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Re: MSc Research - Does making a Website Accessible compromise Search Engine Optimisation?

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From: Karl Groves
Date: Nov 18, 2009 7:35AM

I knew as soon as I mentioned PageRank, someone would bring this up. I
wasn't attempting to claim that PageRank was the be-all-and-end-all of SEO.
I think that while it is interesting that Google has removed PageRank from
Webmaster Tools, I have yet to see any evidence that PageRank is no longer a
concern. I would certainly be suspicious of any claims stating that "
Google Page Rank is *not *important.", as it stands against reason that
PageRank would exist but not be important. Now, whether it has recently
become of lesser value certainly seems to be the case. But I can't find any
information from any source whatsoever that shows that PageRank has been
removed altogether and is therefore "not important".

At any rate, this is all sort of a red herring in that the topic of
conversation was SEO & Accessibility, not the value of PageRank.

Karl




> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:webaim-forum-
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Simius Puer
> Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 7:20 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] MSc Research - Does making a Website Accessible
> compromise Search Engine Optimisation?
>
> Yes - do be cautious of advice. And just to prove the point (sorry
> Karl)
> Google Page Rank is *not *important.
>
> "Google has removed the Page Rank score from WebMaster tools.....This
> is
> about a strong a signal as you can get from Google to say *Page Rank
> just
> isn't important*." I forget where I read this originally (probably
> SEOMoz)
> but a full explanation is available here:
> http://www.shcl.co.uk/blog/2009/10/google-page-rank-is-not-
> important.html
>
>
> Richard, I know I have responded to your questionnaire previously but
> you
> might be interested in a recent development - comments made by Google's
> Matt
> Cutts at a convention in Las Vegas. He has hinted strongly that Page
> Load
> Speed set to be Google's next organic ranking factor! This has obvious
> cross-over with accessibility (in so far as using CSS rather than
> images to
> achieve design - not over/mis-using images and multimedia etc). Good
> article on this at: http://bit.ly/kmr4Z
>
> Regards
>
>
>