TechCrunch reports today that Google finally decided they had to hit a bitch when it comes to the kind of pseudo-link-farming that Weblogs, Inc. popularized and is now fairly common practice among blog networks. Engadget's PageRank of 7 (unheard of for a blog until they reached it) has been walloped down to a 5. Hopefully this is just a penalty that will lose impact when the offending items are removed.
It certainly lessens the impact of the "network factor" of WIN, but at the same time their sites are gaining more individual identities and tend to live in their own AOL channels rather than falling under the big old WIN banner.
It's also true that those sites don't really need the traffic and search boosts that were gained by having a global blogroll and big cross-linking grids. Those formerly controversial, now apparently frowned-upon practices served their purpose back in the day, and allowed sites like Download Squad (now a PageRank 4) to grow on the backs of bigger brothers like Engadget. So I can't say I'm surprised, or totally disappointed: we did our best with those old methods, now it's time to move on. WIN is playing with the big boys now anyway.
It certainly lessens the impact of the "network factor" of WIN, but at the same time their sites are gaining more individual identities and tend to live in their own AOL channels rather than falling under the big old WIN banner.
It's also true that those sites don't really need the traffic and search boosts that were gained by having a global blogroll and big cross-linking grids. Those formerly controversial, now apparently frowned-upon practices served their purpose back in the day, and allowed sites like Download Squad (now a PageRank 4) to grow on the backs of bigger brothers like Engadget. So I can't say I'm surprised, or totally disappointed: we did our best with those old methods, now it's time to move on. WIN is playing with the big boys now anyway.
