Well heck... it seems that I missed the recent PR update from Google. I think it happened sometime early October. When I was a newbie, I'd wait eagerly for Google to update those little green pixels. I would focus my attention on link building and marketing to the point where I'd join in silly forum threads like "How many backlinks do I need to get PR 6". If you're new to the world of search engine ranking, here's an explanation of Page Rank (PR).

I don't worry about Google's Toolbar PR rank anymore. The Toolbar PR is merely a visible parameter that is used in Google's very complex algorithm. Like everything in life - PR fluctuates every day in Google's mega-humongous network of servers. In fact, I remember clearly when the forums were filled with threads because of a statement from Google that the PR value was for entertainment purposes only! We'll never really know for sure if those nice bright green pixels are indeed there just to make us happy. However, most newbies (including myself once upon a time) think that the green bar is the end-all of their websites development, marketing and promotions, believing that once you get a certain Page Rank, you'll reach a Nirvana-like state and will automatically receive tons of traffic and your pockets will be bursting with money from advertisers.

But here's what Matt Cutts, one of the head Google Search Engineers has to say about PR :

I think because the green bar is the only value (of many hundreds) in Google's search algorithm that IS visible - and since it's been given the term "Page RANK" - many webmasters and website owners have become fixated on it. No one really knows how much weight the PR value carries in determining your site ranking for any given search phrase. But based on what we've seen, here's what we do know :

• Google updates PageRank continuously - not once every 3 months. Toolbar PageRank is only a snapshot which can be at any time between updates. Sort of like if you took a photo of your family - it's just a snapshot at THAT point in time.
• Some PR Updates have been buggy enough to seriously misrepresent a page's real PR value, let alone the real value of a website. There have been numerous updates where large prominent sites like Amazon have gone to PR0.

The whole focus on Page Rank has sent thousands of webmasters on a wild goose chase, believing that they can game the system. It's gotten so bad that people are paying good money to buy links on high PR sites, purely to raise their own PR. And if they can't get links from high PR sites, why not get thousands of links from link farms. After all, why waste years trying to build good content when there's a short cut?

And so, in August, there was a thread spanning a long 19 pages on Webmasterworld about whether Goolge should do away with the Toolbar PR. This was sparked by Adam Lasnik.

I've experienced bad judgement calls for homewithandrew.com because of its PR value too. Would you believe that homewithandrew.com once started out with a Toolbar PR0 which suddenly jumped to 5 three months later? The PR5 stuck for about 3 months before it went down to 4. After a lapse of about one inactive year, it went down to where it is now - PR2. Unfortunately, it was then that I decided to revive my blog. I applied to a number of revenue generating sites and was promptly rejected based on my PR2. Crap... if I had know this was going to happen, I would have applied when I was at PR5!

Some of my other sites have not really seen any changes in PR value. Even if they did go down a notch or two, I wouldn't feel like it was the end of the world. Throughout all these PR updates and fluctuations on my sites' PR value, traffic has more or less stayed the same and I've been ranking on page one for many competitive keywords together with the big boys. So as far as I'm concerned, those little green pixels are nice to look at, but don't really mean much.

So to close, here's a good read for more information on page rank : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-pagerank/

And remember... it could very well be that the Toolbar PR is really just to keep us entertained!