Everyone today is absolutely buzzing about the recent manual adjustment of some very high profile sites. It looks like Problogger.net and Copyblogger.com are just two of the sites hit with a two point drop in their ranks.

DailyBlogTips.com has a list of sites being effected in a post entitled, “Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?“.

One thing that I find odd about this whole thing is Google’s selection of sites as it doesn’t seem to just be high level sites, but a bunch of smaller ones as well, if you read the comments on various blogs, you will see it extends beyond the dozen or two blogs that are well known and rightfully concerned about this shift.

Many bloggers have also come up with theories pertaining to the reduction in PageRanks, and they are all spreading some fear, uncertainty and doubt around the blogosphere. It would be nice to know the real reason for these penalties, but I doubt Google will share that information.

I think this is the push that bloggers, and advertising systems needed to remove Google’s PageRank from their valuation systems. Now is the time to come up with a more complex formula to decide a sites advertising worth. Take their unique visitors, add in their RSS subscribers, look at their growth, and factor in a dozen other pieces of information, and you will come up with a system that hopefully, can’t easily be gamed.

Keep watch on your blogs PageRank, and the traffic that Google is sending you. Hopefully, this is just Google stirring the pot, and will settle down soon.

Originally posted on October 24, 2007 @ 4:08 pm