Google Page Rank Update October 2007

They’re calling it the Google Page Rank Massacre: Google has, for the third time this month, been tweaking Page Ranks (PR) which has resulted in a lower Page Rank for many websites, including my own….

First, can I preface this discussion by saying I’m not a Page Rank junkie, and that I acknowledge Page Rank is not an indicator of how well your site is going to rank in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS).

But it is an interesting search marketing metric, and Google’s re-calculations are an indicator of what’s going on with its search ranking algorithm.

There’s alot of speculation, but the consensus appears to be:

1. The reduction in Page Rank is part of Google’s campaign against paid links and advertisement links. We may be talking cheap and nasty sites, but we’re also talking reputable sites, like the business magazine Forbes and the Washington Post both falling from PR7 to PR5.

2. More interestingly from my point of view, there is speculation that Google is slapping the Internet Marketing industry. I’m keeping good company; my fall from PR5 to PR4 is on par with both Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Guide falling from PR7 to PR4 (ouch).

I’d be very interested to hear of anybody else’s change in Page Rank; I’ve seen two clients have their PR go up. The Page Rank update appears to still be in progress, so keep an eye out…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.