Google’s PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?

Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Can’t say that we were not warned about this. Danny Sullivan wrote Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google over two weeks ago, and now it appears many sites are getting hit with a drop in PageRank.

Here is a list of some sites, including major publishers, who seem to have taken a hit overnight:

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

I am sure there are many more. Is this a direct hit against sites that sell paid links? That is too hard to say for sure.

There is a lot of buzz about this around the blogosphere. Here are some of the blog posts:

• Google Page Rank Crash Affects Dozens of Websites, www.labnol.org
• Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry, courtneytuttle.com
• 2nd Google PageRank in October 2007, Search Engine Roundtable
• PR Update Today – Many Sink, The SEO Scoop
• Digg Favorites Slapped By Google, andybeard.eu
• ProBlogger – PageRank 4, ProBlogger
• Thanks Google!, Copyblogger
• Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?, www.dailyblogtips.com
• Google PageRank As Good As Dead, Everybody Go To
• Google PR October 2007, danielctw.com
• Google attacks its competitors with PR meltdown, Syntagma Media
• If the SEOs Go, Does Google Go Too?, CenterNetworks
• Google Drops PageRank For Many Sites: Paid Links or New Algorithm?, Search Engine Journal
• The Great Google Bitch Slap, www.twentysteps.com
• PageRank Drops for Many Sites, Google Blogoscoped
• Google Pagerank Penalties A TextLinkAds Killer?, Jim Kukral
• Google uses the PageRank hammer, mathewingram.com
• Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms, TechCrunch
• Google PageRank Penalties For Network Blogs, technosailor.com
• Google hammers web sites, perhaps for paid links — who knows?, The Guardian
• The Ongoing PageRank Massacre Hits Big Players, Fantomaster
• Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy, mashable.com
• Time to pay the Page Rank Piper, TechWag
• Google PageRank Update and It’s All Down, John Chow dot Com
• Search: Is Google punishing dirty linkwhores?, Valleywag
• Is Google’s PageRank algorithm changing?, News.com
• The Randomness of Google PageRank, Dan Blank
• Google: Journalistopia as important as Washington Post, LA Times, Journalistopia
• At Last, Google Declares War on Parasitic Link Farms and Feed Scraping Blogs, B.L. Ochman’s weblog
• Taken Down a Peg (or 2) as Google Page Rank Drops for Many, the Constant Observer
• Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?, Crenk
• How’s Your PageRank? Mine’s Still an 8, Ryan Stewart
• Anyone Have Some Boots I Could Borrow?, Search Engine Guide
• Google’s PageRank Shuffle: Big Sites Say Bye-bye, Traffic, Silicon Alley Insider
• Is Google’s PageRank algorithm changing?, Webware