It seems Google has delivered a virtual slap in the face to many top blogs this week, cutting up to 3 points of their PageRank.

Popular sites like Engadget and Autoblog have seen reductions of 2 PR points, while some SEO focussed blogs like Search Engine Journal have seen drops of three points.

The speculation is that these sites fall into one of two categories:

  • Sites caught selling text links
  • Sites part of blog networks which include massive interlinking

It’s been known for some time that Google frowns on the process of selling text links because of the way it can interfere with their PageRank algorithms, and the same goes for blog networks which link to each other in order to promote their lower traffic sites.

But the worrying thing is, these are highly respected sites that provide useful content, and they’ve been reduced to the status of spam farms by Google. The problem doesn’t lie with the sites being penalised, it lies in Google’s own algorithm that’s unable to cope with perfectly legitimate linking techniques. So instead of fix their algorithm, Google has chosen to make an example of some high profile sites.

Of course, it’s debatable just how important PageRank is these days, and if these drops will actually affect search engine traffic. But now would probably be a good time to check your own PageRank and keep an eye on it.

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