How did PageRank ruin the web?
Ever gotten a crappy email asking for links? Blame PageRank.
Ever had garbage comments with link drops? Blame PageRank.
Ever had to ferret out the how and why you should make use of the nofollow attribute on links? Blame PageRank.
In 2014, Google finally stopped showing the PageRank value for users. PageRank, which intended to help web surfers to know the quality of the webpage they were browsing, however, ruined the whole web.
The first problem was “PageRank boost”, which means a website bought links from link-selling companies in order to improve their PageRank scores. As a result, users saw websites with really high PageRank scores but actually filled with invaluable information. Though Google fought back against the SearchKing, penalizing the site and some of those in the network with PageRank score reductions or actual removal from Google, but link-selling economy never stopped.
The second problem was “the link spam”, which means that in order to improve the PageRank score, people put their links at wherever they could, such as blog posts and forums.
And Google itself, also made this fade away from people’s eyesight. The PageRank score was only on the Google toolbar, which most people used for searching on Google. But after Google released Chrome, which had a built-in function that people can search at the address bar, making the Google toolbar useless. And Google stopped updating PageRank scores after 2013.
Now we can finally enjoy a life without seeing links in comments. Also, we can get the PageRank scores from third parties, but those scores are only guesses, the true scores are only in Google’s hand, secretly.
source: http://searchengineland.com/rip-google-pagerank-retrospective-244286