Squirrelinabox Network (http://www.squirrelinabox.com)

So the big Google news is that the recent Page Rank (PR) update has caused some major ripples online as many powerful sites have seen fairly significant decreases in their PR. I may not really run any powerful websites, but most of my network has been hit by Page Rank dips, and it’s definitely unsettling - not because Page Rank really means anything, but because many people think it does.

You see, webmasters, advertisers, and other online stakeholders have a difficult time valuing the worth of a website, and more importantly, the worth of a link from a specific website. As such, many have come to rely on Google’s Page Rank to determine how much an outbound link from a particular website is worth. While this is fundamentally flawed (since it’s widely accepted that PR isn’t nearly as important as it was once thought), an online economy was established around Page Ranks.

With the recent PR chaos Google has brought upon the digital world, there’s a whole lot of panic going on. Website owners fear losing money on ads while advertisers fear losing a metric they had relied on for so long. Me? I’m definitely a little annoyed that some advertisers may lower their rates on my sites due to this change, but overally I’m pretty excited. Why? Because this may just be the kick in the pants that we all need to get over the whole PR fanaticism. If I have to take a hit in income for a few months while the industry figures itself out - so be it. Hopefully companies will actually spend some effort valuing adspace properly via research and communication. No green tick on a toolbar is going to tell you whether or not you should buy adspace.

Alright… so I may be dreaming to think the industry is somehow going to find a way to replace PR with a better combination of research and metrics, but hey, that’s why I’m just ranting from the peanut gallery on this one.