picture-1311Google has updated PageRank, the link analysis system Google uses to rank individual pages on the net. Whilst some sites have seen increases, virtually everyones Twitter profile page has seen a fall in PageRank.

Although some ‘SEO specialists’ believe page rank is now irrelevant, others follow it religiously and still believe it to be a major influencer on their sites rankings.

Blogger’s blog So Web, has picked up on the fact that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams profile PR has fallen from 8 to 6. Dom Sagolla, the often forgotten Twitter co-founder, has had his profile page rank slashed to 4. Chris Brogan previously had a Twitter page rank of 7, that has now dropped to 4. Barack Obama was also on 7, now fallen to 4. Interestingly though, Twitter’s homepage has risen from 8 to 9.

Aside from the fact that this may a reaction to Twitter’s gain in popularity, it also stirs discussion around the importance of Twitter profile pages. Whilst not often a consideration, it’s interesting to think the value of a link from a Twitter profile to a webpage. Most peoples priority when someone tweets a link to their site is the number of followers that end up clicking on it, not the value that link back might bring to the site.

It also brings up questions regarding how many links back does your Twitter profile have? How good is the quality of content you are sharing? Are you better known for your twitter profile than any other place on the web? And above all, will all these questions be answered when Twitter releases their analytics features?

On a side note, did you know that PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank)? Also, if you’d like to check page rank yourself – this is probably the best place to do it.