Google PR (PageRank) is not dead . For your information, Google PR is very much alive & kicking.

Google PageRank is Google’s technology that rates the importance of a given web page. According to Wikipedia, PageRank is a Link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, the Co-founder of Google.

PageRank is used by Google (among other things) to determine a page’s rank on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). As you know, incoming links are one of the most important components of gaining a high Google PageRank. Google says, it uses more than 200 signals, including PageRank, to order websites in Google SERPs.

Google PR update used to happen almost every 3 months till April 3, 2010. However, between April 3, 2010 & January 20, 2011, no Google PR update occurred. Since, no Google PR update happened for almost 9 months after April 3, 2010, rumours spread fast that Google was planning to abandon the PageRank algorithm.

Many mused that Google would abandon Pagerank because webmasters were obsessed with it and forgot what was most important – the content. The rumours somewhat subsided with the PR update on January 20, 2011.(So, the next Google PR update may happen anytime now).

Some other reports speculated that Google was to lose exclusive rights to PageRank in 2011. However, Stanford University owns the patent to PageRank and Google has the exclusive licensing rights to it until 2011.

The rumour that Google PR is dead hit the SEO Industry very much. That was the reason I wrote this post.