*Google's Pake Rank Pantent May Be Gone!*

[jordanb27]

Announced recently by the US Patent Office was the institution of stricter guidelines regarding current patent registrations. This could have a huge affect on the internet and software industries all the way to the top including Google's Page Rank Patent, which is held by Stanford University. Many people have complained that software patents affect too large of a scope and inhibits future development. Crackdowns are coming soon . . .

Do you think this could affect the Page Rank patent? What if Google gets rid of it, do you think more will come along to rank the importance of websites via a toolbar or similar application?

[godsofchaos]

Nope, not in my opinion. Google developed it themselves and honestly speaking, they knows best about the product. Hence even if they lose the patent it does not mean that they will lose to the competition cause after all.. Its their product, its their patent!

[jordanb27]

Originally Posted by godsofchaos

Nope, not in my opinion. Google developed it themselves and honestly speaking, they knows best about the product. Hence even if they lose the patent it does not mean that they will lose to the competition cause after all.. Its their product, its their patent!

Google will not have their patent if it taken and this will allow competitors to develop similar systems of ranking pages. For example Yahoo or MSN could develop a ranking tool that would rank pages of websites based on certain criteria. Also, if you would like to read more about this you can check out the full article

[menj1980]

I personally think that it is unlikely that Google will lose their patent to PageRank and even if they do, no one knows it better than them. It would be useless to others except Google.

[SEOibiza]

as everyone knows PR is just a part of the 100+ different signals Google is using to rank sites. the patent is probably pretty insignificant at this point theyre already so far ahead anyway.

[xmartel]

I don't think the page rank is in any danger. Even if the patent goes by the wayside they'll still use it.

[spyrit]

interesting news, it will have some effect, but i doubt it will bother google too much..

[mdvaden]

About all that others could do anyway, is copy the outward design, not the internal computer files and formulas used by Google.

[jordanb27]

I think the page rank system is flawed with the huge influx of fake page ranks and the false re-directs to gain page rank and many other flaws. It seems that the page rank feature is outdated and black hat methods have already figured out how to take advantage of the page rank system.

It seems that page rank keeps getting devalued more and more as time goes by. The only people that seem to care about it nowadays are those that are selling links that are based upon PR which is against the Google TOS as they prohibit link sales based on PR.

I believe that there is space for another major network or individual to invent a system that can rank pages based upon traffic, page links, age etc. that would take into account the ways that people are already taking advantage of the PR system. Anyone can get a fake PR these days and attempt to sale links based upon it. It happens all the time . . .

[mokmok69]

I think white hat SEO don't do such thing like that and I don't want to fool myself.

[jordanb27]

Originally Posted by mokmok69

I think white hat SEO don't do such thing like that and I don't want to fool myself.

That is the best and only way to operate imo, but many newbies visit the b/s/t section and buy links that are based upon false pagerank. After the next PR update occurs, the PR drops to zero and the person is out their money for the link. Something to be aware of for those that don't already know about it.

[mokmok69]

So they must work on there site to be able to increase there page rank and not to do things like manipulating SE.

[Fluxos]

pagerank is pretty much useless anyway