Oct
27
Google has updated the PageRank of every website in their index. There are many high profile websites who have lost pagerank bigtime. Changes from 9 to 5 are not uncommon. SEOMoz has a great summary of some of the affected websites.
The rumor is that Google is penalizing folks who have been selling links from high pagerank sites.
WW has a discussion thread on what it means for you.
Many are saying PageRank is irrelevant. Some of those are people who have lost pagerank. The data I’m seeing says PageRank is still somewhat proportional to the amount of Google traffic you get.
I do know of several sites who have gained PageRank in a very big way. No names mentioned. 
Google’s algorithm has changed during the last 2 years and is now weighted heavily toward new content on ‘respected’ websites.
A ton of new startups have launched during the last year. Many of those have generated a lot of publicity which translates into backlinks - new backlinks from new content on respected sites.
If a new startup has more backlinks from new content on high quality sites and lots of new content of it’s own generating lots of internal pagerank to, say, the home page, then they get higher pagerank.
The good news is that this change looks very very good for folks starting a new business. You can compete with the incumbents on a level PageRank playing field.
