Google has disabled the Toolbar PageRank scores

There has been a lot of discussion and scare on Twitter and within the SEO forums that Google has disabled the Toolbar PageRank scores from working. The truth is, no they have not.

As several sites have reported already, PageRank is still alive in the Toolbar but Google changed the lookup URL. This change has caused third party tools that check PageRank from looking up a page’s PageRank. If you use Internet Explorer and turn on the Google Toolbar, you will still be able to look up the Toolbar PageRank score. But you may not be able to do so if you use a third party tool, not until they update their lookup scripts.

The OLD URL:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

The New URL:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

Googler, John Mueller confirmed this on Google + and added a hint for Webmaster to look beyond PageRank.

So do not panic, your site’s PageRank has likely not gone to zero.