All of us in the SEO world received a big shock when we read the rather startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa that Google has removed PageRank from their Webmaster Tools.

“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,” states Moskwa. “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.” (Source: WebProNews)

We’ve all been eagerly watching our PageRank in the Google toolbar as we make adjustments to our sites and wait for the spiders to go to work. But this revelation from Google doesn’t mean you should completely ignore PageRank now. Higher PageRank means more business, more business means more income. Whether Google is or is not using PageRank, people are still looking at it.

A site with a PR of 7 will still be much more respected than a site with a PR of 2. Link building strategists will still be placing higher precedence, and monetary value on higher PR sites. The Google frowned-upon practice of selling links is still in full-swing and to stop it will be a hard battle to win, even with eliminating PageRank all together.

Now, yes, you can have a lower PR and still come up better in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) than sites with higher PR. Google states that PageRank is only one of about 200 ranking factors which determine how Google ranks its index for keywords.

Google controls roughly 80% of all search engine traffic, and for that they have been established unmatched credibility and brand recognition. Web users and SEO experts alike believe what Google is telling them. PageRank is Google’s ranking system, which means it still holds immense power and influence. PageRank is basically Google’s opinion of your site, and we can all count to ten. So as long as we can all see PageRank, it’s power will remain.