First the good news. Binaryday has got back to pagerank 4. Abhishek raises a pertinent point about pagerank loosing its relevance. So has pagerank lost its relevance? My answer is yes and no.

Now we know that Pagerank is not THE deciding factor for search engine ranking, as was believed. However having said that, pagerank is one of the important factors for search engine ranking, and you should ignore it at your own peril.

Abhishek is a really good freind and I wish him all the best. However there are several reasons why I think we should take google’s penalty seriously.

1. Think about it. If pagerank is irrelevant then why will google penalize erring sites with an irrelevant factor? paid links present a real threat to the very existence of google. The relevance of google search results stems from its ability to identify authority pages by looking at who is linking to the page. Now if those incoming links can be manipulated, then what will happen to the relevance of google search results?

2. If pagerank does not matter then why do people buy links in the first place? Even seomoz has accepted that they do recommend clients to buy links.

I shall be posting about my experience of change in traffic post this update. I have requested abhishek to do so as well. If anyone has studied this topic then please let me know. I shall be happy to link to you.