Nothing would change if visible pagerank died. Google would continues to use their internal pagerank at whatever lever they currently use it. People will still sell links, it will just be based off some other criteria than what can be easily seen with the page rank bar.
Honestly, I'd rather see pagerank gone forever and deleted from every site than seeing a new update of it. And I do understand that it might be used for good things as well as a webmaster, but way to many get fixated at that little green bar.
lol... google can do wtf they want. They're google. But then I also read stories about MSN coming out with some form of trust ranking metric soon? I've been too busy to read it because I don't care about pr
More evidence that google can drop PR without competition coming in. WTF really cares and seo's for Bing when google drives 3/4+ of the internet? PR was as big as it was because google is that big and important for every marketer and SEOer... Does anyone REALLY care about their Alexa ranks? Not exactly the same, but...
Yes, but google has some other measures to calculate rank according to backlinks, like the Hilltop Alghoritm.
Page rank is good, but some people are misusing it and selling their links, instead they should use their authority to refer visitors to quality websites. Anyone can start a crappy site and buy links to increase page rank and as a result a crappy site is #1 on Google, while many quality sites are at the bottom simply because they do not want to "buy" links, links should be earned not bought. SP
I mean yes they're shady practices related to PR (buying/selling high PR LINKS so a crappy website gets a PR2), but that exists in every single aspect of the web world. Black HAT seo they also call it. No matter what you cant get rid of it. The REAL problem with PR is that people rely on it TOO much when its not a very accurate gauge of a websites balls.
Silence is their main approach. Mostly so you and I don't abuse the system even more than we already do.
I hope they do drop the PR. Bing is eating them alive making sure good sites stay at top and are not forced out by payed backlinks. I know alot of powerful PR websites with old articles that block out alot of new websites without PR on that sites only keywords. I vote get rid of it.
I can sympathize with people trying to earn income to support their families. However, try to look at the big picture. Is link selling good for the society? Is it good for the Internet? Or is it harmful? Would the web benefit if there was no link selling and buying? I don't think the elimination of PR will eliminate link selling, but it would likely help. If Google gives more weight to other ranking factors, and less weight to links, that will in the long run help reduce link trading, too.