{"id":9073,"date":"2011-08-09T00:09:21","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T00:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicityhound.com\/blog\/?p=9073"},"modified":"2011-08-09T00:09:21","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T00:09:21","slug":"once-sacred-google-pagerank-doesnt-matter-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/online-marketing\/once-sacred-google-pagerank-doesnt-matter-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Once-sacred Google PageRank doesn’t matter anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lior<\/a>This guest post was written by Lior Levin, an entrepreneur who works for\u00a0Producteev, which makes\u00a0a\u00a0task management tool<\/a>. He also\u00a0advises\u00a0a small neon signs<\/a>\u00a0online store in Oregon.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Lior Levin<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, there was a search engine called AltaVista. It was mighty and considered to be untouchable.<\/p>\n

Then along came Google and knocked it out of the search engine game in a matter of about 12 months or less.<\/p>\n

How?<\/p>\n

Google developed an algorithm that was based on looking at how many people linked to your site and what those links said. So lots of links from lots of websites increased your website’s ranking in Google. The term used to describe the popularity or your\u00a0website was known as PageRank.<\/p>\n

You can measure your Google PageRank by installing the Google toolbar<\/a>\u00a0for your web browser or through any number of PageRank measuring and analysis websites. But to be blunt, measuring the PageRank of your own website or that of your competitors<\/a> is absolutely pointless.<\/p>\n

Why so?<\/p>\n

Once\u00a0people realized that they could “game” or manipulate the Google search algorithm by building masses of links from high PageRank\u00a0websites, things had to change.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nYou Can’t Fool Google<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a>Those PageRank updates we used to love seeing every month or two became less and less frequent. And right now they’re pretty much pointless because the data shown in the PageRank update is not even close to being current, or even useful, at any real level.<\/p>\n

Here’s how you can tell if this is true or not.<\/p>\n

Pick a popular search term in your industry or niche and search Google for it. Now go through the top 10 results for that keyword and make a note of the PageRank\u00a0for each website. What you’d expect is that the sites with\u00a0high\u00a0Google PageRank\u00a0are listed at the top of the results, and then everything else is listed beneath it. But that’s not what you see, is it?<\/p>\n

What you’re seeing are sites with little or no (like zero) page rank,\u00a0achieving higher search engine rankings than sites with lots and lots of PageRank. How can this be?<\/p>\n

It’s because PageRank\u00a0itself stopped mattering a long time ago. Google is just updating PageRank\u00a0on the toolbar now out of courtesy, I’d imagine. I would guess that within the next two to three\u00a0years, they’ll stop updating PageRank\u00a0permanently.<\/p>\n

So if page rank\u00a0doesn’t matter, then what does?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nTrustRank Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trust Rank has mattered\u00a0more than PageRank <\/a>has now for some time. As the term implies, TrustRank is about how trustworthy your site is in the eyes of big G. And\u00a0right now, the more TrustRank your site has, the better.\u00a0
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\nBut how do you measure TrustRank? Is there a TrustRank toolbar?<\/p>\n

Nope, and there never will be. Google learned the hard way that you cannot expose the inner workings of your search engine to the general public because\u00a0some people\u00a0will do their best to manipulate it and ruin the experience for everyone else.<\/p>\n

Here’s a list of things can that can influence your TrustRank and, therefore, your search engine rankings:<\/p>\n