There’s a Google PageRank update taking place, that seems to be impacting sites that’re engaged into selling links. Here is a list of some of the major sites ‘hit’ by the PageRank update:

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.blogherald.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6
• http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.searchengineguide.com/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.johnchow.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://andybeard.eu/ PR5 to PR3
• http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 to PR4

Newspaper and blog networks which use a lot of intralinking, seem to have been hit hard; b5media, Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker. One could say that paid linking led to the decrease in PageRank for these sites, but not all of these sites use paid linking as a source of revenue.

Loren tried to reasons —So, why the decrease? There’re many reasons due to which Google may be changing PageRank.

• Paid Linking: The easy excuse is that they’re targeting paid links, but not all sites which experienced the drop sell or buy links.
• Mass Linking: Do we link out to too many sites via Blog Rolls? Does Linkbait just result in TOO MANY links, even if they are natural. Do blog networks use influential linking to their advantage? I think PageRank has been spread too thin and Google is changing its PageRank formula to address the mass publishing which has taken place over the past 2 years.
• Devalue PageRank: PageRank is seen by many as the end all value of a web site. Our PageRank dropped but we are receiving more Google search traffic than ever. PageRank does not define site rankings in Google or traffic and it should not be mistaken as so.
• Kill the Paid Link Market: If Paid Linking houses use PageRank as a pricing metric, then eliminating or devaluing PageRank will devalue paid linking

Google, SEO, Link, Paidlink, PageRank, SiteRank, Site Rank, Blog Rank, Ranking