The incredibly popular NewsDay.com was at a PageRank of five recently, and Google specifically confirmed that NewsDay received this PageRank penalty due to “selling links that pass PageRank.” But when I look at the Google Toolbar now at www.newsday.com, it shows a PageRank of 8, not a PageRank of 5.

On June 8th, the webmaster reported the PageRank penalty in a thread at Google Groups, on June 9th in the afternoon, a Googler spotted the thread and replied:

But now, the site is back at a PageRank of 8.

In any event, I do not believe that Google typically has called out major sites for this in the past. I know this is known as a valid reason for Google to downgrade a site’s PageRank (just look at ours). But it is always interesting to see the discussion around a major news site, like NewsDay.com.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.