Google just rolled out a new update for its pagerank parameter (on June 27 2011). 
If you don’t know what Google PageRank is, it’s one of the parameters used by Google in their search engine ranking algorithm.
GooglePageRank parameter is dedicated to the calculation of different factors related to the authority of your site. In basic terms, it estimates the quantity, quality and relevance of incoming links for your webpages. The higher the PageRank the higher is a probability that the site has some quality backlinks.
The last Google PageRank update was in January 2011, so it’s been almost 6 months between updates. Until this year pagerank updates were pretty stable – usually you could see a new update every 3-4 months.
That pagerank update was related to the introduction of the new parameter in Google SERP placement algorithm known as Google Panda. January Google Panda update hit hard content farms, and it also affected many established article directories.
So if your site had a lot of backlinks from article directories, many of them lost value and as a result your PR probably went down during the January PageRank update.
I am not quite sure what was the target objective for the latest pagerank update but it seems several social networking sites had lost some of the PageRank. So may be Google is looking more closely now at Social SEO to decide what value to assign to the links distributed through social networks.
But this is only a speculation.
Funny thing is Google own PageRank went down from 10 to 9 which leads to the open question:
“How the most authoritative website in the world can lose a PageRank?”
Real Google PageRank
Important notice: when we’re talking about Google PR updates we actually are talking about Google Toolbar PageRank Update, and not about real-time PR updates.
According to Matt Cutts, Google actually updates its PR almost daily, so there is a difference between a visible PR that shows up in a toolbar and a real PR value that might change often and is known only to Google.
In reality the value you see on the toolbar and the value Google actually assigns to your pages might be quite different (or it could change rather quickly).
Real and Perceived Value of Google PageRank
Should you care about PageRank? Yes, but no more then you should care about your “Panda Rank”, for example.
PageRank is only one of hundreds parameters used by Google to define your ranking in SERPs. It’s not by any means the most important metric to define your rankings in search results.
Yet webmasters became so obsessed with PageRank that Google removed it from its Webmaster Tools at the end of 2009 just to prove that it’s not the most important factor in calculating SERP placement.
There are many sites with low PR that outrank their high-PR competitors.
And the only reason when you should really care about your PageRank is when you decide to sell links from your site. But in this case Google will catch you sooner or later and since it discourages paid links your site PR can go to 0.
Here is another interesting article on the topic: Does Google PageRank Still Matter?
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Opening image from on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.
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