In many ways Google should be a little worried about the blogosphere reaction.

I was the centre of attention more by chance and timing than anything else, as I am sure it wouldn’t have taken my worthy SEO colleagues long to make a list of sites that have been hit by PageRank penalties and spot some patterns.

As almost everyone discussing PageRank updates was linking to me, and I was trying to keep up with the Blogstorm, moderating trackbacks and comments, and even trying to respond both here and elsewhere, I gained true insight into the sentiment of the blogosphere.

• I didn’t read about anyone being scared
• I didn’t see anyone being apologetic
• I saw very few people wholly in support of Google’s stance

What I did see was

• Disbelief
• Confusion
• Rumours
• Outrage
• Sarcasm
• Mature Discussion
• Balanced reporting

But the most striking was:-

Humor

In many ways Brian was the first to set the tone, simply thanking Google for revealing the truth, that they shouldn’t be relied on for anything.

Then Mike followed up with what I can only hope is Matt Cutt’s outfit for this Halloween.

For the full picture, and a very entertaining post, you are going to have to go visit.
Also noteworthy was a link from The Guardian to Mike, and well deserved.

Seo Refugee had obviously thought Matt was taking rather drastic action.

But what is Matt Cutt’s wearing?

It continues…

I think the collective feelings of the blogsphere are most aptly portrayed by the collective initiative happening on Problogger right now.

Competition: Create a Slogan for Bloggers Hit by the Page Rank Slam of October 07

Here are just a few of the early entries

From Meg at Blogpond

From Bloggers Journey

Gyutae Park at Winning The Web

Michael Beck

Darren is taking text and video submissions as well, for a full 24hrs and there are already over 60 entries.

No one is doing this for the prize, it is minimal compared to the amount of work involved in creating these images.
Whilst I would love to include them all, I don’t want to take anything away from this effort and brilliant idea from Darren and the rest of the B5 media team.

Whilst there hasn’t been a definitive statement yet other than those I mentioned in my previous post, I take this to be a statement of PRIDE.

On a sadder note, I feel that Matt Mullenweg is losing touch with the blogosphere.