After 3 years of frozen state, Google Pagerank died forever during the weekend. Obviously it still exists, hidden in Google’s databases as one of the most important ranking factor but there is no way anymore to check the Pagerank of a domain:
Pagerank toolbar shows 0 for all domains
Google Pagerank API (toolbarqueries.google.com) returns 0 for all domains
There are domainers who collected thousands of aftermarket domains with high Pagerank, the value of their portfolio dropped significantly during this weekend or at least harder to sell. Domainers, SEO experts and well-known online businesses bought high Pagerank domains (PR5-PR8) in regular basis for 4-5 figures in auctions with many participating bidders. Obviously Google tries to stop this SEO-fueled activity, i.e. buying domains for backlinks and redirecting them to the target page or building a few page site in order to place backlinks to a target page. While the disappearance of Pagerank cannot totally stop this activity until it works but surely makes buying domains for SEO much more difficult.
