Google is considering removing PageRank from its toolbar, reports Search Engine Journal. PageRank's at-a-glance determination of a site's importance has been thought indispensable to the SEO efforts of many a short-cutting consultant.

By giving pages a rank between 1 and 10, PageRank has become a shorthand means of determining the "importance" of a site per Google's algorithm.

Strong sites featuring relevant, information-rich and frequently-updated content, for example, typically bear a rank of 5-7. Yahoo's homepage has a PageRank of 10.

Google has said outdated numbers, bug-ridden updates and more are behind the impetus to drop PageRank from the Google Toolbar. The data will still exist, but simply not appear to Toolbar users.

Google also cites the use of PageRank as an incentive to trade links - a practice frowned-upon by Google - as more as people try to raise site scores.

Google's Adam Lasnk is asking people for input on how to make PageRank more useful. These include being useful to webmasters and non-webmasters alike.

PageRank plays a large role in search engine marketing as webmasters look to boost rankings in order to show up higher in search results.