As the juggernaut search engine has steadily grown, the need for an assigned PageRank to a website has gradually become less important. Whilst Google had paused the system, meaning new sites wouldn’t be assigned a PageRank rating, but older sites would retain the rating, the entire system has now shutdown, finally. Google officially ended the service on April 15th 2016.
For those whom aren’t familiar, PageRank was a rating from -1 to 10. Sites with the highest rating would be assigned the top rank; 10. Ultimately, it was a gage for website owners and digital marketers to simply understand how Google views the website in question.
However, as Google has matured, using such a simple system has finally become obsolete. Just as you’d step on a set of scales and it would measure your weight, it’s this very concept which helps to define a website’s measurement, using domain authority and page authority as the key metrics. It’s a multiplex of conditions which affect the outcome of the score. These include content, inbound links, outbound links, website navigation and much more.
Simply put, looking back, PageRank was a great way to simplify the process of labelling how small or large Google viewed a website. Yet, this functionality has grandly devolved with importance. What hasn’t changed is the fact that you’ll need many of those same ingredients to score high within a search engine.
Of course, Google’s PR rating has that nostalgic vibe to it, and many will miss it. For those whom believe in reincarnation, then that’s what the domain authority metric is. Will you miss the simplicity that Google’s PageRank rating allowed? Feel free to leave your comments on our social media pages.
