Well the dust is settling on a rather interesting time on the web. People have been virtually begging for a page rank update these last few months, and now it’s arrived, they’re probably wishing they hadn’t!

I’m going to attempt to avoid repeating everyone (rare, I know) as there’s plenty out there to read about the subject if you haven’t had enough already: Andy, after pretty much breaking the story, looks on the funny side, Maki asks us to stop talking about it now (sorry!) and Rhys just says bollocks to Google - good man.

Ups & Downs

Personally I haven’t suffered any great surprises, my random personal blog got a ‘naughty boy’ slap down to 3 and then a further downward step to 2 with the update, my photoblog went down to 3 which is probably more realistic to be honest - I launched it just before the last update earlier this year, and couldn’t believe it went to 4 in less than 30 days, so it’s obvious the PR algo’s were flawed even back then.

Amazingly, this blog has moved up to a 5, probably as a result of some decent inward links in the last few months, but just as likely to be random luck.

Who Cares?

Better people than me have said it, but I think it’s a fact that PR is now utterly meaningless. These hand-applied slaps before the main update immediately raise the issue of fairness, and relate to Andy’s point about a low visible PR being a slur upon his site - has Google penalised every single site that deserved it? Of course they haven’t.

So while a large number of decent sites, who dared to make a little money, are nursing slaps, there will be thousands of splogs, spammers and scammers out there all with PR putting them on a par or better with you and me. If you’re going to hand out penalties to websites outside of your normal algorithm, then you had better get everyone - or else you lose all relevance.

So as the penalties were not fairly applied, as far as I’m concerned PR no longer means a damn thing, and as for being an indication of the relative quality of a site, forget it. Throw in the ludicrous situation where the likes of Problogger were cut down to a four by some over-zealous Googledrone, before being cranked back up again after the howls of derision across the net, and you have one of the best foot-shots performed by a major company in the recent past.

Don’t Panic

Sound advice from the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, and worth noting. I personally couldn’t give a stuff what ‘Webmaster Guidelines’ Google come out with now, or in the future, and I’d advise you to take the same approach.

I know my blogs are not my main source of income, and therefore I can afford to see them disappear and not even care about it, but even if your blogs are your income, you cannot let one company have so much control over you. After the first PR hits, I saw several blogs in a huge panic, dropping advertisers, deleting links and running around in circles - they still lost more PR. Equally, people who don’t even monetize their blogs in any way also suffered huge hits, and as is usual with Google- they’re too arrogant to tell you why.

Paid posting and advertising have earnt me thousands of dollars in the last 11 months, and not one cent has come from Google - who are they to tell me or you what to do? I shall carry on as before, and to hell with them. There are other search engines.

So, how did you get on? Up, down or just don’t care?

Are you going to change what you do, for Google, or are you going to do it your way? I’d love to know.