Update: As we suspected yesterday, there has been an update to the Google pagerank toolbar. This is the first update to the publically displayed pagerank in nearly a year. Webtistic were the first to broadcast this update so keep an eye on this blog to stay ahead in the future.

Here at the Webtistic offices we have noticed early indicators that a pagerank toolbar update by Google may well be taking place as I type this.

We have recently noticed a change to the pagerank of our own site has over the past few hours and it may well show that a full update of the pagerank toolbar may well be underway.

Pagerank is the method with which Google determines how valuable a page is to the web community. There has been talk for some time over whether or not pagerank will be scrapped by Google as a reporting system, in favour of other methods of determining a page’s value.

If this is a major update to the system it shows that Google is interested in publicly displaying the pagerank structure at least for the time being.

We will offer a further update confirming our suspicions as we learn more.

In the old days when people still used to point at aeroplanes, proficient web developers were constantly optimising and measuring the loading speed of their landing pages. This was critical because, with dial-up internet connections, you could begin to load a webpage, then go for a quick cuppa, walk the hound, build a shed, and listen to Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety before the page would finish loading.

In short, the internet was all about optimising landing page speed, and if your website loaded quicker than your competitors website, it was you who would spend the day having grapes gently lowered into your mouth by semi-naked supermodels.

Then came broadband, and we all cared less about speed, and more about graphics, video, and Flash. Image size became less important and many a bad-habit was born into Arnold the web developer who was more swayed by adding 24 dancing iguanas onto his site than optimising for load speed. After all, this is broadband.

Well, let me take you back to basics for a second to give you some news. Google looks closely at landing page speed, and although it doesn’t penalise dancing iguanas, it does give additional Adwords quality score to landing pages that load quickly.

So, next time you are assessing how you can improve your quality score, try doing a speed test on your landing page. You may not realise it is loading slowly, but Google does.