What On Earth Is Going On With The Latest Google PageRank Update?

October 24th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

It’s been a very long time since I’ve written a post while I’m at work, but Andy Beard just pinged me about a story he’d just posted, and I just had to write something I’m so stunned by the post.

Over the last couple of weeks, Google has apparently been penalising sites that have been selling text links by reducing their PageRank, although there’s been no official word from Google to confirm this. In the latest move, a number of sites including poor old Andy’s have been hit by another wave of Page Rank reductions.

I know you’ll be as stunned as me when you see how many A-list sites have had significant reductions in their Page Ranks:

A few search and money related sites as examples

There are some massive sites in this list. I’m convinced that it can’t be just because they are selling text links, as I’m sure that the number of text links that a site like autoblog might have sold, wouldn’t warrant a Page Rank reduction from 6 to 4.

Andy has hypothesised that the reductions might be because the reductions are because the sites are part of blog networks i.e. are interlinking and passing on Page Rank to non-related sites.

Here are the Google guidelines

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

If this is true, then does this mean bloggers now have to be careful about what sites they include in their blogrolls? I’m starting to think yes, as how can Google tell if a link has been paid for or not? I think the rule of thumb now should be, if the link is unrelated in any shape or form to your site’s core topic, then don’t link to it unless you use nofollow. Clearly other ‘blogs’ won’t be treated as being relevant any more.

I wonder what the policy will be about other sidebar content like BlogRush widgets, various other buttons & badges, site meters etc? Do bloggers now have to frantically spend this evening adding nofollow to everything?

It seems PageRank is no longer a measure of how relevant your site is (was it ever?), it’s now a measure of how well you abide by Google’s rules.

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About the Author

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Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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  1. #30

    Pingback by Google整顿网络 PR爆跌 | JooIT on 25 October 2007:

    [...] 前阶段炒得沸沸扬扬的Google Pagerank[注释1] 大调整一说法，目前 也逐渐清晰了。说法是这样的：有些知情者说Google发现PR作弊，付费链接的增多威胁到Google PR的权威性 (ps：PR是Google最早成名作品,目前为止，甚至还没有人能够完全搞清PR的完整算法) Google将对PR做一些调整。具体调整有些说，将PR取消 —我说 “不可能”！有些人说，惩罚付费链接，也有人说“不可能”，其原因就在于Google没有办法知道别人是否对你的链接付费。然而，这一天到来了：早上起床打开iGoogle就看到满天的喊冤和对Google PR的揣测…. 这里，这里，这里，这里，这里，这里，这里，这里，还有这里….. [...]

  2. #29

    Comment by Everton on 25 October 2007:

    Google must love it that we spend all day talking about what we think they do, so they can do the exact opposite!

  3. #28

    Pingback by Post-Buzz: Money Buzz Online. » Blog Archive » Hello, my name is Google. on 25 October 2007:

    [...] you blame me? Because of that pagerank? Oh please… I’m not take all of your pagerank. Just a “little bit” of [...]

  4. #27

    Comment by Harishankar on 25 October 2007:

    ok, now another prediction… Bunch of sites that interlink among themselves where everyone sell links, google has a new algo to find these sites and measure these 2 factors and penalize them or make their interlinking invalid….

  5. #26

    Comment by Harishankar on 25 October 2007:

    But this time, even blogs that are particularly pointing on specific keyword are also hit… might be google is not happy with people who sell links to be simple…

  6. #25

    Comment by Harishankar on 25 October 2007:

    With a little research I did on few sites I usually read, I came to a conclusion like this: Sites that have wide spread content with no common point of target, and having bunch of irrelevant links on their pages, are moved down in PR. To make it simple blogs which are specific to a particular topic, say about mobile games or say its about mobile phones are not suffering but sites like this blog which have each page targeting different keywords suffer.

  7. #24

    Comment by Joseph Plazo on 25 October 2007:

    Those blogs dropping to PR4’s not so bad. I fell to PR4 on the first quarter PR update this year, but my search engine ranking positions for the critical keywords I target increased!

    There seems to be little correlation between PR and SERPs these days.

    Maybe they should roll out trustrank in force and ditch PR?

  8. #23

    Comment by Marcus the Lover on 25 October 2007:

    I can confirm this. More than half in my blogging community dropped from PR 4 or 5 to PR 2 to 3. This is simply because we espouse text-link-ads and paid links.

    One of them even runs a paid subdirectory like iwebtool on his blog. His site lost PR for the same reason.

    I’m planning to stop advertisng TLA and paid advertising by next week.

  9. #22

    Comment by Dave Starr on 25 October 2007:

    This will be a rather interesting puzzle over the next few days. Of particular interest are Darren’s comments a few hours back. Problogger.net is arguably at the top of nearly every list … and they don’t sell links or use TLA, TNX, BlogRush or whatever the current “don’t do” of the day is. He drops to 4. John Chow, a very close second to ProBlogger by many measurements … and who, by his own self description is evil … he’ll sell anything that isn’t nailed down … also drops to a “4″. The logic, if there is any, escapes me.

    In reality, if you aren’t making a career out of TLA is, who cares. I have a PR 2 blog that I am reviving from the near dead. What difference does PR mean to me?

    The fact that I have one of my desired search terms on the front page of the SERPs definitely means something, though. SERPS results certainly aren’t driven by PR as some seem to think, I see plenty sites with higher PR who rank below me for my term.

  10. #21

    Comment by Micah on 25 October 2007:

    So far, it doesn’t look like the PR drop has dropped traffic much, if at all. (for the blogs I can check their traffic anyway). Just don’t be linking to any shady sites or linkfarms…or be getting any links from them either. Other than that, just keep on pumping out good posts, and you should be fine.

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