, go to our websites and see that all of our PageRanks are showing as grey bars, never to return.

The immediate effect would be panic – “Is it just me, are all my sites banned in Google?”. But, once everyone realised the entire internet was effected all of the SEO experts buying and selling links would then start to find some other measure to rate sites on. Quickly, we would all forget about PageRank and it would be consigned to history.

We would all survive, ultimately, but what impact would it have on Google? We have to wonder at this point why Google tollerates our behaviour of doing what we can to creep that bar further to the right. Hiding this information, as other search engines do, would make their job a lot easier.

So what are they gaining from giving us an insight into how they rate our websites? Well when you install the PageRank tool, there is the warning that data is transmitted to Google about what pages you are visiting. This is so that they can determine what page you are looking at and its rating.

However, Google do not state just what they do with that data and where else it might be used or what it could be stored for. It is quite possible that they are storing this information and using it to see which pages of which sites we are actually viewing.

To what end would they do this? Well it is quite simple really. By having a huge workforce of internet users who are reporting back their every page view, it becomes possible to see which websites are actually useful to human visitors.

Take, for instance, a spam site built to perform well in search results and then get people to click on PPC adverts. It would become very obvious with a little tracking that the site is getting a lot of bounces. Contrast that with a site that has lots of useful information that people spend time reading. Here, the bounce rate would be a lot less and the number of pages a lot more.

So with only a little bit of tracking, it would be possible to work out which sites actually appeal to human visitors and therefore rank these above those less desirable sites.

Does this sound far fetched? Well, what better way is there to rank sites than by working out which do actually appeal to a human audience? By sending visitors to those sites that humans visitors prefer, the results look better and more people use the search engine.

And if you are not convinced, why then do Google offer Google Analytics, which monitors every aspect of your website and feedburner, which tracks what RSS readers are doing?

So, if Google were to drop the PageRank Toolbar then the general public would start to remove it from their own toolbars and Google would miss an opportunity to gather data and improve the results like no other search engine.

I think it will be around for a while to come!

Related posts:

1. What Would Happen If Google Didn’t Update PageRank?
2. Will PageRank Ever Update Again?
3. Has Google Seen The Light And Abandoned PageRank?
4. Are you wondering about your PageRank?
5. Have We Had A Minor January PageRank Update?
6. Does Anyone Else Sense A PageRank Update?
7. Still No Page Rank Update For July
8. What will you do if PageRank is scrapped?
9. Can you imagine the panic when…
10. Will There Be A PageRank Export This Weekend