The problem is, half the web has been caught up with (paid) link trading for the past x years. I doubt your PR went down because *you sold links* - it’s more likely sites that linked to yours *also sold links*, and the PR you got from them has decreased accordingly.

If it’s any consolation, I found your site through google right near the top for a PHP query. What I reckon has happened with this fairly substantial change is a LOT of sites have lost PR, so the overall effect on individual sites probably isn’t quite as dramatic as “argh I just went from PR6 to PR3″ actually seems.

Good luck with the blog

From its inception I have been a huge fan of google. Of late that fan status is dropping. The ranking system is competitive and has been from the beginning. Where there is a buck to be made as usual business owners, developers and of course the SEO experts will sell their mother for some edge.

It is not a far stretch to realize google is also doing that.

As a surfer looking for information I want the most viable for my time.
I have learned to skip the sponsored links at the top and side and when I land on a site that even hints of more sponsors than pertinent information I am gone before the page fully loads.

Websites such as yours that is packed with content I would probably spend hours on research.
Advertisements on the side are fine I can look or not.
As a consumer I am more likely to click a link from a product you recommend from personal experience than just a paid sponsored link.

I was talking to a representative of a company called NettSolutions the other day. I was told they have cut a deal with both google and yahoo where they contract for position 1, 2, or 3 at the top of your (interested company) keywords. Those positions go for $200 upwards a month.
What does that logically tell you before google or yahoo would even consider such a contract?
That they will get more for those spots than what they would get from any other sponsored ad from clicks or any other means.

This young man was shocked that a consumer might skip the top placements for any reason.
Imagine what the business person would think who is paying by the month.

The consumer is not totally stupid and neither is the surfer looking for information.
So you are right sooner or later google will lose its important support base if it does not watch its P’s and Q’s

Personally if I were google any spam link domain would have a -0PR

If G evaluates advertising the way it evaluates regular content, my understanding is that this is what causes a site that has nothing but ads to appear before a site that has real, unique and useful content. Lots of keywords pull up sites that are basically links to other sites that again, link to other sites and you end up with nothing in the end and a lot of time wasted.

With this change, and again this is just my understanding, is that G is just giving USEFUL CONTENT a priority over useless (in the visitor’s position) advertising. They’re just raking sites based on what will benefit users as opposed to what will benefit the owner. Though, receiving visitors that come to read YOUR CONTENT are the only real visitors you should want. The others are virtually useless.

Every for-profit company is just out to make money. Google is no different. They just have a different business than us. All the other search engines out there are in it for the same reason, they just pick up the technology at different times. Yahoo and AOL and MSN have and will continue to change their practices just like Google does…we will forever fight the battle of the rank. This business of search engines is free advertising for us. If you want your site in a certain position, either follow Google’s protocol or pay for the privilege of being number one.

Google used to be an incredible search engine. Now Greed has turned it to something almost useless. Try doing a search for “Registry Cleaner Freeware” and you will find NOTHING that is Freeware.

Goolge needs to take the High Ground and fix that before they penalize folks that actually have usefull information posted.

Yar!

Google has become ubiquitous and very powerful - gmail, google docs, search, calendar, even picasa and blogger. I use all these tools. But it’s naive to expect them to behave in a totally balanced, unbiased fashion. They’re a business.