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With Google not allowing 3rd party tools to give you Page Rank information a lot of people are speculating that Google is discontinuing Page Rank altogether. Google already hampers the ability for 3rd party tools and sites to display link popularity and search engine saturation, so it’s no real surprise they are doing this with Page Rank as well.

So all of you people out there selling links on PR whatever sites are still safe to keep convincing people that it really helps their SEO.

Personally, I uninstalled the Google Toolbar more than a year ago because I don’t care about Page Rank at all. Link building that is based on the PR of the site that links to you is worthless. Getting 100% original content placed on high-traffic websites is much more valuable. Getting a link from a page that already has related content and traffic is more valuable.

Page Rank isn’t officially dead. It’s just almost entirely irrelevant.

Related articles

• Google Has Made PageRank Updates (andrewsegawa.com)
• Why PageRank Doesn’t Matter Anymore (And What You Should Focus On Instead) (entrepreneurs-journey.com)
• PageRank is Dead (The Rush to SocialRank) (ross.typepad.com)

Before you look for problems with the website or the SEO methods you are using, check to see if the traffic for their search terms is down all over the web. If the number of people searching for their key phrases is up and their traffic is down, you might have a problem. If their traffic is down about the same as it is for the whole web, you likely don’t have a problem.

Latest trends for terms related to SEO

But, with Facebook challenging Google for being the website with the most traffic, there seems to be a chink in Google’s armor and they are no longer everyone’s darling.

Google still has more hits, but FaceBook owns people’s time. People spend hours on FaceBook while only a few seconds on Google as they do a search.

Everyone in the Internet Marketing and SEO world seemed to be always looking for what might be the “Google Killer” and several up and comers had that title given to them prematurely only to find out they were not the Google Killer everyone thought they were.

Most also thought that a new search engine would be that Google Killer. But, maybe not. Maybe it’s faceBook. Maybe it’s Twitter, maybe it’s something else entirely. Or maybe Google is still invincible.

What are your predictions and thought?

My answer: Subdomains are like standalone websites without the advantage of having a real domain name. You can build whole sites on subdomains, but they won’t help the website on the actual domain and the subdomains carry less weight than a site on an actual domain name. /folders help add content to your website. If what you want to put on the subdomain isn’t to help your website, then it’s better to get a domain name for that content. Google has been wavering on how they treat subdomains.

So I looked it up on the Google Webmaster Blog just to be sure.

Subdomains vs. Subdirectories

What’s the difference between using subdomains and subdirectories?

When it comes to Google, there aren’t major differences between the two, so when you’re making that decision, do what works for you and your visitors.

In addition to those considerations, if you use Webmaster Tools (which we hope you do!), keep in mind that you’ll automatically be verified for deeper subdirectories of any sites you’ve verified, but subdomains need to be verified separately.

So, they are the same from an SEO perspective, at least for Google. Remember, you need traffic from other search engines as well. The Google Webmaster blog only applies to Google Optimization. The advice that Matt Cutts gives us is also only about Google Optimization.

Some search engines may treat subdomains as separate websites and subdirectories or folders as part of the actual website. So the safer way to go for SEO purposes is to use subdirectories or folders for content you want to be seen as part of your website.

This is from Matt Cutts on how Google treats subdomains and subdirectories;

My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content.

A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example.

If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.

Remember the KISS principle. keep it simple and stupid. The more you complicate your SEO efforts, the more likely you will make a mistake.

In addition to that, Google has changed their policy on subdomains more than once. They have always counted subdirectories as content for your site. Do you really want to put all that effort into building subdomains just to have them change that policy again?

I recommend subdirectories / folders if you must use them at all. For most websites I put all of the web pages in the root with folders for images, docs, scripts, styles, etc. It makes it very easy to work on your website when you do it this way.

Excessive folders with different keyword names can make your URLs seem like spam. I can’t prove that is a problem, but anything that looks like spam, smells like spam and tastes like spam is probably spam.

What experience have you had with subdomains vs. subdirectories? I don’t mean just in Google. How do they do for you in Yahoo and Bing or other search engines?

(OK, I had to use the “add-to-dictionary feature in Microsoft Word because it didn’t recognize XP, so some Microsoft hating is justified.)

And I primarily use Google for search. So why would I ever switch to Bing? Well, I won’t be switching, but I have to give Microsoft its’ due. Bing is more user-friendly than Google and Yahoo.

I don’t mean for power users and SEO pros or Internet Marketers. I mean for the normal web surfing public. Sometimes as marketers, we think that what we like is what consumers will also like. That’s the worst mistake a marketer can make.

Bing has other suggested searches by Google, but they are at the top left instead of at the bottom.

Your search history is on the left as well rather than hidden on another page because Google wants you to leave history enabled. You can turn off your search history at Bing right there in the sidebar. Most Google users don’t even know web history is on or how to turn it off.

When you mouse over results at Bing, you get a web page summary popup before you waste time clicking to a page you don’t want. Even the contact info is on the popup in many cases.

So before we write Bing off as another pathetic attempt to compete with the Google Monster, you might want to give it a little more attention. Users are going to like Bing if they keep improving the user experience there.

We just have to hope that Microsoft doesn’t come out with VistaBing or something like that each year.

Do You Have a Google Habit?

1. If I like a site or visit a site often, it’s likely already in my favorites or bookmarks or I know the web address by heart. Google Personalized Search is just another bookmark tool rather than a real search engine results page. If I wanted to find the same sites over and over again, I don’t need Google.

2. Site owners now believe they rank well for all of their keywords. They do not understand personalized search and Google has done nothing to educate them. Google just decided to give them the search results they are getting without really asking them if they want their search results altered in this way.

3. Whenever site owners search Google for the keywords they are targeting, they believe everyone else is seeing the same results they are. They think they are ranking high in Google for their keywords and can’t figure out why they don’t have more traffic and sales as a result.

I get calls from clients where they tell me how well they are ranking. When I tell them to pause their web history and look again, they are usually disappointed.

I get calls from potential clients who tell me they don’t need much help because they are already at the top of Google for their keywords. Again, I have to start by disappointing them with the fact that they aren’t seeing the real results.

This makes Google appear to be ineffective at sending traffic to their website. That’s one of the reason I call personalized search one of Google’s biggest mistakes of all time.

4. Even when I want to get a newsletter, I have to subscribe to it or opt in. If Google wants to offer personalized search, why not let the people that want it opt in from a page where it explains that by opting in to personalized search they will no longer get real search results.

What do you think of Google personalized search?

I realize some people do not want anyone to call them. They want people to order product through their website because they have it mostly automated. But this is not true for some website owners. They want their customers to call them, so they put their phone number prominently on their website.

But why wait until the user gets to your website? When a user types a search term into Google, they get a results page with 10 listings for them to choose from plus extra pages of listings if they want them.

There is a description meta tag in your web pages if you coded your website properly. As long as that description contains the terms the searcher typed in, that meta description is the description Google displays under your link.

So put your phone number in the description. I’ve had people call me from just that description without them having visited my website at all yet. That’s why I call the Google results page, the Google Phone Book.

In addition to that, Google snippets means that if the search phrase typed in by the user is not in your meta description, then Google pulls the description from the text around the search term where it appears on the actual page itself.

This means, you need to put your phone number in more than one place on your website in order to take advantage of the Google Phone Book.

Example: You sell three things on your website. We’ll call them Thingies, Whatchamacallits, and Whatevers.

You have your phone number at the top of your web page already.

In paragraph 1, you talk about thingies. At the end of the paragraph, put in something like; “If you want to know more gibberish about Thingies, call XXX-XXX-XXXX”.

In paragraph 2, you talk about whatchamacallits. At the end of that paragraph put; “Call XXX-XXX-XXXX to learn more about whatchamacallits”.

Now if Google pulls the description from the text on the page, it will also pull your phone number into the google results page just as it would if it pulled it from your meta description.

So, if you want people to call you, emphasize that on the web pages you build and make sure it is going into the descriptions Google displays under the link to your website on their results page. That’s what I call using the Google Phone Book.

For anyone that doesn’t know the basics of how this works; When someone types a search phrase into Google and Google finds a web page in your website that is relevant to that search phrase, Google first looks to see if that phrase is in your description meta tag. If it is not, then it finds the phrase on the page and grabs the text around the phrase and uses that as the description instead of the one in your meta tag.

So you may see your web page rank for more than one key phrase, but see a different description under the link, even though it’s the same page. This improves click-thrus from the SERPs in my opinion. It shows the user that your link is relevant to the exact phrase they searched for and makes them more likely to click the link.

Anyway, just wanted to applaud Google on using these snippets to help improve click-thrus and helping searchers find more relevant content.