This is a guest post from John. John loves to blog about Google and their PageRank feature. He also blogs about coupons and discounts codes for products like dick blick and istockphoto. Check his blog for the best dick blick art coupons and istockphoto promo code.
I was stunned when I woke up this morning to be bombarded with news on Twitter and Facebook that Google has just stopped its PageRank feature. I was like “What? How can this be possible?!”. I actually didn’t believe that Google has stopped its PageRank feature, but I was surprised when I tried checking the PageRank of my dick blick coupons and istockphoto coupons site only to notice that its PageRank isn’t even showing. In my own experience, the worst thing that could happen is the PageRank of a site reducing. I believe if the PageRank has disappeared completely then it probably means Google has banned the website from its services.
The Google PageRank is currently one of the most controversial services Google has. While a lot of people really love it, and are always on the lookout for every update, some people are actually praying that Google stop updating it. I know it will be really difficult for Google to stop its PageRank service completely so I decided to go online to see what could be happening. After reading some articles on the subject, I noticed that the problem isn’t with Google stopping its PageRank, it is with something entirely different.
Google Just Changed its PageRank Query URL
If you’re someone familiar with how Google PageRank works then you already know this, but if you are not, I will explain.
Google has two kinds of PageRank updates. The first update is the one that is internal and is done consistently, the other one is the one that we all see and that is done every once in a while. The external PageRank is the toolbar PageRank and whenever a tool or website wants to know the PageRank of a particular website it has to connect to one of Google’s datacenter to find out the PageRank of that website through Google’s query URL. If the query URL is correct the data will be displayed, if it isn’t, the data won’t be displayed.
The problem today was that the query URL was changed from the former one to a new one.
The former PageRank query URL is:
The new PageRank query URL is:
What it means is that if the PR checking tool you are using uses the old query URL then you won’t be able to check your PR.
As at the time I’m writing this, the only way I know you can check your Google PageRank is by installing the Google toolbar. What this means is that PageRank is still active, you can just only check it with the Google Toolbar.
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PageRank works without toolbar look at http://www.freepagerank.be
I can still check PageRanks at http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php though it’s a bit tedious entering the URL and a captcha to get the info.
You can still check your PageRank at http://viewdns.info/pagerank/
As some people have posted, yes you can use certain websites to check PR currently, but this is a pain in the butt! Not only am I used to just seeing the PageRank in my toolbar without having to go to another site, but those sites often limit how many PR’s you can check, or make you fill out a captcha form every time, annoying!
It took me a little while, but I figured out a way to get Google Toolbar (which still displays PR) to work with current versions of Firefox (It is only compatable with FF 4.0 or lower, and it will not let you install the add-on if you have a more current version). I wrote up a brief guide, since I could not find this info anywhere else online: http://www.landofjacks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=76
I hope it helps some of you out, because I know it was driving my crazy not seeing the PageRanks of the sites I was visiting.