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The Ongoing PageRank Massacre Hits Big Players
Search industry watchdogs have noticed an ongoing radical slashing of many (former) darlings’ PR values. It’s happening across the board and has hit a slew of previously high PR rated sites such as Barry Swartz’s SE Round Table (down to PR4 from PR7 which, in PR terms, sure qualifies for a bloodbath), Autoblog (down to PR4 from PR6), Engadget (previously PR7, now PR5), the usual suspects such as John Chow (from PR6 down to PR4), Andy Beard’s own site (down to PR3 from PR5), industry leaders such as Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Guide (both down to PR4 from PR7) - and even the venerable Washington Post and good old Forbes have been hit dramatically, both dropping from PR7 to PR5.
Note that PageRank not being a linear algorithm,
For an approximate though fairly plausible quantitative overview of what this can mean in actual inlink power, check out this resource: PageRank Links Packages . This seems to have affected primarily what’s generally estimated to be about 1% of the pageranked sites on the Web.
Expectably, speculation is rife about all this relating to these sites offering (or possibly even buying) paid links.
Andy Beard isn’t so sure, however:
Some of the hits were certainly paid link or advertising without nofollow related.
However many of these sites do not fit that pattern, but they do fit another…
[…]
Many of the reputable sources that have received a penalty are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common. They have massive interlinking between their network sites.
He’s got a good summary overview worth a read here where you’ll find further resources quoted:
Digg Favorites Slapped By Google
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[ Keywords: PageRank, PR, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO ]
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