Google PageRank update-- PR losses for high-profile sites

The "hot" news and topic for discussion in the SEO community for the past two days is the Google PageRank loss for some very high profile sites, including www.Forbes.com and www.washingtonpost.com. For a bigger list, check out this blog post by Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz.

There are a number of very good reviews out there on why there has been a drastic drop in PR for some of these sites; the main thinking is that it is Google's penalty for selling text links. Rich Ord has categorized the reactions into four categories--including the "Google is Justified" scool of thought to the "Google is Out of Control". Read his post here.

A move like this from Google had been expected sooner rather than later, even since it came down heavily on several pay-for-inclusion directory sites in the recent past. If the intent is to prevent link selling and thus prevent artificial boosting of link popularity, it remains to be seen how successful Google will be.

My take on this is this: Irresspective of what happens with the contentious green bar on the Google toolbar [there is speculation that it could be a thing of the past soon], as long as "in-bound links" to a website or page is known to be a factor [and a key factor at that] affecting rankings in search results, there will continue to be link buying / link selling / link exchange / some form of "link popularity manipulation". There will be a demand for generating in-bound links; and there will be "creative" suppliers to meet that demand.

I believe the weightage that links have in determining relevance and consequently, rankings, has to come down / will come down at some stage; this change will have to come from the search engines, not users [I mention users broadly here--- marketers, publishers / link selllers, and searchers].

The importance of search marketng for small businesses

I am basing this post on a recent news item from Hitwise that points out how smaller retailers drive a higher percentage of their overall traffic from search engines than the bigger retailers.

It is not exactly eye-popping news: that is exactly what most people would expect. Even though the story was about retailers [and many of the "smaller" retailers in Internet Retailer's Top 500 list are bigger than the average small business], the facts could apply to any business.

Small businesses (SMBs) have a lot less budget to spend on other forms of marketing and try to diversify their traffic stream. Hence their reliance on search marketing. On the other hand, larger companies have the wherewithal to spend on print advertising, e-mail marketing, outdoor advertising, affiliate marketing and what not. Depending on the nature of their business, they may also be able to run cost =effective affiliate marketing programs by attracting good affiliates. Therefore, the share of traffic from search engines is bound to be lower [in absolute traffic numbers, of course, one would expect the bigger players to significantly higher traffic].

The implication is for small businesses: search marketing works and can be very effective for both top line & bottom line. Try it not only if you are constrained by budgets or other resources but also because you could be losing out on a lot of relevant traffic to your website. Why leave money on the table, especially when you have a lot of control on what you are going to have to spend?