At least now I know what it is. Back when all this broke, I wrote Google PageRank - what’s that?, because I didn’t have a clue.

Anyhow, nice article, Dan. (I thought about writing a short post about it and linking to yours, but I’ve already done at least one post today.)

It will be very interesting to see where the “Big G” goes from here. I certainly agree that many people who respected Google in the past–including some fairly influential people–have become extremely disillusioned by the current PR fiasco. And this cannot bode well for Google.

Jeanne

Google used to focus on its customers; now, its focus is on its shareholders.

I think with lots of businesses, you can see patterns emerge. Established businesses will make foolish mistakes that allow upstarts to grow and take their place. Then, those upstarts become established and, for whatever reason, believe they are acting differently when they begin to make the same mistakes the businesses they uprooted made. I suppose I am still in a minority, but I see Google making those mistakes, and I see the beginnings of its fall.

So, sites are quite right in ceasing to use Google’s PageRank to determine a quality blog.

Think about it. Advertisers want the most bang for their buck, right? It used to be that PageRank was a good measure of the popularity of a site. Perhaps not the most accurate, but a reasonable estimation. It also gave some indication of quality.

What does PageRank mean now? Now it has become just a tool that Google uses to bully website owners. If a site had its PageRank lowered because it sold links, then PageRank has become meaningless. They lost PageRank not because their quality decreased, not because their popularity decreased, but because Google doesn’t like webmasters selling links.

If it were the other way around, if Google were punishing sites that bought links rather than “earned” links, that may be a different matter entirely. But, if Google is penalizing sites for selling links, they are punishing the wrong people. Think about it. If Google can recognize a paid link, then it can recognize those sites that are buying links. But, instead of punishing those sites, they chose instead to punish the sellers. Could it be because the sellers are Google’s competitors in the online advertising world? Hmmm? “Do no evil” is something that Google has long since tossed in the trash bin.

You’re right, if people start focusing more on quality content, that will be a good thing. But, people will still continue to focus on increasing traffic, and they will do that by buying links. It was mentioned on another blog that, if a good number of bloggers decide to stop selling links, that will mean that those that continue to sell links can charge more because of decreased supply.

Quality content is important. Buying and exchanging links will continue to be important too. PageRank’s importance is quickly declining.