Google lowers it’s own PAGERANK to 9

PAGERANK [Google's way of measuring the importance of a site] possibilities range from zero to 10. I found it amusing that Google has now lowered it’s own PAGERANK to 9 as it was previously a 10. After all, it makes sense that the king of the web and the inventor of PAGERANK would give itself the highest ranking.

I have a sneaking feeling that this lowering of Google’s PAGERANK from 10 to 9 has something to do with the roll out of the +1 button!

For those of you who do not follow PAGERANK UPDATES, the latest PAGERANK update was JULY 2011, only a week ago. I anxiously await PAGERANK updates to see how my sites, and my clients sites faired. Many of my clients sites PAGERANK have increased thanks to our never ending SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts.

I only noticed by mistake that Google’s PAGERANK was showing as a 9 instead of a 10. I thought it was a mistake and reloaded the page a couple of times. I did a quick search of the web and really didn’t find anything discussing this so I wanted to start my own discussion.

I’m curious as to how many of you out there think this has to do with the +1 button roll out? Or do you think Google is trying to minimize the importance of PAGERANK?

On the last PAGERANK UPDATE [January 2011], many sites had their PAGERANKS decreased. Arguably due to Google’s new algorithm that punished link farms and low content sites. However, we know many site owners who’s sites were punished that did not fall into this category.

Many of the websites we are involved with gained a 1 point increase in PAGERANK.

Anyway, I hope to hear your thoughts on this matter.

p.s. Pagerank is arguably more for amusement and does not represent how a site will rank in searches. A site with a low PAGERANK can have great search rankings and vice versa.

google lowers it's own pagerank to 9 from 10