Google Slaps Webmasters Around Using PageRank

October 24, 2007

There has been a lot of talk about Google going after paid links. In other words, if you sell links on your page, Google has a problem with you now. Well, it also appears as if Google is in the process of updating PageRanks. And a lot of blogs are all of a sudden finding that their pagerank has decreased.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger is reporting that his pagerank dropped from 6 to 4 while he isn’t selling any links. Darren is running sponsor banners on the right side of his page, but I also do the same over at PC Mechanic. So far I am not noticing a PR change on any of my sites. WebbyOnline is at 4, BUZZscreen (newly re-launched) is at 4, and PCMech is at 5.

Speculation abounds on the reason. Are they penalizing paid links? Or are we seeing some change in the Google algorithm?

And only Google can spark this much conversation and speculation, and you can get a small sample of that here:

Thanks Google!, Copyblogger
Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?, www.dailyblogtips.com
Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy, mashable.com
The Randomness of Google PageRank, Dan Blank
Google PageRank Update and It’s All Down, John Chow dot Com

So, I’ll just keep an eye on it. While I know PageRank doesn’t really mean that much, all webmasters (including myself) do use it as a kind of benchmark in some cases. Nobody likes to see their PageRank drop, but hey, it happens. You’re more or less at the whim of Google in that regard.

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