There should be a "Google Rumor and Speculation" forum. At the very least, Rumor should be added to this thread topic.
Ummm do you mind if I finish this triple vodka before answering? & you do know that PR stands for "Poo Radish" don't you?
No - Again, please read my first post. I try to collect information on how to calculate something similar to a PR to have a good (or even better) alternative to the Pagerank.
Google might consider doing away with it eventually...but IMHO there is no way PR is just going to dissapear overnight. Can you imagine the amount of coding and changes that Google would have to implement. Toolbar etc etc I think this would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going of in the industry
Well nobody knows this and I shouldn't tell but Yahoo does own Google. Remember the Yahoo commercials of old? Well they wanted to really get the world's attention. So they started an competing company (google) to make it look like they are in a search war... and by doing so have knocked MSN completely out of the picture. Amazing what goes on behind the scenes.... Anyone heard about the CIA editing Wikipedia??? Conspiracies are everywhere if you know where to look.....
What the OP is trying to say that Google will no more disclose the TBPR. [Which also as he said could be a rumour.. the rumour has been going on for a couple of weeks now] It was no use anyway, and was just a Pet Toy that google used quite sucessfully as a PR ( as in Public Relations) Tool for the PageRank Algorithm that determines the SERP that killed its owner yahoo [sic][hic]. Link sellers just started publicizing the small green bar when google introduced it with the Tool Bar. One Good, it will release us from the craziness that makes us dance with each PR Update.
Google isnt going to stop PR atm. And the link that was provided by Nick was about Google is shutting down payment for certain videos they sell on You Tube and Google videos. So everyone breath. I think atm Google is only refiguring their PR Algo. But I am sure that is all pure rumors as well. But they will not shut down the PR.
I can tell you one thing(OP) there are 75 million domain names out of which only 30 million domains are online!
It's not so much that the NEED a way to determine the value of a link, it's because they WANT a value for a link so they can say my link is worth $$$ but PR is only good for selling PR. It has/had no value outside of PR. This is probalby a silly suggestion but how about considering the relevancy of the link, the number of outbound links on the page, the sites position in SERPs and the sites relation to Google?
How do you effectively judge based on traffic? If DigitalPoint got 500 hits today that would be very poor, but if the local Florist's website got 500 hits in a day it would be classed as a webserver meltdown. You can't base websites authority on traffic.
There's also no way of knowing how much traffic another site is getting, unless you use Alexa, and we all know Alexa is much more useless than throwing darts.