It has nothing to do with ego and looking down on you fools from the saddle or cockpit depending on what vehicle you currently drive. I have complete control and enough fuel to travel far.

I see those pts. For every webmaster that is knowledgeable about TBPR there are 100’s who aren’t.

A warning was issued…..and not everyone is paying attention. There could be further actions by G which will affect those that understand TBPR and the greater number who don’t

What do you suggest?

Regardless of whether or not toolbar PR means ANYTHING at all, doesn’t matter. In this instance, we don’t need an education about what it is, how it differs from real PR, or anything else. What we need to realize is that Google took an action – in this case it involved PR, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been something else or not. They took an action designed to WARN US. If you aren’t paying attention to those green pixels, or aren’t watching them, and your site got hit, you won’t even know you’ve been warned! In that respect, it is important.

I’ve been taking offense at people who’ve been telling me to ignore PR, and then deciding they needed to explain PR to me. Trust me. I understand it. I’ve been around a long time. I don’t need an explanation, thank you very much. I also don’t need anyone telling me I shouldn’t even be concerned. Of course I should! Everyone should be concerned. Let me explain why.

Let’s say Google emailed you personally. Let’s say Google said, “Dave, we don’t like the color of your site. Change it from blue to red, or be banned”. Now, let’s consider some things.

1. What if you never received the email because you never looked at Google email? At some point in the past, you decided it wasn’t important for some reason, so you never see email from Google. You would have missed the warning – you wouldn’t have changed the site color – and you would have wondered why you got banned. (That example is equivalent to never even looking at the toolbar PR or noting changes to it).

2. Now, let’s say you did get the email and you thought to yourself…well, Google has the right to do anything it wants, and it’s our own fault if we rely on Google traffic. (Let’s quote iamlost for a minute…If you build on a flood plain and get flooded whose fault is it? If you build for Google supplied traffic and Google supplied revenue and they dry up whose fault is it?). So, you think, well, I’ll just continue on with my blue site, and not worry about loss of traffic. After all, I’ve built my site to not depend on Google traffic.

That’s all well and good. If you don’t care about being banned from Google, and your business model wont’ notice the difference in traffic – more power to you. But I’d like everyone here to raise their hands who DOESN’T CARE about being banned from Google. C’mon…who wouldn’t miss the traffic?

If you don’t care, then what the heck are you doing in the field of SEO in the first place?

If you do care, then what Google did MATTERS. I don’t care whether or not TBPR is important or not. The change that was made MATTERS nevertheless, because it was a warning. If you never pay attention to TBPR you will miss the warning…and that could spell disaster for you.

Those are my points and I hope that clarifies things a bit.

Dave