Google Page Rank Hits Thousands Of Sites

Many webmasters woke up to lower Page Rank and fallen rankings this morning as Google does another PR update. Over the weekend Google updated its Page Rank toolbar meter. Usually this doesn’t effect rankings simultaneously, but this update is different! Some websites that lost PR also lost substantial placement as well. As I was checking my client’s rankings after the update, I noticed quite a few competitors’ sites had fallen. Looking at their PR confirmed that this time Google followed through with it’s threat against sites selling links, and not only lowered Page Rank, but rankings as well.

Websites that have quality unique content were the beneficiaries of updated Page Rank on their newer content. Some WordPress pages that I created 3 weeks ago now have a 4 PR. This is the fastest update I have seen in years. If Google continues to make quick Page Rank updates that coincide with changes in the index, then they will go back to being the most relevant search engine. I have been complaining for a while about Google’s watered down results, but this could be a new turn towards Google being able to get spammers and scrapers out of the top results.

Duplicate content and ad only sites that steal content are one of the top 10 Internet Plagues, and the one that irks me the most. We provide only unique and researched content for our clients and there is nothing worse than someone stealing your content and making money off of it with ads. Hopefully these sites will fall all the way out of Google!