Search Engine Lowdown featured a demonstration of Google's clustering at Web 2.0 as the second most popular search engine news story from 2004. It is believed that clustering, a fairly new search engine technology that looks at word associations to determine the meaning of search queries, could eventually replace PageRank, which currently determines the importance of websites on Google.
It should come as no surprise that clustering made the Search Engine Lowdown list. The importance of PageRank has been a hot topic for the past year.
The controversy all began in early December, when a member of Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch forum posted a supposed email response from a Google employee stating that "the PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for entertainment purposes only." The message went on to say that hacking attempts have caused Google to stop updating the Toolbar PageRank data as frequently as it used to. In fact, the email suggests that the PageRank displayed by Google's Toolbar often contains data that "is several months old."
Most search engine optimization professionals were already aware that the PageRank displayed in the popular little green bar is inaccurate and doesn't display a site's real PageRank. However, it was still shocking to hear a Google employee describe the PageRank on the Toolbar as something that apparently had no real value.
Of course, word quickly spread to all the popular online search forums, which became breeding grounds of rumors and gossip about the importance of Google PageRank.
Finally, a Google employee by the nickname of GoogleGuy posted a response on one of the leading online forums, WebmasterWorld, in defense of the Google Toolbar:
"I'd strongly disagree with the statement that the toolbar PageRank is for 'entertainment purposes only'--millions of toolbar users use the PageRank display to judge the quality of pages.
I think it's also a little irresponsible to quote John Galt claiming to talk to some random person at Google, and then for you to quote it as a response from Google, which makes it sound more official. I'm happy to refute that this is any sort of official stance."
While GoogleGuy undoubtedly meant to relieve some concern, it should be pointed out that he did not deny the original statement that the Toolbar PageRank is "for entertainment purposes only." All he said was that the statement was not an official Google response. Further, his statement that "millions of toolbar users use the PageRank display to judge the quality of pages" does not make the PageRank display anymore valid. Just because millions of people are under the perhaps misguided impression that Toolbar PageRank is accurate does not mean that the PageRank display has any effect on the actual PageRank of a site.
Toolbar users who still believe Google uses the Toolbar PageRank to determine a site's worth might be interested to know that the PageRank display is no longer one of the feature elements highlighted in the Google Toolbar tour. Now, if the PageRank display is so important, why doesn't Google see the need to feature it as a key element for potential users of the Google Toolbar?
Read Part Two of How Clusters May Affect Link Exchange Efforts for information on how clustering might one day replace PageRank, and how that might eventually affect link exchange strategies.
