Google doesn’t use PageRank says Ask Jeeves’s Apostolos

Search Engine Roundtable reports Apostolos Gerasoulis, founder of the Teoma search engine (which powers Ask Jeeves) and former Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University, as saying Google doesn’t use Google’s well known PageRank.

The Roundtable:

We all had our suspicions that Google no longer used PageRank. Well, most of us thought Google just doesn’t use it to the level they did a year or two ago. Mike Grehan says Google does not use PageRank period. He kind of implied that Apostolos said Google does not use PageRank at all. In the interview, Mike quoted Apostolos as saying, ‘Have they implemented PageRank? The answer is no.’ He goes on to explain that ‘The importance [of PageRank] has diminished because PageRank is just one piece of the ranking algorithm over there. The ranking algorithm is so much more complex now. And PageRank is just used when they when they want to break ties.

This may be too techie to some, but Google PageRank (every Web site and blog has a score from 0 to 10) has long been recognized as measurement of a site’s popularity. Even if it did not effect the sites ranking itself, a link from a site with a high PageRank helped your site in the search engine rankings.

Do not blow off the PageRank for two reasons. First, no matter what, PageRank can be viewed as a measure of the value of links to your site. Incoming links to your site is a huge factor in rankings on all the search engines. Second, search engine rules are always changing and it’s hard to know what value PageRank has in the rankings and even if it’s value has diminished for now.