If at all Google could employ one full time employee, Directories would be cleaner...

Google, which prides itself for offering fresh and relevant results, is quite pleased with displaying old pagerank data to webmasters. It keeps webmasters talking about Google and that is good for branding and profits. The more that webmasters talk about Google, the less chatter there is about Bing, Ask, etc. Pagerank is purely a marketing tool for Google and they exploit that metric rather well. I'm of the same opinion as you. PR really has no reason to be displayed to end users, and spam would decrease if it was no longer provided to the public. But as we all know, Google's profits come before relevancy and the elimination of spam. I would be shocked if Google stopped displaying PR anytime soon. But as Google expands well beyond search, as they have been doing, their need to maintain their love - hate relationship with webmasters will be diminished. At such time I'm sure they would have no problem pulling the PR metric from the toolbar and pushing organic listings to page two or three of the SERPS.

 

This is a no win situation guys..

Let us all be friends and learn from each other..

Let us make a winning team.

 

@ snowbird, YMC & Dan ..............

Problem is who could make that move to make MC or SB understand it that PR is a tool to game and many people are abusing it?

Sorry Mr. brilliant one.......... I'm missing your lessions as I'm on holidays. Somehow got hold of a system today and learnt so much from you! )

Why don't you find out all the directory editors and start a coaching school for them on how to edit a directory listing???

I promise you... I'll enroll in it before anybody else.

 

MC is aware it gets gamed. He'd have to be blind, deaf, dumb and disconnected from the internet not to know. Did you forget 2007 when they (I'm just gonna say "they" to represent whoever it is that pulls the levers at Google) slammed blogs, directories, websites, forums, etc for "selling paid links" (read: selling pagerank). I don't believe they were interested in preventing the gaming however, since Google engaged in selling pagerank and paid links themselves in a greater magnitude via their adsense/adwords advertising system.

 

Google fully understands how PR is abused and how it has become the basis of a type of SEO currency. As I noted before, my opinion is that toolbar PR is simply a marketing tool that keeps webmasters talking about Google just as we are right here. For Google, gaming PR is an acceptable annoyance for the marketing gains they achieve. Toolbar PR is a minimum of approximately two weeks old right after a toolbar export. At most, the toolbar PR can be three or four months old. While toolbar PR is not an entirely useless metric by any means, too many webmasters give it too much weight in everything they do.

 

@ Dan

No mate..
How could we forget those nightmarish days? I still vividly remember all.
And yes .. I know MC knows .. coz many of us participated on his personal and official G blogs regarding the issue and I remember he personally answered Jeff's queries regarding his directories.
@ snowbird
yes buddy .. we have to just just live with it. I can see many industry leaders are calling to remove it once and for all. But as you say.... acceptable annoyance......marketing tool...etc...

But I also think the importance of PR in real SERP has decreased a lot from previous days and it will keep decreasing in times to come. One can easily get the point across when one frequents serious webmaster forums and blogs. I saw the most serious webmaster forum where MC and other G guys personally frequent had just 8 posts on the topic even after 4/5 days of the export and the most read industry (SEO) blogs didn't even mention it! Also missed any mention on Twitter if there was any mention at all (of-course depend on who I follow and who follow me....... but MC is certainly there and so are the industry leaders).

It is unfortunate that some people still don't get the point and market PR as the main plus point of their products. May God bless them.