Google Pagerank

There is a buzz in the search engine world regarding the recent Google PageRank drops. I would like to clarify some things for the benefit of all the webmasters out there.

Fact 1:

The PageRank that is displayed in the toolbar is not the one Google uses for its internal purposes. The PageRank displayed in the tool bar is updated infrequently and may be several weeks old, whereas the one Google uses internally is updated throughout the day as Google finds/drops the links to a site constantly.

Fact 2:

PageRank is not in direct proportion to the search traffic referred by Google. We have seen reports that sites have recieved higher Google search traffic irrespective of their PageRank fluctuations.

Fact 3:

This move by Google is to discourage the sites selling the links. Since sites which buy links look at the PageRank of the selling site to decide the authority/popularity of the site, the drop in the PageRank will clearly drive those sites away from buying links from the site.

A couple of months before, Google added the paid link report tool to allow webmasters to inform Google about sites that are buying or selling links. Since then, we have been hearing warnings about Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google. Yesterday, Google engineer Matt Cutts has confirmed, "The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site."

Concluding Thoughts:

As a white-hat search engine optimization firm, our team at Digital Brand Expressions never recommends buying paid links. For our clients and many other webmasters who adhere to white-hat search engine optimization practices, Google's recent move will not have a negative effect.