A collective moan rumbled through many of the webmaster forums earlier this month when the Big G started slashing page rank.  It seemed for most websites the trend was toward lower PR ranther than any bumps.  A lot of prominent PR7 and PR6 sites tumbles 2 or 3 notches.

To me it seemed like a natural realignment.  Prior to spring of 2006 PageRank seemed a lot harder to come by.  Earning a PR4 really gave a webmaster a sense of pride and accomplishment.  Then in the spring of 2006 a major PR update pushed many sites to new highs, some without merit.  I know because I had a few sites that made PR5 with very few backlinks.  The value of PR really dropped then.

Well, just when we thought the aftermath was over, here comes another PR adjustment in the same month!  Many sites, including this one, took a second dip in their PageRank.  Where will it end?

 The trend for Google here really seems to be aimed at paid links.  It has been a while that they have been asking us to report instances of paid link via their webmasters control panel.  Now their algorithym is squarely targeted at discounting paid links.