PageRank: Is It Still a Thing? (The Modern Answer)

As an SEO expert with over a decade in the trenches, I get this question all the time. It usually comes from clients who have been around long enough to remember “the good old days” or new SEOs who’ve stumbled across the term in an old forum.

“I keep hearing about PageRank. Is that still a thing? Should I be trying to increase my PageRank?”

The confusion is understandable. You might remember that little green bar in the Google Toolbar. You might remember the entire industry built around “buying PR5 links.” And then, one day, it all just… vanished.

So, what’s the real story?

Let me give you the short answer right up front: Yes, PageRank is 100% still a thing.

In fact, it’s just as important as it ever was. It’s a foundational, core component of Google’s ranking algorithm.

But (and this is a massive but) the PageRank that exists and matters today is not the PageRank you remember. It has evolved. It’s more sophisticated, more nuanced, and completely invisible to us. The public 0-10 score is dead, but the concept is very much alive.

If you’re serious about SEO in 2025 and beyond, you need to understand what PageRank became. Forget the old-school tactics of hoarding “link juice.” The modern application of PageRank is deeply intertwined with concepts you hear about every day: E-E-A-T, topical authority, and helpful content.

In this article, I’m going to pull back the curtain. We’ll cover:

What PageRank was and how it worked (the simple version).
Why Google killed the public PageRank score (and why it was a good thing).
The “smoking gun” proof that Google still uses PageRank today.
How “Modern PageRank” works (hint: it’s not just a simple vote).
How PageRank is the engine behind “Authoritativeness” and “Trustworthiness” (the ‘A’ and ‘T’ in E-E-A-T).
Most importantly, what this all means for your actual, practical SEO strategy.

Grab a coffee. Let’s get into it.

Part 1: The “Good Old Days” – What PageRank Was

To understand where we are, you have to understand where we started. Before Google, search engines were… well, they were terrible. They primarily ranked pages based on keyword density. If you wanted to rank for “blue widgets,” you just stuffed the words “blue widgets” onto your page a hundred times.

It was a spammer’s paradise and a user’s nightmare.

A Quick History Lesson: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and the “Vote”

Then, in the late 1990s, two Stanford Ph.D. students named Larry Page (yes, that Page) and Sergey Brin had a revolutionary idea. They proposed that the web’s link structure could be used to determine the quality and importance of a page.

Their idea, which they called PageRank, was based on the concept of academic citations. A research paper that is cited by many other important research papers is considered authoritative. Page and Brin applied this logic to the web.

A link from Page A to Page B is a “vote” from Page A for Page B.
It’s a democratic system, but not all votes are equal.
A vote (link) from a highly important page (like a major university or news site) is worth far more than a vote from a brand new, unknown blog.

This was the magic. PageRank wasn’t just counting links; it was measuring the quality of those links, which was determined by the PageRank of the linking pages. It was a beautiful, recursive algorithm that brought order to the chaos of the early web.

How the Original PageRank Algorithm Worked (The Simple Version)

At its core, the original PageRank of a Page (A) was calculated based on the PageRank of all the pages (T1, T2, …Tn) that linked to it.

The formula looked something like this:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Let’s break that down in plain English:

PR(A): The PageRank we’re trying to calculate.
d: A “damping factor,” usually set to 0.85. This simulates the chance that a user will get bored and stop clicking links, jumping to a random new page instead.
PR(T1)/C(T1): This is the key part. It takes the PageRank of a linking page (Page T1) and divides it by the total number of links on that page (C(T1)).

This “division” is the concept SEOs came to call “link juice” (a term Google employees famously dislike, but one we all understand).

If a page has a PageRank of 100 and 10 links on it, each of those links passes on 10 “points” of PageRank (100 / 10). If that same page has 100 links, it only passes on 1 “point” (100 / 100).

This simple mechanic created an entire industry.

The Rise and Fall of the Public Toolbar PageRank

Google, in a move they would later come to regret, made this internal metric public. They displayed it in the Google Toolbar as a simple, logarithmic score from 0 to 10.

And the SEO world lost its mind.

That little green bar became the single most important metric in the industry. It wasn’t a ranking factor; it was a representation of one. But for SEOs, it was a score to be gamed.

This led to the dark ages of link building:

Link Farms: Vast networks of terrible websites created for the sole purpose of linking to each other to inflate their PageRank.
Paid Links: The birth of an economy where you could literally “Buy PR5 links” for a set price.
Comment & Forum Spam: Automated bots dropping links in every comment section and forum on the web.

SEOs weren’t trying to earn links by creating good content; they were just buying, begging, or spamming for links from any page with a visible green bar.

Google had to stop the bleeding. The public metric, which was meant to show transparency, was actively encouraging spam and degrading the user experience.

So, Google took action. First, they stopped updating the public Toolbar PageRank score. For years, the score you saw was an old, stale snapshot. Then, in 2016, they officially removed it from the toolbar for good.

The green bar was dead. And many SEOs mistakenly believed PageRank was dead with it.

They were wrong.

Part 2: The Big Question: Does Google Still Use PageRank?

Yes. Emphatically, yes.

All Google did was hide the score. They didn’t turn off the algorithm. Think of it like a car’s dashboard. Just because the “engine oil pressure” gauge is hidden from you doesn’t mean the engine isn’t using oil pressure.

Google’s internal, real-time PageRank score is more important than ever. It’s just one of hundreds of signals, but it’s a foundational one.

Google’s Own Words

You don’t have to take my word for it. Google has been very clear about this.

In 2017, Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed on Twitter that Google still uses PageRank (and had been updating it continuously) long after the toolbar was gone.
Google’s own “How Search algorithms work” documentation lists PageRank as one of its core systems for “ranking useful pages,” stating: “These systems… are based on a breakthrough in the ’90s called PageRank… PageRank is still used today.”

The 2024 Leak: The “Smoking Gun”

For anyone who still had doubts, a massive Google Search API document leak in 2024 provided the “smoking gun.” Within the documentation, developers spotted multiple attributes directly related to PageRank.

We saw variables like RawPageRank and, even more telling, PageRank_NS (which many experts interpret as “Nearest Seed”). This _NS version strongly suggests a more modern, sophisticated version of PageRank that calculates a page’s trust and authority based on its proximity (in links) to a set of hand-picked, highly-trusted “seed” sites (like major universities, government sites, or top-tier news organizations).

This leak confirmed what advanced SEOs have known for years: PageRank never went away. It just went to college, got a Ph.D., and became way more complex.

It’s Not the Only Thing

Here’s the critical context: PageRank measures authority or importance. It does not measure relevance.

A page can have an incredibly high PageRank but be completely irrelevant to your search. The original PageRank paper itself could have a high PageRank, but you don’t want it to show up when you search for “best pizza near me.”

That’s where Google’s other systems come in:

Relevance Systems (like BERT, MUM, and RankBrain): These AI-driven systems understand natural language. They figure out what your query means (the intent) and which pages match that intent.
Content Quality Systems (like the Helpful Content System): These systems reward content that is written for humans and provides a satisfying experience, while demoting content written just to rank.
User Experience Systems (like Core Web Vitals): These measure page speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

Think of it this way: Relevance and Content Quality systems create the list of potential pages for a query. PageRank is then used as a major signal to help order that list, pushing the more authoritative and trustworthy pages to the top.

Part 3: The Evolution: Meet “Modern PageRank”

This is the part that most SEOs miss. The PageRank of 2025 is not the PageRank of 1998. The “divide by the number of links” model was just the start.

Beyond the “Random Surfer”: The “Reasonable Surfer” Model

The original algorithm was called the “Random Surfer” model. It assumed a user would click any link on a page with equal probability.

We all know that’s not how humans browse.

In 2004, Google patented the “Reasonable Surfer” model. This new model introduced the idea that not all links are created equal, even on the same page.

It assumes that a “reasonable surfer” is more likely to click some links than others. For example:

A link placed prominently at the top of the main content.
A link that is contextually relevant to the paragraph it’s in.
A link in a larger font or a different color.

Conversely, links that are “less likely” to be clicked—like links in the footer, in the sidebar, or links that say “click here”—would pass less PageRank.

This patent means that a single, contextual in-content link from a high-authority article can be vastly more valuable than a sitewide footer link from that same website, even though the source page’s PageRank is the same.

Topical PageRank: It’s Not Just Who Links, but Why

This is another huge evolution. The original PageRank was topic-agnostic. It just passed “authority” points.

Modern PageRank is deeply intertwined with topical relevance. Google doesn’t just see a link; it analyzes the context of the linking page and the context of the target page.

Here’s an example:

You have a blog about fishing.
You get a link from a high-authority gardening blog. This is a good link! It will pass some PageRank.
You get a link from a medium-authority fishing blog. This link is better.

Why? Because this second link not only passes PageRank (authority), it also passes a powerful topical signal. It reinforces to Google that your site is a relevant and authoritative source for the topic of fishing.

This is why chasing links from relevant sites in your own niche is far more powerful than just getting any “high DA” link you can.

The “nofollow” Conundrum and the Death of PageRank Sculpting

Back in the day, SEOs got clever. They thought, “If PageRank is divided by all my links, I’ll just ‘nofollow’ all my unimportant internal links (like ‘contact us’ or ‘privacy policy’). That way, I can’t lose that PageRank, and I can hoard it and funnel it all to my ‘money’ pages!”

This was called PageRank Sculpting.

It worked for a while. Then, in 2009, Google’s Matt Cutts announced a change to stop it. Here’s how it works now:

Old Way: A page has 100 PageRank points and 10 links (5 dofollow, 5 nofollow). SEOs thought 100 / 5 = 20 points went to each dofollow link.
New Way (How it Actually Works): A page has 100 PageRank points and 10 links. The PageRank is divided by all 10 links (100 / 10 = 10 points each). The 5 dofollow links receive their 10 points. The 5 nofollow links… their 10 points just evaporate. They are lost.

This change single-handedly killed PageRank sculpting. You can no longer hoard PageRank.

Furthermore, in 2019, Google announced that nofollow (along with new attributes rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content) would be treated as “hints” rather than “directives.”

This means Google might choose to pass PageRank through a nofollow link if it thinks it’s a valuable, authoritative citation. The days of absolute control are over.

The takeaway: Stop trying to “sculpt” PageRank with nofollow. Just link to relevant pages, both internally and externally. It’s that simple.

Part 4: PageRank, E-E-A-T, and the “Helpful Content” Era

This is where it all comes together. This is the “grand unified theory” of modern SEO.

You hear me and every other SEO talking nonstop about E-E-A-T. This stands for:

Experience: Does the author have first-hand, lived experience with the topic?
Expertise: Does the author have the necessary knowledge or skill in the field?
Authoritativeness: Is the author or site a well-regarded, go-to source for the topic?
Trustworthiness: Is the site secure (HTTPS), is the author transparent, and is the content accurate?

E-E-A-T is a concept from Google’s human rater guidelines. It’s not one single algorithm. It’s a framework, and Google uses many different “signals” to try and measure it.

So, how does Google algorithmically measure “Authoritativeness” and “Trustworthiness” at the scale of trillions of pages?

You guessed it: PageRank.

PageRank is the original, and still the most powerful, algorithm for measuring authority and trust.

When a highly authoritative site (like a .gov site, a major university, or The New York Times) links to you, it’s not just passing “link juice.” It’s passing trust. It’s an algorithmic signal that your site is authoritative. This is what builds your “A” and “T” in E-E-A-T.
That PageRank_NS (Nearest Seed) variable from the 2024 leak? That’s almost certainly a direct E-E-A-T signal, measuring how “trusted” your page is based on its link relationship with known, trusted seed sites.

A Helpful Page Earns Links

Now, let’s connect the final dot: The Helpful Content System (HCS).

Google’s HCS is designed to promote content made for people and demote content made for search engines. So, what’s the connection to PageRank?

It’s a virtuous cycle:

You stop trying to “game” PageRank.
Instead, you focus on creating the most helpful, expert, and trustworthy content on a given topic (i.e., you focus on E-E-A-T and helpful content).
What happens when you create genuinely helpful, original, authoritative content? People link to it.
Journalists, bloggers, academics, and fans will naturally cite your work as a resource.
These natural, high-quality, topically relevant links are the purest signal for Modern PageRank.
This high-quality PageRank flow tells Google your site is authoritative and trustworthy (E-E-A-T).
As a result, Google’s ranking systems (including the Helpful Content System) reward you with higher visibility.

See? It’s all one big ecosystem. You don’t “build” PageRank anymore. You earn it by being helpful and authoritative.

Part 5: So, What Does This Mean for Your SEO Strategy in 2025?

This is the “so what” part. I’ve told you it’s real, it’s evolved, and it’s tied to E-E-A-T. Now, how do you use this information?

1. Stop Chasing Metrics, Start Building Authority

First, let’s get this out of the way. Stop obsessing over third-party metrics.

I’m talking about Domain Authority (DA) from Moz, Domain Rating (DR) from Ahrefs, and Authority Score (AS) from Semrush.

Are these tools bad? No! I use them every single day. But you must understand what they are. They are third-party approximations of PageRank. They are not the real, internal Google score. They are great for comparing your site to a competitor’s, but they are not an absolute KPI.

I have seen sites with a “low” DA outrank sites with a “high” DA all day long. Why? Because their content was more helpful, their E-E-A-T was stronger, and they had a handful of topically relevant, high-authority links that the third-party tools just didn’t weigh properly.

Use these metrics as a guide, not as a gospel.

2. Master Internal Linking (The PageRank You Control)

This is the most actionable and underrated SEO tactic, period.

You can’t control who links to you from external sites. But you have 100% control over how PageRank flows within your own site.

Most websites have a terrible internal link structure. Their homepage has a ton of PageRank (from external links), but it doesn’t share it effectively. New blog posts are published and become “orphan pages,” with no internal links pointing to them.

Your goal is to use internal links to:

Guide users and Google to your most important pages.
Distribute PageRank (authority) from your “strong” pages to your “weaker” (but still important) pages.
Signal topical relationships to Google.

The best way to do this is with the “Topic Cluster” or “Pillar Page” model.

Pillar Page: A long, comprehensive “hub” page about a broad topic (e.g., “A Beginner’s Guide to Fly Fishing”). This page will be your main target for backlinks.
Cluster Pages: A series of shorter, more specific articles that cover sub-topics (e.g., “How to Choose a Fly Rod,” “5 Best Flies for Trout,” “How to Cast a Fly Rod”).
The Link Structure:
- The Pillar Page links out to all the Cluster Pages.
- Every Cluster Page links back to the Pillar Page.

This structure is brilliant for modern PageRank. It funnels all the authority from the cluster pages up to the pillar, and it funnels the broad authority from the pillar down to the specific cluster pages. It also creates a dense, relevant link structure that screams “topical authority” to Google.

3. The “New” Link Building: A Comparison

Your external link-building strategy (or “Digital PR,” as we should call it) must change. It’s no longer a game of quantity. It is 100% a game of quality, relevance, and context.

Here’s a simple table to show you what to stop doing and what to start.

Old Strategy (Toolbar-Focused)	Modern Strategy (PageRank & E-E-A-T Focused)
Buying “High PR” links from any site.	Earning links from sites that are topically relevant to you.
Submitting to hundreds of low-quality directories.	Getting listed in a few, key, human-vetted industry directories.
Spamming blog comments and forums.	Genuinely engaging in communities where your audience is.
“PageRank Sculpting” with `nofollow`.	Smart, natural internal linking to your best pages.
Begging for links with “please link to me.”	Creating “linkable assets” (original data, free tools, “ultimate guides”) that people want to link to.
Guest posting on any site just for the link.	Strategic guest posting on high-authority, relevant sites to build authority and reach a new audience.
Chasing a quantity of links.	Chasing the quality of links. One link from a top-tier site in your niche is worth 1,000 spammy links.

FAQs

Q1: Is PageRank even still a thing in 2025?

A: Yes, 100%. PageRank is absolutely still a core part of Google’s ranking algorithm.

However, the PageRank of today is not the public 0-10 score you remember from the old Google Toolbar. That public metric is dead. The internal, real-time PageRank algorithm is very much alive, but it’s far more complex and is completely invisible to us.

Q2: Can I check my website’s PageRank score?

A: No, you cannot. Google officially removed the public-facing PageRank score in 2016. It is now a purely internal metric, just one of hundreds of signals Google uses. Anyone or any tool claiming to show you your “actual” Google PageRank score is not telling the truth.

Q3: If I can’t check my PageRank, what metric should I use?

A: Use third-party metrics as a guide, not a gospel. Tools like Ahrefs (Domain Rating – DR), Moz (Domain Authority – DA), and Semrush (Authority Score – AS) have all created their own approximations of PageRank.

These scores are useful for comparing your site’s link profile to a competitor’s, but they are not an absolute score to obsess over. A site with a “low” DA can easily outrank a site with a “high” DA if its content is more helpful and its links are more topically relevant.

Q4: How does “Modern PageRank” work? Is it different?

A: Yes, it’s much more sophisticated than the original. The original “Random Surfer” model assumed a user would click any link on a page with equal probability. The “Modern PageRank” algorithm is smarter:

“Reasonable Surfer” Model: It understands that some links are more likely to be clicked than others. A prominent, in-content link passes more PageRank than a tiny link in a website’s footer.
Topical PageRank: It’s no longer just about “authority.” The algorithm analyzes the topic of the linking page. A link from a medium-authority site in your niche is often more valuable than a link from a high-authority site in a completely random, unrelated niche.

Q5: How do I increase my website’s PageRank in 2025?

A: You earn it by focusing on E-E-A-T and helpful content. The old days of “building” PageRank by buying or spamming links are over.

The modern strategy is a virtuous cycle:

Create Helpful Content: Focus on demonstrating Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
Earn Natural Links: When you create the best content on a topic, other bloggers, journalists, and experts will naturally link to you as a resource.
Master Internal Linking: Use a “Topic Cluster” or “Pillar Page” model to distribute PageRank from your strong pages to your new or important pages. This is the part you fully control.

Q6: What’s the connection between PageRank and E-E-A-T?

A: PageRank is the primary algorithm Google uses to measure the “A” (Authoritativeness) and “T” (Trustworthiness) in E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T is a framework, not a single score. Google uses many signals to measure it. When a site that Google already views as highly authoritative and trustworthy (like a major university, government site, or top-tier news organization) links to you, it’s an algorithmic “vote of trust.” This is how PageRank quantifies your site’s authority and trust at scale.

Q7: What is “PageRank Sculpting” and should I be doing it?

A: No, you should not. PageRank Sculpting is an outdated tactic that no longer works.

This was a practice where SEOs would add a rel="nofollow" tag to unimportant internal links (like “contact” or “privacy policy”). The theory was that this would stop PageRank from flowing to those pages and “hoard” it for their more important “money” pages.

In 2009, Google confirmed this doesn’t work. Now, if you have 10 links on a page and nofollow 5 of them, the PageRank is still divided by 10. The 5 “followed” links get their share, and the 5 “nofollowed” links’ share simply evaporates. You can’t hoard PageRank; you only lose it.

Q8: Do `nofollow` links still affect PageRank?

A: Yes, but you can’t control it. In 2019, Google announced that nofollow (along with new attributes rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc") are treated as “hints” rather than “directives.”

This means Google might choose to pass PageRank and authority through a nofollow link if it thinks it’s a valuable, authoritative citation. The days of absolute control are over. The best practice is to simply link naturally and not worry about sculpting.

Q9: How important is internal linking for PageRank?

A: Extremely important. It’s the most actionable SEO tactic you have for managing PageRank.

While you can’t control who links to you externally, you have 100% control over your internal linking. A smart internal linking strategy (like the “Topic Cluster” model) does two critical things:

Distributes Authority: It passes PageRank from your established, high-authority pages (like your homepage) to your newer or deeper content.
Signals Relevance: It creates a dense, interconnected web of links around a specific topic, which signals to Google that you have “topical authority” on that subject.

Q10: What’s more important: PageRank or Helpful Content?

A: This is a false choice. They work together.

Conclusion: PageRank is Dead. Long Live PageRank.

So, let’s circle back to the original question: Is PageRank still a thing?

Toolbar PageRank—the 0-10 green bar, the public score, the metric that fueled a billion-dollar spam industry—is dead and buried. And good riddance.

But PageRank the concept—the algorithm that uses links as votes to measure authority and trust—is not only alive and well, it’s the foundational pillar of E-E-A-T. It’s grown up. It’s smarter, it understands topics, it weighs links based on context, and it’s working silently in the background of every single search.

My final piece of advice to you is this:

Stop trying to “game” PageRank.

The only way to win in modern SEO is to deserve to rank.

Focus every ounce of your effort on creating the best, most helpful, most authoritative, and most trustworthy content on the web for your specific niche.

When you do that, the links—and the PageRank—will follow.

Also, don’t forget to check Google guide about their search ranking system.
Happy ranking everyone. cheers.

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