Very interesting thread caught my attention at Cre8asite forums named What Does Pagerank Mean in 2004?. This thread, kind of suggests what I hinted to on 9/03 and have been thinking about for a while before that. What is PageRank worth these days? As noted in the thread, the last time there was a PR update was over three months ago. Everyman, accurately describes the blatant selling of pagerank that has been taking place for a while. Google has been turning its head to this practice as opposed to how they dealt SearchKing (classified as one of the hottest debated SEO topics).
So where will PageRank take us by the end of 2004? In an other thread at WebmasterWorld named How Google can avoid Google checksum algorithm crack?, it discusses the past and most recent time the checksum have been hacked. Brett Tabke believes that this is all in preparation for a big Google update, which he has already pre-named to be "Vegas". My thoughts, well, its been three months, three months! I don't remember there not being a PageRank update for three months before.
Is this the end of PageRank, I am not sure. Why would Google spend the time to create a new checksum algorithm? Of course a week later, this checksum algorithm has been hacked. Do they just scratch the whole thing and not display the true PageRank value as Everyman believes they have been doing since April 2003? I would, but I am not Google.
This will make for a very interesting 4th Quarter.
