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I didn't realise this. Is this really enforceable? One of the tools that Moz sells is their PR proxy, opensiteexplorer. I wonder how they're able to replicate PR without running afoul of this?

Also, is PR really the best, only way to do this? Seems like there are all kinds of better (more modern) signals we could use other than links, which were kind of the only game in town 10ish years ago.

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Moz uses the original pagerank research paper published before google incorporated. It is the original seed formula which google later modified and now claims it is hardly using.

Google pays Mozilla hundreds of millions a year to keep its default status in the search bar. Perhaps being able to use PR was part of the deal, or perhaps Mozilla is rich enough to pay royalties to Stanford. Or perhaps Google doesn't mind because Mozilla doesn't seek to directly compete with Google on text search.

Edit: Woops. So none of this is true.

Moz (formerly: SeoMoz) != Mozilla

Woops. Even so Google might not mind because the opensiteexplorer doesn't really compete with its core business.

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