Google Attacks Blogrolls

TechCrunch announced today that Google is lowering the Pagerank of blog networks. A large number of blog networks rely on income from selling text link ads. Google hates text links ads. So it’s not a big surprise that this would happen.

I had a conversation once about my initial concerns about interlinking blogs with the founder of Weblogs Inc., Jason Calacanis. In the comments of this post, Jason said:

in term of interlinking out blogs we always did it in an honest way. It’s totally acceptable for NBC to tell you what’s on Bravo or the SciFi channel, and it’s fine for blog networks to have their own blogrolls…

We both agreed that interlinking blogs shouldn’t be a problem.

So is lowering the pagerank of blogs that interlink ok?

In my opinion it is fine. Lowering the pagerank for blogs that interlink seems like a legitmate thing to do, but I don’t think it should affect the blogs Search Engine rankings. I guess we will find out if Google thinks the same thing.

On the other hand, I understand why bloggers would be upset about this, because it does affect their livelihood. I personally wish Google would just forget about text link ads and work on improving their algorithm. If Google doesn’t improve their algorithm, then companies like Proximic will stand a chance at taking away their business.

What do you think?

Thanks to Matt for the heads up on this news.