Google Pimp Smacks Authority Sites

As frequent readers of this blog know, there’s no love lost between Google and myself. In my opinion Google has two sets of standards for almost everything they do, kowtowing to big sites, publishers, ad buyers, whatever and pissing all over the little guys. Well, today it appears Google has grown bored with beating on the little guys and pimp smacked a few of the biggest names on the net. Apparently the big G is in the middle of updating the PageRank that is displayed (the little green bars we’ve all come to know and loathe) and dropped several authority sites.

According to Andy Beard the list is as follows:

http://www.autoblog.com/ from a PR6 to a PR4
http://www.engadget.com/ from a PR7 PR5
http://www.problogger.net/ from a PR6 PR4
http://www.copyblogger.com/ from a PR6 PR4
http://www.joystiq.com/ from a PR6 PR4
http://www.tuaw.com/ from a PR6 PR4
http://www.searchengineguide.com from a PR7 PR4
http://www.searchenginejournal.com from a PR7 PR4
http://www.johnchow.com from a PR6 PR4
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ from a PR6 PR3
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ from a PR6 PR4
http://andybeard.eu from a PR5 PR3
http://www.seroundtable.com/ from a PR7 PR4
http://www.blogherald.com/ from a PR6 PR4
www.Forbes.com from a PR7 PR5
http://www.sfgate.com from a PR7 PR5
www.washingtonpost.com from a PR7 PR5

Now I don’t know about you but I think that’s a pretty impressive list. Darren Rowse (aka Problogger) has already noticed and written about the sudden drop for his site, and I would imagine it’s only a matter of minutes before this floods across the net, especially search related blogs like this one. Granted, this could simply be a temporary screw up (which Google is prone to despite having more PHD’s working for them than they know what to do with) or it could be a continuation of their FUD tactics in their war on paid links. Whatever the case, Google just earned themselves a lot of publicity. I’ve mentioned to several people that if Google really wanted to mess with the paid link market they’d just get rid of visible PR all together. However, by doing whatever the hell it is they’ve just done, they are going to bring an incredible amount of unwanted negative publicity on themselves. You’ve got some of the biggest sites on the web on that list and I don’t think they are going to be any to pleased about being down graded. I mean at this point SEOrefugee.com has a higher page rank than both Problogger and CopyBlogger. Does that make sense to you? Of course not!

So, once again Google has stepped in it. Unfortunately for them, this one comes at a time when more and more people are becoming disenchanted with the large monopoly and being exposed to the truth. When you have only a few voices such as Aaron Wall, Michael Gray, or Gevil.org shouting it’s easy for people to ignore or brand us as zealots. When you then throw in the likes of the sites on this list, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot. Someone send a pizza or something over to the boys and girls in the ‘plex, I’m guessing it’s going to be a long day for a few of them.