After a fair bit of trawling around it seems that no-one has created (at at least published) a C# version of the Google PageRank script that is flying around the Internet in PHP form. For those of you who aren't aware of it's existence or purpose: the script automatically generates the necessary URL to find out a page's PR from Google.

In order to stop your average Joe from spamming this facility to bits they put some minor security on it. In order to retrieve the PR score from the query, a hashcode is generated and sent with it.

A few clever chaps noticed how this was being generated and made a PHP script to replicate the process, thus effectively allowing anyone with PHP knowledge to use the Google service.

Now since Google put the protection on the service, should we really be bypassing it?

I have seen many sites hosted in various countries that directly pull PR counts from Google. Most link directories and SEO tools sites have a variation of this in place. Is is legal to do so and does it violate their terms of service?

I don't at this stage know the answer to that so I am not releasing my code (which by the way is C# converted from PHP). My version is based upon the code attributed to the website: http://pagerank.gamesaga.net/

Once I have established the ligitimacy of the original PHP code – as it may have come about through reverse-engineering techniques – I will if possible provide a C# download version.

I also hope to include this facility in the new directory I am building in C#.