Google Boost

Today Google took a big bite out of paid links on sites. This manual big-brotherism of PageRank is indeed confusing - does it render Googlebot moot?

To illustrate what this did to some website’s PageRanks - list courtesy http://searchengineland.com/071024-093938.php

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6
• http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5
• http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.searchengineguide.com/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.johnchow.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 to PR3
• http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 to PR4
• http://andybeard.eu/ PR5 to PR3
• http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 to PR4
• http://www.blogherald.com/ PR6 to PR4

What does this imply, that people and businesses that stand to profit are going to manually override the system in their favor? Or does this mean that Google is shutting down one market in order to create a new one? Are irrelevant text links on web pages with high page ranks a thing of the past?

Let’s look at the bigger picture.

This is $675 and 82 cents a share talking - nothing less. Never mind the little guys who were clever enough to goose the system in their favor - they are just an afterthought, an innocent casualty of a larger motive. After all folks - the money’s gotten so big so quickly that you have to question who - or what - is in control.

I see the gradual migration from PageRank to TrustRank taking place. Perhaps Google, in its inevitable march towards creating their own library like Mr. Atoz, is suffering some AI problems that only a human can figure out. Despite the thousands of scripts bouncing between Google’s inexpensive infrastructure - that are feverishly trying to be in essence a Librarian - they can’t do one thing - think for themselves.