5 Reasons why Google PageRank sucks (and is no more a valid metric) !

I’m a huge fan of Google PageRank. Not because I have a tendency to love anything Google, but because its the only authoritative and successful metric today that can grade websites for their authority. Its been there for ages now and though often speculative, it has given webmasters a generally accepted measure scale for websites. Even though Google says that its an algorithm based on the incoming number of links and the result of complex calculations no body can completely predict, many people understand it, and associate a lot of “quality assessment values” to the green bar.

“Less green = bad site, More green = Awesome !” – Is what many people believe of it, even though technically they may be incorrect.

But today I think that Google PageRank is a thing of the past. Google has forgotten to upgrade the great PageRank algorithm to match the current trends and climate. Ask me why ?

1. Many people still don’t know what the hell it is !

Believe me, many people think that its a ranking system for websites. So, if you score a pagerank 1, that means you are number one. Just like your school grades.

2. Google hasn’t bothered to explain us how exactly it functions.

And its not even necessary you may think. But hell no ! If this thing is out in public, it makes sense to exist if only everyone knew how it worked. Yes, Google has taken the pain in explaining a few things (what they say matters to you) but tell me if there’s one person who can tell us how the whole thing works ? No. Google guys will only say bits and pieces about it and probably the best explanation is “its our own metric to grade and calculate website authority based on number of backlinks”. How is it calculated ? How is it triggered ? When is is calculated ? Nobody told us. May be nobody even knows.

3. Google PageRank should’ve remained an internal tool at the Googleplex

I mean, other than the three month updates and the usual “is it live” discussions (not to mention the umpteen number of rumours) what good is it to us anyway ? If Google built it for website authority grading, they should’ve used it internally and not released it to public without planning to tell us how it works. Its your tool, keep it with you, we’re better off without it.

4. Google PageRank is heavily based on “backlinks” and not all of us are webmasters ! (Heck ! Some people even don’t know what a backlink is)

Think about it. Google says PageRank is completely or almost completely based on the number of incoming links a website gets. It does some funny calculations with the number of backlinks and the PageRank of the original website, before deciding the resulting PageRank of the new website. Fine. But my question to Google is..did you expect everyone in this world to be webmasters ? I hope not. But I also wish if that was the case. So that, just like everybody says hello, we would all say “link equals to – domain – rel equals to dofollow”. But that isn’t the case. We are humans, and if we love a website or a webpage, we simply email it to our friends, or tweet about it, or copy paste the URL to our networks. Don’t you think that’s also one of the metrics to count for “website authority” ?

5. Google PageRank can be easily “made up”, if you really want it or is obsessed with it.

So Google, you say the green bar fills up when more and more people link to our site, and on the other hand you expect people not to buy links ? Now, that’s a clever joke. Did you know that all you need is some cash in your PayPal account, and some time to buy “quality incoming links”. No, I’m not talking about directory submissions, but PR6 and above .edu backlinks ? You either know it or you’re pretending that you didn’t know. But trust me, its easy as that. And I’m not doing it because I know that I can run a popular site without buying links, and investing that much money on other productive things like hiring a content writer or a designer, you know…!

So, there you have it. Google PageRank is now obsolete. Its just another reason for “internet marketers” to sell SEO and Link building softwares. The clever know that its no more valid, it does not take the social media aspects into context, and is only a count of how many links point to your site (in a funny scale that is). And you might want to roll it back to the plex soon, at least you can avoid a lot of confusion in the world.

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