Pagerank update – Is there an update going on in Google

A webmaster world member has reported pagerank change to his site. It seems his site has lost some pagerank and is now downgraded from PR5 to PR3. This looks like the New Google "Toolbar Pagerank Reduction" or TPR policy. Google introduced TPR around December 2007 to go after text link buyers and sellers. Text link advertising which passes pagerank is against Google's policy and they introduced TPR to tackle.



Lots of sites depend on Google toolbar pagerank to judge the value of a link apart of other things like number of backlinks in yahoo and Alexa ranking. Google toolbar pagerank is a very important when it comes to buying or selling these days. A PR9 link goes for around 800$ a month which is a huge amount for a link. I am sure this industry is not flourishing anymore due to the introduction of TPR. TPR reduced text link advertising to atleast 40 to 60% I would say. It sent bubbles in link publisher's stomach and many advertisers who were selling links for their site or buying links to their site panicked and removed all of them to make sure they don't loose any further trust in Google.



I know being part of a SEO company that this TPR affected lot of sites that didn't buy links but inside I appreciate Google for taking strong efforts to protect their Algorithm from being manipulated through text link advertising. I have always said Text link advertising is for the rich and famous for competitive keywords and it should stop or real quality sites that don't buy anchor text links will not get the exposure in Google that they deserve.

Forum discussion in webmasterworld.

Labels: Google, pagerank, pagerank update