For the third time in a month, Google has updated the PageRanks of many blogs, and it seems to do nothing but add more confusion.

As we discussed last week, Google was in the process of updating their PageRanks system, and it seemed that they were penalizing sites that included paid links.

For those who don’t understand the paid links situation, it is a form of advertising where you place a link inside the normal text in an attempt to trick search engines to feel it is a natural link,  These are done with a bit of code so the advertiser knows they worked.

The fact that Google seems to be taking a dim view of this act has now been confirmed in an email to Search Engine Journal :

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

This could have a major effect on blogs who sell advertising to more than just text link users.  Many sites can charge more for their advertising based on how high their PageRank is.  The lower the rank, the less income for them.

Considering that Google normally updates the rankings once every three months, this number of updates in a row just may be a result of shaking bugs out of the system.  Some sites that had previously been downgraded have since gone back up, but there is guarantee that this will continue to be the case.

Related:

Entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 7:59 pm under Google.

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
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