Two days ago some people may have noticed that their PageRank toolbar started to only bring back values of N/A or 0. It got tongues wagging about the web and people were wondering whether it was a glitch, a new update, or if Google had disabled PageRank scores altogether.

After reading SEOQuake’s tweets this morning, it turns out that Google has simply moved the tool bar query URL.

To fix the PageRank on your SEOQuake tool bar, go to your preferences, on your parameters tab, select ‘Google pagerank’, edit and change the word ‘search’ to ‘tbr’.

Before -

[NAME]=Google pagerank
[TITLE]=PR
[URL_R]=http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&hl=en&ch={gchecksum}&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank&q=info:{url|encode}
[REGEXP]=Rank_.*?:.*?:(\d+)

After -

[NAME]=Google pagerank
[TITLE]=PR
[URL_R]=http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&hl=en&ch={gchecksum}&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank&q=info:{url|encode}
[REGEXP]=Rank_.*?:.*?:(\d+)

Then select ok, clear your cache and restart your browser.

PageRank is a measure of the volume and quality of links pointing towards your site, but it shouldn’t be used as the only comparison to how your website is performing. Other factors include the relevancy of the domain, page and domain authority and also the age of the website. We always hear of people who say “SEO’s should ignore PageRank”, but it’s hard for us to ignore a domain if it has a score of 8, for example!

Link building is a main technique used by many SEOs which some people believe may eventually be killed off by Google and its future algorithms, but there’s no need to panic… not just yet anyway…

Last week, Facebook introduced some new changes on their social networking site. A few days later, Google+ made their social media accounts available to the general public. Could this be the start of a real social media battle?

Even though Google have denied that they are in direct competition with Facebook, everyone who has both these social networking accounts can see how similar they are to each other and how there’s always going to be some rivalry (let’s not forget Facebook’s association with Bing instead of Google).

Last week, Mashable ran a poll and just fewer than 35% of the 5,346 people who voted said that they hated the new Facebook! People also vented their anger and confusion using Twitter which then saw #NewFacebook trending.

However, we all know, from past Facebook changes that users will moan about the updates for a little while but then just accept the new changes and forget all about the old Facebook, allowing the social networking site to retain its users and continue growing.

Facebook has now reached over 800 million users whilst Google+ is also growing at a very quick rate, and has over 43 million users. Although the number is not as impressive as Facebook’s numbers just yet, we have to remember that Google+ is only 3 months old and has only this week become available to all people, rather than invite only.

With Google+ now open to the public, we are wondering if Google’s real time search would make a comeback after Twitter and Google failed to agree on terms so that Google could keep Twitter’s real time tweets in their results.

However, it seems that they are still at loggerheads with each other rather than working together. Bing renewed their contract with Twitter earlier this month to have real time results in their search engine, but who actually chooses Bing over Google when it’s not their default browser setting?

I have to admit that I’m one of the people that complained about the new Facebook changes and contributed to the discussion on Twitter, but still found myself using Facebook. Facebook is still the social network that most of my friends are using which makes using it much more interesting than Google+, where nothing is really going on in my circles yet. However, if I find that more people I know start using Google+ more I may get weaned off Facebook. It’s just what happened to my Myspace account, once everyone I cared about joined Facebook, my Myspace got deleted.

At the end of the day, people are going to choose and use a social networking site where they can actually be social with other people, rather than choose a networking site purely based on how great the user interface is.

We’re not sure if people are ready to ditch Facebook for Google+ just yet. Do you have a preferred social media account?

Like most people in SEO, I spend a fair amount of time reading industry blogs, to see what people are currently talking about in the world of online marketing and looking out for the next big thing in SEO, such as Google+.

A couple of months ago you couldn’t move for posts about Google+, with everyone talking about its rivalry with Facebook, its sudden influx of 20 million users and hundreds of debates about how it was going to completely change the game! But now when I look around SEOMoz, Econsultancy, Search Engine Land and the rest I see barely a few mentions of this ‘revolutionary’ new social network.

To be fair, I am no better than the rest, when Google+ first came out I was straight on it and published 2 or 3 posts about how it could topple Facebook, change the way we connect online and add a huge new element to SEO, but now I am paying about as much attention to it as I am to AOL.

The fact of the matter is, so far we have seen little to no impact on SEO by Google+, and although it has 20 million+ users I haven’t seen a fresh update from any of my circles in weeks! Meanwhile, Facebook continues to roll out new features, such as the subscribe button, and both Facebook and Twitter are still much better places to interact with friends, fans and customers.

So where do we go from here?

A couple of months ago everyone was discussing how Google was becoming much more social and how we need to adapt to that and move away from traditional SEO tactics. However, in the last month there has been very little impact from Google+ and Google have not renewed their deal with Twitter, effectively losing some of their social element, rather than increasing it.

So should we just forget about Google+ and social networks altogether? Well no, social is obviously still very important for online marketing, with Twitter and Facebook being excellent mediums for creating brand awareness, customer interaction and content distribution, but I do think it is fair to say that the initial hype over Google+ was a bit much and that, although a move into social is good, abandoning traditional SEO tactics in favour of a social only approach might be a bit too presumptuous.

This week, Matthew Oxley, Gravytrain’s Head of Search, talked about the evolution of social search and Google+ over at Fourth Source.

At the moment social search is getting people in digital marketing excited, as it brings some great opportunity for users, as well as a number of prospects for advertisers.

However, the main area of discussion in this article is the possibility of Google+ overstepping the line and breaching people’s privacy and how so far, most social networks have done this by misjudging user’s needs for confidentiality. Matthew points out that, “Facebook is only just getting over their PR nightmares with regards to privacy, and Linkedin have more recently come under fire about their new social ads.”

Matthew explains that in day to day life, people like to keep personal information private, whether it’s a young lady reading her kindle to avoid stares from fellow commuters or an employee being coy about his whereabouts to avoid office gossip.

Matthew’s article considers the benefits of social search on Google+ but also illustrates a scenario to point out the negative points.

You can read the rest of Matthew’s views and the full article on Fourth Source.

This week, Gravytrain’s Account Manager, Matthew Read, spoke to UTalkMarketing.com about the social networking site Google+, and discussed how it can really compete with Facebook.

Since Google+ was launched two months ago, a staggering number of over twenty million users have set up an account; it took Facebook three years to gain the same number of users.

As Google+ pages for businesses aren’t available until the autumn, UTalkMarketing.com discusses what brands and businesses might want to get out of the social networking platform, once they’ve signed up.

One of the suggestions was having an online shopping experience on Google+. Facebook offers online shopping within Facebook pages, however businesses have struggled to measure how much of its new business can be attributed directly from consumer activity on the site. Matthew says “I would like to see the integration of [Google’s] shopping search results, so that businesses can have a direct point of sale on their Google+ profile and therefore accurately attribute sales from this medium”.

The article suggests that Google+ could challenge Facebook by touting itself as an effective new business tool.

You can read Matthew’s thoughts and the rest of the article on UTalkMarketing.com.