Google PR Update Today, Sure, But Also Old Penalties Dropped

Matt Cutts mentioned that we'd be seeing a toolbar PR update within a few days, and sure enough, I see it today, as do others. *Everyone yawns*. But that's not the most interesting aspect of the day. Matt also said, "we'll be expiring some older penalties on websites." And sure enough, he was telling the truth on that one too!

I've had a penalty on one site for two solid years. It happened during the July 27, 2006 "data refresh". I've never known what the penalty was for, but obviously I did something wrong. I eventually quit worrying about it, and just lived with whatever penalty had beset me. And today, magically, the penalty has been lifted. (Interesting that back then, Matt assured everyone that it was ONLY a data refresh, but obviously penalties were involved as well).

I'm not sure why 2 year old penalties would be lifted for no reason. Did I fix the problem sometime during the last two years without knowing it, and Google is just now getting around to acknowledging that? Or does Google no longer consider whatever I did to be a terrible crime? Or have I simply served my time in Google prison, and am being let out despite the fact that my crime continues to exist? I have no idea.

In any case, I believe this is the more interesting aspect of the day, and not the toolbar PR update that happened. Still...I DID check my PR, yes I did. Because I'm a nut like that. 🙂

P.S. An interesting sidenote: In the post recently (noted above) in which Matt told us the PR update was pending, he also made an interesting comment down towards the bottom of the comments. He said:

Darren, the toolbar PageRank display is not linear. It's more than twice as hard to get a PR6 compared to a PR3, for example.

It's not that we didn't already know that, but I don't recall ever seeing Matt actually say something like that...out loud. 🙂 Good to see.