New Google PageRank Algorithm Debunked

[djbaxter]

New Google PageRank Algorithm Debunked
by Val Danylchuk, Search Engine Journal
February 23, 2011

In my recent article on SEJ about Google PageRank I suggested that a new formula could be in action. The article has gone big on Twitter and LinkedIn, with hundreds of shares. And from some comments, it looks like many people accepted it for a fact.

Now I hate to break it but I have to admit that I was most probably wrong. So I need to write this follow-up article to prevent yet another SEO myth from spreading. Let me explain what happened:

• I saw an unreasonably low toolbar PageRank value for my blog after the last update;
• I started looking around for possible reasons;
• I noticed many people observed similar effects;
• I found an article by Bill Slawski about Google?s Reasonable Surfer model, which seemed to explain my observations and other people?s rankings well;
• I decided to share my findings for consideration and discussion.

And the discussion followed! My article collected about 100 comments, and a few SEO experts came up to correct me. The problem is, too many people accepted the alleged news without doubt and spread it further, so now it is my responsibility to get things staight.

So what was the real cause of poor ratings?

Read more...