After last week's possible PageRank update where many blogs were affected, Google Guy Matt Cutts confirms the update in a letter to SearchEngineJournal.
" The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.
Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank."
Most people who were affected maintain that they have never bought or sold a link.
IMAGE SOURCE: SMALLBUSINESSSEM.COM
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Navneet Kaushal, CEO PageTraffic is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He is a featured author at Web Pro News, Search Newz, Promotionworld, Website Notes, DevWebPro, SEO Article and Web Help Now among many others.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What I want to know is why have our sites collecting inbound links from directories been hit and what should we do about it? They are free directory listings and I wouldn’t have thought the numbers were big enough to impact negatively (I’m talking roughly 80 inbound links here per site). The sites themselves are not involved in any form of link exchange, link buying or link selling. They are standard html business sites!
Janey,
You need to check the PR of those directories as well. If the PR of those directories has gone down, chances are your site PR will also take a dive. Also need to check other link back and their PR.
Nevertheless, a PR drop will not affect your site rankings. So nothing to panic I guess.