Google has confirmed that the PageRank distribution feature has been removed from the Webmasters Tool. According to Susan Moskwa of Google they removed the feature because they realized that offering such a feature and giving webmaster all over the world advice not to sweat over the pagerank is contradictory. In her answer to a question in Websmaster Central she said, “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.”

The funny thing is that here at even here at Smartpagerank we know that using pagerank as a metric to assess your website or blog’s actual SERPs ranking in Google is no longer smart. What to do? Just look at your actual ranking in search engine results pages and try to work your way to the first page and then to the top results.

Here’s sound advice on what to do from Steve of StraightUpSearch.

So then what should PageRank be used for?
Well, why don’t we start with what it should NOT be used for. PageRank should not be an indicator of SEO success. In fact, if I were a site owner that was paying an outside vendor to improve my organic visibility, I would care less about PageRank. Instead, I’d be focused on whether or not my underlying objectives were being hit, either relative to traffic (branding), site conversions, sales, ROI, etc., and that they were being achieved through best practices.

Remember STOP obsessing about pagerank and focus on metrics that really reflect whether you are on the way to achieving your goals.

Please share your thoughts