Search engine optimization companies offer great opportunities for improving your online revenue streams. Unfortunately, not all SEO experts really know what they are doing. They seem to have success — when they have it — more by pure dumb luck than by any rational plan. Take the search optimization companies that provide Pagerank sculpting expertise. There is not only a complete lack of scientific support for this sham SEO tactic, it has been openly denounced by Google as a strategy that has hurt Websites’ visibility in the search index. So why do some SEO writers still claim that Pagerank sculpting works?

Obviously not everyone in the industry got the memo. But perhaps the people who conitinue to promote their Pagerank sculpting expertise simply don’t care about the harm they do to other people’s sites. After they get their money they are done, right? Or perhaps they really don’t know what they are doing. Sincere fools may be very loyal to a false scheme even though more reasonable people point out all its flaws. And some very reasonable people (besides Google) have long been pointing out the flaws in Pagerank sculpting. If you are working with an SEO company that advises the use of Pagerank sculpting, you need to get the real facts so you can make an informed decision about what to do.

Pagerank sculpting attempts to hide internal links from search engines. The justifications offered for this radical self-emasculation have varied from “those pages are not important” to “it helps increase your search visibility”. Pagerank sculpting SEOs are notorious for claiming that their tests and studies prove it works but they never publish the information that proves their claims. They always offer excuses. And they have yet to explain why their tests did not reveal changes that Google made two years ago to offset their efforts to sculpt Pagerank.

Google inadvertently inspired the PageRank sculpting movement by admitting at a conference that they had used the “rel=’nofollow’” link attribute to manage how Pagerank flows through YouTube, a site Google owns and operates. Google does not reveal how often it calculates Pagerank. Some people suggest that Pagerank may be recalculated on as frequent a basis as every day. Opponents of Pagerank sculpting have argued that since SEOs cannot follow changes in Pagerank they cannot reliably manage its flow. Both Google and fundamental SEOs say that proper Website design ensures there is no need to manage the flow of Pagerank. The YouTube example was a very special case. When Google noticed that Websites were removing valuable content from its search index by attempting to sculpt Pagerank, they changed how Pagerank is distributed to help those sites recover their lost visibility.

Even though Google finally told the SEO industry what had happened, some die-hard Pagerank sculpting SEOs continue to preach the false gospel. They are misleading Website operators into believing that Pagerank sculpting is a viable, effective search engine optimization strategy. In fact there is no positive outcome from attempting to sculpt your Pagerank. If you are doing business with an SEO firm that says you should be sculpting Pagerank, you probably want to find another SEO firm to do business with.