OK, I know I only posted yesterday but this is important.

For the past few weeks we have all been waiting anxiously on the PageRank update to kick in and now it has. As I only saw it a couple of hours ago I haven’t got too much info on it except that it looks like a biggie! Normally a new site wthl some links in it would open at a PR3 but sites I have seen have opened at a PR1 and blogs that I haven’t done any work on since the last PR update have been reduced to a PR1.

One site feeds the other...

It seems that Google are being less generous with the old green fairy dust than before. In saying that it’s not all bad because most of my clients have had a PR increases. I wonder if this has anything to do with Google giving more love to bigger brands?

I might need to do a PageRank explanation for the newbies…watch this space.

<nic>

OK I’m not saying that we shouldn’t need a server request to get access but after you give access, as far as I have seen, you can’t take access away without changing server. This is an obvious pain in the ass and almost impossible for any large companies to do without a proper business case.

The problem with someone that no longer works with or for you having webmaster tools access is that they can drop your site out of the rankings with a click of a button. BIG problem is you have you have parted on bad terms.

In a less malicious way having webmaster tools access can allow an ex-employee/ agency exploit weaknesses in the companies website for financial gain or for in-depth competitor analysis. No one wants to be in the position where your old agency goes to pitch for your main competitor based on ‘we know what others don’t about your competitors’ get hired and then systematically take your natural search marketing apart.

What Should Google Do to Protect Webmaster

Google should tie Google Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics but only allow webmaster info to be seen if a server request has been completed. Not only would this allow you to control your users but I would suspect that it would increase the accuracy of Google Analytics tracking and allow particularly nerdy and analytical folk to figure out more accurate position CTR.

</nic>