It looks like Google wants you to think PR doesn’t matter, but don’t let them fool you! For more than a decade now, Google has been trying to retrieve this metric from the radar of webmasters. That Google has stopped pushing regular updates to their toolbar is one more step in the strategy to convince you that PageRank doesn’t matter anymore.

Balderdash. Let’s look at the trouble Google’s gone to pull the wool over our eyes.

PageRank wasn’t unknown to webmasters in Google’s in the late 90s, but the search giant really spilled the beans on PageRank in December 2000 when it released the Google toolbar that included the metric that Google still describes today as "basis of Google’s search technology."

Google knew that the metric would be of vital – and viral – interest to webmasters and webmasters not only flocked to install the toolbar, they began using the metric for link swapping, selling and buying. It made PR manipulation so much easier when you could easily see Google’s estimation of the importance of a page.

Google has been backpedaling ever since. Unhappy with the manipulation of PageRank that was greatly enhanced by the ability to see the PR on any page, (but apparently unwilling to withdraw entirely the prime reason to keep the toolbar installed on your browser), Google fought back with a publicity campaign and with tools that sometimes backfired.

For example, in 2005, Google introduced the nofollow attribute to fight comment spam and encouraged webmasters to add it to their blogs. Not long after, they demanded that anyone selling text links use the nofollow attribute to discourage selling PR.

This handy attribute opened yet another can of PR worms for Google, as webmasters quickly learned how to apply to sculpt PageRank within a site and Google engineers had to change the way that Google divides links on a page to prevent webmasters from reassigning it with the use of nofollow.

Google stopped pushing data to the toolbar in late 2004 and established something of a quarterly schedule of updates with the hope, one assumes, that outdated PR would devalue the commodity. "The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for entertainment purposes only," Googlers reportedly announced that December.

In October of 2009, the ability to see the "importance of a page" was removed from Google’s Webmaster tools in the search giant’s ongoing campaign to take the focus off the PR metric, and 6 months later in April ’10, released what appears to be the last quarterly update. Webmasters report updates to toolbar PR often with no pattern, as though updates are now simply random and sporadic.

Google does seem to have effectively rendered the toolbar more useless than not, and  it’s common to hear many webmasters insist that PageRank is no longer important.

Again, I say, balderdash! If PR wasn’t still a central factor in Google’s algorithm – or as Google puts it, the basis of their technology — why would they go to all this trouble to pretend otherwise?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Print advertisements and magazines used to be our main source of product information. But with the rise of the Internet, search engines and blogs have taken up the responsibilities. We can easily search and learn about a product within minutes.
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Duration : 8 min 15 sec

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Mike Mitchell, the artist who created the now-iconic “I’m With CoCo” image of Conan O’Brien that has circulated through Facebook profile pictures and blogs since NBC’s The Tonight Show scheduling controversy, told TMZ that he’s been paid by Conan’s producers for the right to use the image during Conan’s impending “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour.”

TMZ reports that the producers paid him well enough that he can “take a very, very long vacation.”

Mitchell originally posted the image to TwitPic, but it achieved meme status when it became the profile image for the huge “I’m With CoCo” Facebook group that was used to promote the real-world pro-Conan rallies. Mitchell says he’s been selling merchandise with the logo, and that he has raised $25,000 for Haiti doing so. The terrible earthquake that occurred there took place around the same time as NBC controversy.

Since leaving his post at The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien has joined Twitter and announced the aforementioned tour, which begins April 12. We’ve included a full-sized “I’m With CoCo” image below in case you missed it when it was everywhere.

Reviews: Facebook, Twitpic

Tags: conan o’brien, facebook, i’m with coco, team coco, television, tv, twitpic

I want to ask someone who is more experienced in the field of SEO marketing. How could I learn basics of SEO? I’m currently working as a freelance provider as a data entry professional, but I want to learn the SEO thing from scratch. I started reading free SEO guides available in the web but still not contented with it.

Please help.

If you have a web design company, try finding a SEO company to work with. My company was strictly graphics and web design, and for over a year I outsources all of my SEO jobs to a company I liked. Over the time, I slowly picked up things (all for free) and now I would consider myself very well versed in the field. I have now merged my company with the other to create http://www.Webmosa.com – I am very happy with the way I learned. Plus, if you plan to sell the service you are at least getting trained by actual professionals in the field. SEO changes over time, and one needs to stay on top of the game in order to be the best. Google "Tacoma SEO", within 1 month of the merger and launch of our new site we are already 5th on page one – crushing other companies that have been around for years.

To be the best, learn from the best. SEO books and blogs are often out dated.

I have seen tons of ads about making money at home through google adwords. They say it is as simple as following a cookbook. Is that true? Has anyone had experiences out there that they can explain how it is so "easy" to make money,with that system? Any other bright ideas,that will not cost me money upfront ?

Great questions! I have also seen and heard a lot of people preach about how easy it is to make money with Google AdWords… What many of them fail to tell you is how much it can cost you if you don’t know what you are doing, or exactly how to do it.

Firstly, to make money with AdWords you need to be selling something, or promoting something from which you will receive a commission. You need to understand, AdWords themselves cost you money, they are simply and advertisement. You make money using them by driving traffic to a product or service.

If you have a website already, you can make money with Google AdSense, but that is another topic in itself.

AdWords are fairly simple and step by step to open and create, however, the best course of action is to research and learn as much as possible before jumping in. Google have their very own training system to help you. Search Google AdWords Professional Training. Best of all it’s free.

All said and done, it is not a quick cash system, but used correctly can be very powerful and profitable.

As for making money without upfront cost, you really need to find a quality product or service to sell or promote, and start by promoting through word of mouth, networks, blogs and articles. Then when you have learnt more about AdWords, try paid advertising such as Pay-Per-Click.

Hope this helps.

I would like to do work at home. Thing is many people are looking for SEO type work. I know a bit have done SEO article writing and some backlinks the old fashioned white hat way as they say. Can anyone help me on what skills I need? Im a Psychology grad so not that techie. I normally source my job offers at Craigslist and Odesk if this helps. Hope anyone can help my out. Thank you!

To be good at SEO and to enjoy doing it all day, day after day, month after month, year after year from your home office with just a pet or two around for company the majority of the time, you need to be a lover of words.

For people who love writing, playing with words, making equations out of words, juxtaposing words, and making up words, search engines are like the ultimate playgrounds. Search engines algorithms are all about words–words on websites and keyword searches–and we SEOs spend large portions of out time keeping up to date on how the algorithms may be changing and what words need to be changed or added to a client’s site in order to advance up the rankings for keyword searches.

And speaking of clients, you’ve got to love them too–and you have to love selling to them because the best SEO in the world can’t be an SEO if he or she isn’t making money at it. If you can’t sell yourself and your skills to a client, you’ve got to at least sell them to an employer who will pay you to do SEO tasks for them. You’ve got to be a good business person to be an individual SEO consultant or agency.

As far as all the other stuff, reading blogs (as Jason mentions) (How’s it going Jason?), on-page and off-page stuff, web page programming, backlinks, etc., you’ll pick that up as you go if you really enjoy the work and you’re smart.

SEO ain’t the sexiest job in the world and it may not always be the most fun but if you are great at playing with words, few other jobs can match it.

By social media, I mean things like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, blogs, and Wikipedia.
Any country or level of government is okay.
I’m doing a presentation and need some examples. Thanks.
Obama is an interesting example, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a department, rather than a specific individual or politician.

The president of the United States. He has used youtube lots of times, posting his daily speeches on there sometimes.

That’s my answer, Barack Obama.

Mike Stopforth of Cerebra (www.cerebra.co.za) talks about social media adoption in South Africa on CNBC Africa

Duration : 0:6:5