There has been word around the neighborhood that G is trying to prevent the selling of PR - but what exactly are they doing about the matter, or are they going to do in the future? Currently, some high PR pages which sell text links have their PR transferring power blocked. (example: PR9/10 page www.phpbb.com which doesn't show up as a backlink for any of the sponsors on the homepage) How drastically is this going to change the off-site SEO scene?

it looks like phpbb.com is passing pr to me, and it is showing up in sponsors backlinks. link: http://www.hostdepartment.com/

phpBB does pass PR to links in the forums.

ok? :confused: im not sure what that has to do with your first post. you were talking about the homepage before.(example: PR9/10 page www.phpbb.com which doesn't show up as a backlink for any of the sponsors on the homepage)
These site all have phpbb showing up in there links. www.hostdepartment.com
www.clubbin.com
www.at-nite.net

and so does this site with is in the 'helpful resoureces' section.

Helpful resources
www.traveldynamicsgroup.com

they arent blocked, maybe those other links are new, i have no idea.

oh i just saw what your talking about most of those links are forums, but either way the main site is still passing links, http://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://www.traveldynamicsgroup.com/&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off&start=10&sa=N

i dont know what pr they should be, im just pointing out some sites are showing links from their homepage.

edit:

I am pretty sure they've been there for months already.

How are you 'pretty sure' they were there before? you saw them there months earlier?

Google position on selling PR is pretty remarkable - considering that Google have effectively told the webmastering world that their websites have been assigned an arbitrary and very public value - but that these websites must never reference that value for marketing purposes!!

Sort of like 5 star hotels not being allowed to say they've been awarded 5 stars, even though the award body brochure says they have 5 stars.

In my opinion, it's simply a sign that Google are incapable of dealing with the magnitide of the effect they are having on the internet. Whilst that in itself may be understandable, trying to punish webmasters for being effected by it is simply wrong, in my opinion.

Nice to be here. :)

I don't think that Google ever really comprehended how to deal with it's success - but I suspect that downplaying PR in the rankings isn't just a way to negate Standford ownership of the PageRank algo, but also a way to limit the effects of text-link advertising. Certainly the sandbox seems to be a part of that as well.