The effect of PageRank has been debated endlessly, as people have seen numbers go up and down without any clear correlations in traffic levels.  Everyone who’s interested in PageRank has something to look forward to (or dread), though, since Matt Cutts has issued a statement about some impending changes.

The extent of Cutts’s original heads up: “I wanted to let you know that new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days.  I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.”

That second sentence is hard to regard as anything other than good news (so long as your competitors aren’t getting all the breaks).  The first sentence is a tougher nut to crack.

Will PageRank values go up?  Down?  There’s sure to be some hubbub either way.  And what’s with the “become visible” phrase?  This implies the alterations are already active somewhere, so perhaps, even as people see fresh values, there won’t be any significant changes.

Anyway, it appears that new values are about all the toolbar update will entail.  In the comments section of his blog, Cutts answered a question by writing, “I wouldn’t expect any new features in the toolbar.  This is strictly a data refresh of new values.”

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