PageRank Sucks!

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Okay, so we all know that Google “Ranks” websites on a scale of 0-10 with 10 being the best and 0 meaning you have not been indexed by Google or have no juice (links) from other websites. But instead of people gaining a higher rank or maintaining their current Page Rank (after the quarterly update), we have noticed that most major blogs and websites have seen a decrease (some by a big margin) in their Google Page Rank.

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Yes, SweetHacks Technology Blog currently has a PR of 0 but we where predicted a 3/4 in the upcoming update however, with the heavy changes currently taking place at Google head quarters I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a new PR of -3!

Noticeable Changes:

Now the list goes on and on and on so I have limited them but I think you get the idea of whats going on right now. Remember how I said theres 16k workers over at google? Well, now we know why there are so many!

Why Are Google Doing This?

Who better to ask rather than Google Themselves?

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

There you have it, do NOT sell links! If you are then make sure you put the “no-follow” attribute to make sure none of your google (pagerank) juice is not passed on. However, now a days people only buy links for SEO/SERP (google pagerank juice and search engine rank positions) so the no-follow kinda kills the whole idea of a text link sale.

The move by Google could well cause many smaller blog networks, including a number with funding, to close given their heavy reliance on text link ads and related sales that depend on strong Google page ranks for each site. Although traffic alone can and does sell ads on bigger sites, a drop from say PR7 to PR4 in one example makes the ad sell that much more difficult, particularly on blogs with little traffic. I’d suggest that the Deadpool will soon see a number of new entrants….Techcrunch

So my bet is, if PageRank is being tweaked and manipulated then we may have a new system on our hands….Trustrank anyone?

The TrustRank method calls for selecting a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once the reputable seed pages are manually identified, a crawl extending outward from the seed set seeks out similarly reliable and trustworthy pages. TrustRank’s reliability diminishes as documents become further removed from the seed set.