WebFusion - 11:50 pm on Jun 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

Obviously not. Only not very bright people would be put off by the green bar disappearing. It's constantly amazing how people think removing the *display* of the green bar would change anything. Try to understand, as long as Google employs the concept of pagerank, pagerank will be valuable, whether it is displayed on the toolbar or not. Sure, the not-very-bright will think "out of sight, doesn't exist", but anyone with a showbox full of sense will know that it still exists, and what type of sites have it, etc.

I love it when someone calls my intelligence into question.

Of course it will "exist", that's not the point at all. the POINT is, no one wil be able to use the pagerank as "exposed" on the toolbar as a marketing tool in and of itself to conduct the business of selling links. Of course people have and will always sell links (which I personally think is just fine), but they will no longer be able to "point' to the toolbar and say "my site is a PR8, therefore advertising here cost XX amount". They will instead have to "prove" the value of their site to their advertisers the old fashioned way - by demonstrating traffic/demo's to targeted clients.

Further, all these "Oh no, my PR fell to 5" discussions, rants, etc., will not have a reason to complain due to the fact that a visible PR would no longer be driving the "Mania".