Matt Cuts calls himself "the head of the webspam team" at Google, and he frequently interacts with most of Google's users on Twitter.

A few days ago, he sent out a Tweet in response to Niels Bosch's question about PageRank updates happening before 2014. "I would be surprised if that happened," he said.

However, despite this claim, on Dec. 6 PageRank updated again.

According to the UK's own HoboWeb, Google PageRank updates approximately every three months or so. As they explain, a high Google PageRank can lead to higher placements in Google searches, but these numbers can be very easily manipulated. In addition, too much manipulation of these numbers can actually work against websites, because PageRank goes according to the number of "quality sites" (that is, sites that have a high PageRank, or sites that are firmly established).

"A page probably accrues real Pagerank within hours - perhaps instantly in 2013 - and Toolbar Pagerank updates every 3 or so months. The most common reason for a drop in Toolbar Pagerank is simply your website is receiving less Pagerank via the links it has pointing to it from other sites. Pagerank can also go down as the result of a penalty. If you have been penalized there may be a notice in Google Webmaster Tools," explains HoboWeb.

Not all tech-heads hold creedence to the importance of PageRank, however; sites such as SearchEngineLand give little creedence to PageRank, especially the PageRank toolbar, which they have officially declared "dead."

"Over the years, support for PageRank has dropped. Google never offered a Google Toolbar for Chrome or any add-on to show PageRank values. Google dropped the Google Toolbar for Firefox in June 2011. Internet Explorer is the last browser to still have a PageRank display offered by Google, but the data that flows into that display hasn't been updated for over six months," reports the site.