Two days ago Matt Cutts (SEO specialist working at Google) announced that a PageRank update would soon hit across the Internet. Finally today, it is being observed that PageRank of some websites/blogs might have been updated by Google.

PageRank and its importance remains a mystery to all. However it should be kept in mind that Google still uses PageRank as a tool to determine the popularity of a website/blog and accordingly assigns a search engine ranking position for a particular keyword.

So the bottom line is that PageRank does matter.

Google still hates advertisers/publishers who try to manipulate the PageRank algorithm by selling/buying links so to remain on the safe-side it is recommended not to be part of such activities. Other such activities which Google may not like is doing paid reviews just for the sake of link advertising.

Also another point to note is that PageRank display is not linear. For e.g. It is more than twice as hard to get a PR6 compared to a PR3.

Congratulation to all those who got a good PageRank. For those penalized by Google, Read how I managed to get back my PR.