There were many blogs that got their pagerank dropped lately but this morning came a big surprise: ProBlogger is now a PageRank 4. What?

I was sorry to hear that Darren, and I’m sure this is temporary and we will all learn a thing or two about pagerank reading Darren’s perspectives in the near future.

But why the drop? (or as some call it, a penalty)

My Top 3 “Potential” Reasons:

1. Contests for Links. - Giving away prizes for links is probably the same thing as paying for links in Google’s opinion.

2. Group Writing Projects. - Just because a linkback isn’t required doesn’t mean that an algorithm doesn’t see these as the exact same thing as huge reciprocal linking schemes. They might also look like “link farms” to the googlebot, and hosted on your blog.

3. People reported Problogger. Doesn’t anybody else think it is more than coincidence that almost the next PageRank update after Google starts taking user submitted reports of paid links that they start giving out penalties like candy?

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

(note: I didn’t say Darren sells paid links but that doesn’t mean people didn’t report him)

Of course I’m probably wrong on all 3 points so what do you think? Are group writing projects giant reciprocal linking schemes? Why Is Problogger A PageRank 4? Will we ever really know?