Posted on Sunday 28th of October 2007 at 08:30 in SEO

Google PageRank is now completely defunct after the war on link-farms

Last week Google rocked the boat with a slightly controversial update to the Pagerank listings. They normally do this once a quarter but this time they've mixed things up a little and heavily penalised sites who sell links.

Jamie Harrop wrote on JohnChow's site how this might mark the death of Pagerank but I find the whole thing slightly hypocritical.

What they've done is penalised sites that they believe to be selling text-links on their site; which I can sort of understand. Google never take kindly to users attempting to game their systems, so I can concede that buying text-links purely for the PageRank benefit is dishonest. But doesn't it seem slightly hypocritical that a company who runs one of the biggest advertising networks is specifically penalising users for running (what is essentially) an alternative network on their site?

What would Google have users do? Add a nofollow to their text links? Why don't we just stop linking to other sites at all, genuine or otherwise

I do wonder what Google wants users to do because there's no real clarity in their actions. Websites like Forbes.com have been penalised and that's just not really very smart.

What Google have done is shot themselves in the foot, they've killed PageRank
Because of their latest actions, PageRank no longer means anything at all. You can no longer use it as a metric for the importance of a website because it only reflects well on those who are not brokering text links.

No longer will people look at the PageRank of a site and think it means anything. Google have killed the social importance of their ranking algorithm and that's a shame. It's as worthwhile as an Alexa ranking now, completely defunct.


 

Enjoy this article? Why not subscribe to the full RSS feed?

blog comments powered by Disqus
Who is Seopher?

This is me. I'm a 27 year old web
developer, blogger and entrepreneur
from near London.

I've done work for people like
Samsung, Vauxhall, Cadburys,
Chevrolet, Center Parcs and TKMaxx.

I've been running this blog since 2006
and have reached more than
1.7 million readers

I'm passionate about the web, heavy metal, zombies and cats.

Seopher
Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Stay up to date with Seopher.com by subscribing to the RSS feed, either in your browser or subscribe via email using the form below

Updates by Email

By subscribing by email you’re also subscribing to the Seopher.com newsletter; a periodical email outlining new reviews, competitions and other subscriber-only content

  • ReviewMeReviewMe
  • buy 125x125 advert for $50 pcm
Want to give your product/website exposure?

Paying for a featured review is a great way to give your product, service or website exposure. For as little as $75 you can have a full review on the site forever.

Advertising Bundle! Review + Banner = $100

Buy a review and get a 125x125 advert half price. Your banner gets displayed on over 541 pages for a full month.