Aaron Brazell, our technology manager at b5media confirmed a suspicion I’ve kept to myself. A few weeks ago, Cellphone9.com dropped from a solid Google PageRank 6 to a 5 and then today, a 4. Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger also dropped from a towering 7 to a measly 4. Same goes for Brian Clark’s Copyblogger. Must be disappointing to admit it, but A Bugged Life, though not linked to the network dropped in PR from a 5 to a 4 a few weeks before Google declared jihad on blog networks. Funny though, because as soon as my personal blog’s PR dropped, it made Technorati front page.
At b5media, we are weighing how we want to respond to this. Either we give in to Google and let them dictate what we do and have the unenviable position of losing pagerank and possibly advertising dollars, or we take the stand that quality content is quality content regardless of Google and that our content will speak for itself. We still produce millions of pages of content per month. We still have respect in the community. We still have advertisers recognizing that these sites are valuable assets to leverage to get their campaigns out on. [Technosailor]
