It’s the weekend before Halloween, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Google has been handing out both tricks and treats.
First came a strange — and unexplained — round of Google Toolbar PageRank penalties for some of the web’s most popular sites. There was plenty of speculation and gnashing of teeth as to why this happened. PageRank was declared dead by some; Others were quick with an “I told you so” regarding the practice of selling text link advertising, which offends The Google. Whatever the reason, these changes are generally agreed to be individually applied penalties, not the long-overdue refresh of toolbar rank neurotically expected by skittish site owners.
This morning, Darren at Problogger, one of the penalized sites, noted that his previous PageRank has been restored. He also tipped that his sources indicate that Google’s blogger slapdown was, indeed, a response to text link ad sales. Problogger hasn’t sold links in quite some time, and was likely popped by mistake.
Enough of the tricks — on to the treats. It would appear that Google PageRank update has actually begun. There have been a few false alarms over the past month or so, but I’m seeing changes on several of my sites. Lighter Footstep is up from PR4 to PR5. Its sister site, ecoTumble, went from unranked to PR5. So perhaps we’re off to the races. If so, PageRank changes should fan out across the web over the next several hours as Google’s data centers update their indices.
Whether Toolbar PageRank will mean much over the coming months is another question.
