Google adding value back to PR

As most webmasters are aware Google recently carried out its long overdue PR update. Most website owners witnessed very little change to their sites ranking, that said a small band of directory owners have seen a dramatic cut in their rankings. Two noticeable changes I found were on two heavyweights in the directory sector; Alive Directory and Bigweblinks, both sites were cut from a PR of 7 to 4. I imagine some people are very unhappy having paid a small fortune for a homepage listing on the Bigweblinks site.

There is still a lot of outrage in the industry regarding this matter, Google have taken steps against sites visibly selling links for PR. However if you consider Google itself incorporates a paid link for PR system on its Enterprise Solution page. If accepted a business will be listed when making a $10,000 payment. The no-follow attribute is not incorporated.

I personally think changes were needed with the page ranking system. If a site is to grow naturally it should take 2 to 3 years to reach a ranking of 5 or above. The fact some webmaster were able to achieve this in under 3 months, shows manipulation was possible. However I still cannot work out why Google has publicly stated they are against paid links when they incorporate the system themselves, morally Google has not come out of this smelling of roses. You then add the fact there have been allegations of blackmail around listings in Googles directory.

Google is expanding at an alarming rate, there are rumours they are going to purchase Facebook, I personally feel their first priority should be to put their own house in order before they look to expand further.