Dude, where's my PageRank?

In various degrees, all webmasters are concerned about their PageRank, from obsessing with checking the PageRank hourly and doing everything possible to increase it, to developing testbeds in hopes of understanding what is the algorithm behind the PageRank.

As you might be aware, very recently a powerful slap was given by Google to a great number of websites, especially to the ones with a PageRank of 5 or more. The reason behind the slap has become obvious to webmasters, given Google's recent criticism on the matter: the selling of links. Since this latest grand slap of Google, it has become clear that the PageRank is manipulated by humans, scouting the Internet for websites with a PageRank of 5 or higher and content oriented, which are the most likely to be selling links.

The victims of Google's latest slap affected the big names too, including WashingtonPost.com, Forbes.com, Engadget.com and SFGate.com. Some of these websites regained their original PageRank after proving to Google that they are not selling links, however most of them are still holding a PageRank of 5 or 4, a huge drop from their original PageRank 8.
 

Why you shouldn't be worried

If you are selling links, you might as well keep honoring your deals with the link buyers, since the only advantage of regaining your original PageRank is to maintain the appearances of a well known website. All webmasters that had this sudden drop in PageRank at the end of October caused by Google's slap reported no loss in traffic or search engine ranking as a result. Thus, if you were given a PageRank of 3 down from 6, even though all the data centers report a 3, you are still being calculated as a 6 in the search engine results rankings. Furthermore, the PageRank is only a small factor that influences your ranking in the search results, unlike what many may believe.

PageRank is now what Google wants it to be

You may think that with this recent update Google really blew it, given how many webmasters it angered and how the word of a new evil Google spreads around the blogosphere. The fact is Google always wanted the PageRank to be given less credit and even considered removing it from public view, and the day Google slapped the link sellers is the day we all started carring less about it, now that the blog of average Joe has the same PageRank as Forbes.com.