The google hand has dropped and its come down hard on most people who post for profit it seems. One of my other blogs was hit hard dropping from a 4 to a 3 and then a 0 and according to some places I’m not alone. This comes on the heels of the earlier update when several larger sites (including the washington post) lost their PR as well. When it first happened, I figured it wasn’t too bad as the drop was only one point.

There are several theories floating around the sphere today about why this is but to be honest no one knows. It might be googles reaction to the popularity of other means of advertising in an attempt to retain the online ad space. It could just be the math has changed or it could have something to do with the number of google scammers that have popped up and started scraping sites in an attempt to create content.

The problem is no one knows except google. What can be done? Some have suggested selling google stock (which seems to be happening), others have suggested using nofollow in the links or stop selling links through other means. Some, like John Chow are taking Winston Churchil’s words to heart and “Never Giving Up!”

A helicopter with a pilot and a single passenger was flying around above Seattle when a malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s navigation and communications equipment. Due to the darkness and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to get back to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building with lights on and flew toward it, the pilot had the passenger draw a handwritten sign reading “WHERE AM I?” and hold it up for the building’s occupants to see.

People in the building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the passenger asked the pilot how the “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER” sign helped determine their position.

The pilot responded “I knew that had to be the Microsoft support building, they gave me a technically correct but entirely useless answer.”