The search world has been in meltdown for the last few days because of a little green bar.

Toolbar PageRank (tbpr) is the source of more wasted blog time and forum comments than any other topic. Despite repeated statements from the more sensible end of the SEO market that toolbar pagerank is neither a true reflection of the real unseen PageRank, nor in any way worth bothering about, the mass of webmasters seem to obsess about it.

Last week a lot of people reported falls in their tbpr and the speculation machine surged into action.

• ‘They’re penalising paid links’ – hmm, so why are sites being affected that don’t sell links?
• ‘They’re penalising blog networking’ – hmm, so why aren’t some very obvious link schemes being affected?
• ‘We’re all doomed’ – hmm, your tbpr seems to have gone back up again.

None of these experienced commentators seem to have followed the usual golden rule in these situations – sit on your hands, do nothing, and wait to see what happens after a couple of weeks. After every piece of twiddling or lever pulling, whether minor or major, there is always a period of instability. Sit it out and then review the situation. Wildly changing some aspect of your site only adds another variable into a situation that already has too many of them.

Meanwhile Google themselves were remarkably quiet. Official mouthpiece Matt Cutts has been making no search related blog posts for a few weeks, and no other comment has been forthcoming. We seem to be back to the bad old days of complete non-communication. This really isn’t good enough for a company that expects us to trust it with all of our data. It has to realise that if it leaves a vacuum then speculation will inevitably rush in; most of it ill-informed and potentially harmful to both webmasters and to Google itself.

For instance the latest turmoil could easily be interpreted by the cynical as being the third year in a row that the natural SERPS have been thrown into randomness so that Xmas-dependent businesses would have to spend money on Adwords. Is that true? I don’t know, but I do know that a lot of people suspect it to be, and in the absence of any explanation from Google that is the view that will spread. Is that what they really want?

The fact is we don’t know if this is a major update, or a change in PR algorithm, or a manual blitz, or a warning shot across the bows of  link sellers, or an experiment (failed or successful). No-one can respond sensibly to such a situation, so if it is a warning shot as some have speculated, then it’s not very well aimed. And as has been mentioned by many, it’s one that won’t even be understood by most web businesses because outside of the search industry most people haven’t a clue what a nofollow tag is or why it might be important. They also have no idea about selling PageRank – they are just trying to make some money from advertising on their site. That’s the reality – most site owners don’t know much about web design and know nothing about SEO and it’s related subjects. They just see a medium for communication – and that includes advertising the same as any other medium does. They see Google selling adverts with links on them – must be ok then.

Come on Google – get rid of the PR and make with the Public Relations.