Normally, I hate wading in on topics that have been done to death, but on this occasion I feel the need to.

For those that don’t know, Google reduced the PageRank for a number sites, in many cases between two and three the toolbar scores/ranks/numbers. This has caused many people to write a heck of a lot of posts, and make me eternally thankful that Blogs use bits and bytes, not paper (I reckon an Amazon worth of trees would have been cut down otherwise).

The reason I want to wade in is simple: I don’t get it. What is the big deal? To me, it seems like everyone is surprised that the 800 lb gorilla in the corner, the one that has been making those threatening gestures, is doing anything. What, you mean those threats were real?

On top of that, the complaints have been strange. TBPR (ToolBar PageRank) has surely and deliberately been downgraded for many sites selling links, but there is little to no evidence that this has been accompanied by any real penalty, like traffic from Google falling.

I think that makes the solution Google implemented near perfect (from their perspective), as it targets the behavior they don’t like (link selling) without affecting anything real. Assuming that this has not affected real PageRank (or whatever link factors they now use internally), then really, it isn’t a big deal at all, and if the sites truly were not selling PageRank, then the reduction of said toolbar score should have zero affect on their sites and revenue.

Thing is, the anger is partly because all these sites were selling PageRank, knowingly or unknowingly, and Google’s removal of a few points of TBPR removes the premium paid on ads which parse PageRank, and this is/will hurt people were it hurts most: the hip pocket. To me, it is odd that, rather than thanking Google for not doing this a year ago, before the text link market was mature enough to pay good money for these links, which would have cost many sites many hundreds (thousands?) of dollars, they are upset that Google took away something they really didn’t have to sell in the first place, and 100% should not have relied upon in any revenue projections.

This situation really points out the follies of using a price determinate that belongs to a third party diametrically opposed to the behavior. relying on TBPR to price ads is kinda like Columbian drug bosses paying bonuses based upon drug enforcement data.

Lastly, there have been comments that nofollowing links is a good idea, and this enforces it. That is really kooky logic, as nofollowing links will only preserve TBPR. This is good so that what, you can then sell PageRank? If you do that you’ll lose your PageRank, in which case you’ll need to nofollow your links… on and on ad nauseam. The issue here is Google messing with your PageRank so you can’t sell it, which is the same as nofollow, in practice, anyway, so either approach is no score draw.

I want to express that I am deeply sorry for all the people who will suffer a drop in revenue as a result of this update. unfortunately the only constant in SEO is change, and if you rely upon advertising for a living, you need to make sure that your offer is compelling enough that this sort of situation won’t overly hurt you in the future.