No PageRank information available in the Google Toolbar

Being quite a regular at the Digital Point forums, I noticed that a few peoplefreaked out when they realized that the Google Toolbar Page Rank visualizer shows a “No PageRank Information Available” (a “greyed” page rank bar - see below) for their PR0 pages.

For people not into PageRank and SEO, that’s not a big deal, but every webmaster will tell you that a web site with a “greyed” page rank bar is a big no-no.
Before the last TBPR (Tool bar PageRank) update, “greyed” pages were normally considered as banned by Google, thus, they were removed from the Google index, and as such,  webmasters and bloggers refrained from exchanging links with them.

So here’s the update: since the last TBPR update Google actually show new sites/pages with PR0 as “greyed” in the toolbar whereas before they show up as “white”. First, I was a bit skeptic about this, so I made a test: I searched for a “greyed page” from the Digital Forum in Google, and big surprise, it appeared there! . I repeated this test with a couple of other PR0 blogs that wanted to exchange links with this PR4 blog.

Bottom line guys, no need to freak out, it’s just a change in Google’s policy. The big majority of those “greyed” pages are perfecly ok, they are by no means banned, and are good to do business with.

Your thoughts are welcome! 

[tags] Google PageRank, TBPR, Goolge [/tags]