Many Ways to Get Around Pagerank

Implications: All of these "parking" sites use paid search & direct navigation to circumvent low organic search result rankings.  But social media doesn't necessarily hinge on search - it's more about friends & application sharing.

Analysis: Ironically, Google invented the practice of ranking sites based on links to and from their site as a measure of quality, interest and overall consumer acceptance.  The more links, the more relevant & liked the site generally is.  Funny how the tides turn when Google, who also invented Ad Sense which only ads links from any site, can tell sites that adding their links are ok, but anyone else's paid listings isn't ok.  Seems pretty hypocritical to me.

But if you look at common, gray practices like "parking" - web URLs for misspelled names like computrs.com that act more like directories than websites that make money on clicks - it's all about links to other sites.  Google doesn't ask them to remove their sites or clean up their act.  This underground system also relies heavily on Ad Sense.

So if you look at two of the more questionable practices for search, Google acts as an enabler.  And that's only two of them.  So who are they to tell sites not to leverage a practice that they condoned in the first place?  If Google is trying to get social media to act a certain way, most social networks don't use search in the traditional sense.  You look for others you know, share common interest or for new applications to add to Facebook or MySpace.  In that environment, Google plays a very small role, if any, especially on Facebook.  Food Fight anyone?

Anyway, I'm not convinced Google has made - or forewarned - of any real or dramatic changes to their algorithms for page rankings.  Google Toolbar is directional at best - even by Google's accounts.  Maybe partners should ask Google to either do away with the function or update it so rankings are more accurate for search planning.  Let's see if they listen to the little guys.