Thousands of businesses brokering in paid-links received a rude surprise this week as Google appears to have lowered the Pagerank scores applied to their sites.
About six months ago Google’s Quality Czar, Matt Cutts told the SEO/SEM community that Google was going to devalue the weight of paid-links, causing a swell of controversy in SEO/SEM circles. On Wednesday, the engine took action by decreasing the Pagerank of thousands of sites known to trade in links. Some of the sites include the Washington Post, Forbes.com and Search Engine Journal.
Pagerank, as understood by those working on the outside of Google is reflected in a tiny green section of the Google Toolbar rating the worth of individual web documents on a scale of 1 – 10. Most sites fall within the 2 – 5 range with “authority” sites earning Pagerank values of 6 – 8. It is very rare to see 9’s and even rarer to see a Pagerank value of 10.
In reality, the visible Pagerank displayed in the Google toolbar has been considered “for entertainment purposes only” by most Sr. SEOs for years. Google does not rank sites on a scale from 1 – 10 and what is shown by the toolbar is not a true reflection of Google’s evaluation of a site or a document. When it comes to buying and selling links however, the visible Pagerank represents an easily marketable measurement and is thus sold as such.
As the thinking goes, the higher the visible Pagerank, the more “trustworthy” the document in Google’s estimation. The more trustworthy a document or site is, the higher the value of a link from that document or site. Because Google’s ranking formulas are heavily influenced by links, a well placed link on a site with a high Pagerank can be worth a fair bit of money. Hence the business of buying and selling links.
Earlier this month in an article at Forbes.com, Text-Link Brokers CEO Jarrod Hunt said his clients would pay between $15 and $1000 per month for well placed links. For the most part, they have been able to do so with relative impunity. “These paid links can’t be detected by people, so how could they possibly be detected by an algorithm?”, Jarrod was quoted saying.
Chances are Jarrod is correct, at least when it comes to how his business does business. In many other cases however Google is able to perceive patterns in the application of links to documents in its index and discern whether those links should be given weight or not. The timing of placement, context between documents and number of new links in a given time period are ways Google can perceive the “intent” of each new link.
What Google giveth, Google can easily take away though how it makes the decision on which sites were to have their visible Pagerank devalued is known only within Google.
That fact could become an issue if what appears to be a direct Pagerank shuffle aimed paid-link vendors cascades into larger-scale shifts in the SERPs.
This issue is not going to be cleared up or rectified because Google has messed with the method of measurement. As the dust dies down and people become accustomed to the potentiality of punitive handiwork from Cutts and co., Google should publish the criteria by which it made the decision to devalue the visible Pagerank of so many sites. It should also refine and clarify its policy on buying and selling links, if only because so many independent websites rely on the revenues generated from making the space available on their pages.
Though it is a public company Google is also one of the primary means of communication for businesses operating online. Its popularity makes it a virtual institution, a foundation of the online economy. Economic reliance on any given institution requires that institution respond to the effects of its own actions on the population it serves, especially if part of that population is incapable of policing its own practices. Otherwise that institution is merely lashing out using an ugly big stick.
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