Paid links proved the PageRank undoing for search professionals as well as for prominent sites like The Washington Post, but only recently did Google confess to doing this.

The flaming wreckage of Google's update took down several sites a couple of PageRank notches. Though it looked like an intentional change, that hadn't been confirmed.

Until now, that is. Search Engine Journal heard from Matt Cutts about the update, which has had numerous online industry pros in a tizzy. Said Matt:

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

The PageRank plunge has been painfully obvious to people like Andy Beard and Darren Rowse. It puts an image of an old joke about morale in our minds: "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

As for PageRank improving, there aren't any instructions about that. But paid links won't be in the equation, it seems.

Google, PageRank, Matt Cutts