forbesYesterday, if you missed it, Google (in my opinion) sent a message to publishers who sell text ads on their sites. There was a major shake up in the industry that impacted sites worldwide.

In short, Google has a little thing they call PageRank. They show a PageRank score in their Toolbar and it represents how popular a page is. The other night, they dropped the score of hundreds of sites by a lot. Including sites like Forbes, Washington Post and even my site. Because of that, I had some folks in the press call me (I suspect because Danny is on vacation) and ask me some questions.

So I answered a bunch of Andy Greenberg's questions over the phone. Then he called back and I answered more. I honestly thought I wouldn't be quoted or quoted much because this happens too often and ends up not being much. But to my surprise, Andy at Forbes really quoted the heck out of me.

Google Scares The Search Crowd from Andy at Forbes is the article. A ton of the content is from quoting me and I think he did a good job representing what we discussed over the phone.

But Schwartz, who has tracked affected sites and seen no change in traffic, claims that Wednesday's algorithm shift is simply a public relations stunt. "The bottom line is that people are able to manipulate Google's rankings by buying links, and Google has to do something about that," he said. "Today, they sent a huge statement to some of the most popular blogs on the Internet, and particularly those in the search industry."

I wouldn't call it a public relations stunt necessarily. More of one of the only real ways to handle it.

Anyway, wanted to share my quotes from this article with the people who read my personal blog. Plus it is good to document.