Nearly 16 years ago, Google launched their very own toolbar. It allows website visitor’s to search for content on said website, locate search terms and highlight them, view Google’s cache, find related pages, share a webpage to Google+ and search the world wide web. The toolbar features and many more great additions to “Googlefying” your browser are automatically built into Chrome, which is a leading browser by Google. The Google Toolbar also used to allow us to view page importance (PageRank / PR), but PR has since been discontinued.

Google PageRank / PR Discontinued – Use Open Site Explorer Instead

PR was a useful feature, because we could get a quick idea of how a website stacked up, compared to others in the same industry (or different). As of 2016, it has now been discontinued. For those wanting to get an idea of site importance now, and without spending a lot of time, we suggest using Open Site Explorer to check domain and page authority. Watch for our post all about PR being discontinued 🙂

Why Start from the Beginning? To Learn Where Search is Going

This is a short warm up post in a huge series we are doing all about the different Google algorithm updates. It is important to start at the beginning though, to get an idea of where search is headed. Since the Google Toolbar is obsolete, along with PR (many features are available with enhancements if you use Chrome) this tells us that Google likes to create new products, make them better and discontinue things that may not have worked out how they expected.

What we can learn from this is that we need to be one step ahead and analyze what information Google gives us, before it is taken away. We have to be constantly on top of things and not just adapt, but adapt with enough creativity that we are within Google’s “rules”, but not so much that we miss out on opportunities. Testing is key.

Contact Us for More Info About the Google Toolbar or Any Google Update

It was a slice, Google Toolbar, but now we have Chrome 🙂 If you have any questions about different Google algorithm updates, or need help if you have been hit with one or more penalties, please contact us for more information. You can also leave us a comment. We love discussing SEO and can’t wait to hear from you!