I’ve spent way too much time following the PageRank Shakeup, and I’m done.  Here are my conclusions, and links to those of much smarter people around the web.

As you well know if you are an internet publisher, and especially if you are a link-seller or link-buyer, this past month Google lowered the PageRank of many sites, ranging from the huge to the insignificant.  PageRank is Google’s measure of a site’s authority.  While they’re wekre keeping quiet about their reasons (can you say FUD?), they recently confirmed that they’re targeting sites that sell links.  These sites have seen their PageRank fall as much as 3 or 4 points.  The interesting thing is that traffic, search engine rankings, and revenue haven’t changed.  Yet.

And the reactions from around the web couldn’t be more varied, or amusing.   The best play-by-play update out there came from Andy Beard, and the most coherent opinions out there are those of Aaron Wall, Darren Rowse, and  Yaro Starak.  The basic conclusions are:

• At the most basic level, text links are valuable mostly because of search engine algorithms,  so buying and selling (low relevancy) links is a form of spam.


• PageRank is no longer really relevant to results placements, yet.  If you buy or sell links there’s still a chance of your traffic being penalized.


• The market for text links is going to go underground and heat up, as anything does when it becomes “illegal."  It will be riskier and more lucrative.

On some level, I was never too comfortable selling links because it meant I could be sending my visitors to sites that I didn’t particularly like.  Ultimately, your sites should focus above all on serving your visitors.

But my desire to monetize my sites won out, and I began selling paid links.  I figured they were at least relevant, they were clearly marked as Sponsored Links, and the fixed monthly income was nice.

This latest PageRank update made me reconsider though.  The truth is that most of my traffic comes from Google, and I need to stay in its good graces.  (Heck, most of my income comes from them too...way to diversify)  Ultimately, I think it will also be better for my visitors.

So yesterday I cancelled or nofollowed all my paid links, and sent a request to be reconsidered to Google, via their webmaster central.  Let’s see what happens.

(Oh, and thanks to &y for the spanking.)

I’ve spent most of today reading about and absorbing Google’s move last month to correct to whack the PageRank of link sellers, link buyers, and site networks.  It’s interesting to read the cacophony of opinions and to watch Google remain silent about its move for now.

I’ve come to some definite realizations, and the upshot is that I will be changing (slightly) how I run things around here.  But crisis backwards spells opportunity (ok, not really) and I think some sites will come out of this much better positioned than they were before.  For now, I leave you with this hilarious bit of commentary and I plan to have some more well thought out conclusions on Monday.