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Okay, it’s official. If you paid for links, your site most likely was punished. Or rather, if Google determined that your site most likely paid for a certain link, your site was punished. Paid links have been big business for companies, individuals and even academic institutions. But now the very same PR that earned the link funds has suffered because of them.

Major websites such as washingontonpost.com and forbes.com fell from a PR 7 to a PR 5. Statcounter.com fell from a PR10 to a PR 6 (or 8 according to other counters.) Ouch. How the change affected your own site may still be up in the air, but most feel as though the latest Google update is complete or nearing completion, and the biggest victory for Google was taking a bit hit at its nemesis, paid links.

There was a great amount of concern over the PR fall on websites in regard to traffic. Would traffic still find its way to sites through Google? So far the answer is yes. Of course, many webmasters are throwing up their hands about PR and giving up trying to understand. If it can’t be used to set prices for links, and it’s not affecting traffic, what exactly is its purpose?

Philosophical questions aside, one-way links to your website still have value for SEO and traffic. It’s only obviously paid links that are causing problems (so far), so the solution is to simple find alternative to obvious paid links. (more…)