Wow, this has been quite a week around the blogosphere, with an unusually large focus on Google and their PageRank algorithm adjustment. Over this past week, a lot of bloggers have been focusing on how PageRank effects bloggers, but I haven’t really seen any talk about how this change will effect paid linking companies, such as Text Link Ads. At least that was the case until today, when Stephen at Daily Blog Tips made some projections about what he thinks will happen with the paid links market.

For the record, here are just a few of his projections:

PageRank will become meaningless. In Google’s attempts to kill paid linking by making PageRank an unreliable measure of link value, PageRank will be the ultimate casualty. Bloggers and entrepreneurs will sense the growing discontent and develop third party measurements to take its place. Eventually, PageRank will be looked down upon as inaccurate, uninformative, and frequently out-of-date, as it always should have been.

Google will demolish trust between link buyers and sellers. Just after the paid linking community thinks is has won a small reprieve, Google will unleash a secret counterattack in the form of voluntary disavowal of links (as they’ve already hinted). Within Google Webmaster Tools, a new utility will be developed that will allow webmasters to remove their own outbound links from ranking calculations, all without ever using rel=”nofollow”. Link buyers will no longer be able to trust that link sellers aren’t cashing in without providing value. Short of adding an unenforceable “You will not disavow paid links” clause to link brokerage agreements, all trust in paid linking as a useful SEO method will be lost.

In the end, Google will emerge victorious. Online advertising will continue and thrive as it always has, and some bloggers may be able to use traffic-based advertising for monetization. For the most part, however, paid linking will be reduced to a shadow of its former self. With the value of paid linking for ranking purposes being next to nothing, paid posting and paid directories will also take a hit. Dejected and crestfallen, bloggers will turn to other methods of blog monetization.

Its always interesting to speculate at what the future will hold. It is sad for me to say, but I think Stephen is right on. Google will ultimately win out in the end, as they always do. Google used to be the company that can do no wrong (aka the “fun” company), and now that they’ve attained the power, they have flipped the switch and decided to start abusing their power. And why not? Who is going to stop them? Google is the new Microsoft.

As for Text Link Ads, it looks like they were anticipating this change to the PageRank algorithm and have responded with ShoppingAds.