As many of you would have already noticed Google has removed PageRank data from their Webmaster Tools service. For a long time now Google have been informing people not to focus too much attention to the PageRank of their site. And it now seems Google have gone one step further by removing information about PageRank in one of their most used programs.

I speak to clients each and very week who often question why they have dropped PR, or why their PR has not increased. I find myself answering the same question week in week out. So in my opinion this is a good move by Google.

A few years ago Google even wanted to remove PageRank information from their Google Toolbar, but this never materialised as it is such a large part of their scoring link quality. Although Google has removed the PageRank information from Webmaster Tools, this won’t distract website owners from focusing on their PageRank.

It certainly wont stop certain webmasters using the tool to obtain high quality links to enhance their sites ranking. Hopefully this may reduce the amount of people trying to manipulate the search results by selling links on high PR pages. This move by Google is a statement to Webmasters that PR is not as important as everyone thinks, lets hope it changes some peoples minds.