Programming Coffee

If you haven’t heard about or noticed the latest Google PR update, let me fill you in a little. During the last PR update, many young sites with very few inbound links received very respectable PageRank. I’m not talking about a PR2-PR3 here, I mean more like a frikkin PR4-PR6. Other sites have noticed that their interior pages have a higher PageRank than their homepage, which I will admit is possible, but definately not by the order that is being seen. Some of the sites have a home page with a PR2, and interior pages with a PR4-PR5 and have fewer (and less prominent) inbound links than the home page.

My take on all this? I think 1 of 2 things are happining.

1. Google is playing a big April Fool’s joke on us. Yeah, it’s all fake. Perhaps this new PageRank is just a facade that’s being shown to the public, while the real PageRank is still being used in the algorithms. I guess if May rolls around, and so is the inflated PageRank, then perhaps my second option is more viable…
2. Google is trying to curb link purchases based on PageRank. They are tired of everyone scamming the system to alter the search results, and have decided to throw a curveball. Now, people everywhere will be paying for inflated PageRank, that probably isn’t even being used in the algorithm.

Any other idea’s?