October Google Page Rank Update

A lot is being talked about the latest (October 2007) Google Update. Basically it appears that directories and sites selling links for Page Rank purposes have been penalised.

A lot of people are complaining that it's a major hit on their sites and I've heard of PR6 sites becoming PR3 – and I thought a drop or 1 was bad! It would appear that Google has targeted these sites selling links because links = "popularity" = increase page rank.

But some observers have pointed to sites that have been included that don't sell links and some that do sell links that haven't been included. On close investigation, some of those not selling have been found to use other popularity practices that are frowned upon.

So what could be happening? Well yes, fair enough if Google increases sites' Page Ranks by counting links in and people try to cheat this system them they are in their right to change their own internal ranking system. I agree with that – a lot of people don't. But how has Google identified sites selling links and hit so many so well? I'll take a look later this week!