First of all, slow down. Google can read iframes and JavaScript. Google very likely is already programmatically diferentiating between comments and page content anyway, and tweaking their rankings accordingly. PageRank is not a cut-and-dry “links in minus links out equals rank.” It’s a complex system involving a lot of calculations on Google’s part. I imagine they value links differently depending on what sort of link it is.

Second, stop worrying about it. Google’s business is to provide good results. If everyone tries to cheat the system with a bunch of silly schemes (such as PageRank sculpting and JavaScript links) Google will just change things again. If everyone plays by the rules, and doesn’t worry about their ranking too much, it all works out in the end.

Anyway, I was checking another widget a few minutes ago, and I had a bit of a surprise. All of my websites’ ranks went up. That’s right, they’ve all went up.

• Webmaster-Source.com is now PageRank 3 (it was 1 previously)
• SiteOfRequirement.com is now PageRank 4 (was 3)
• NTugo.com is now PageRank 3 (was 1)

After seeing my new ranks, I went and checked some other sites.

• ProBlogger.net: 6 (hadn’t it been lowered to 4 recently?)
• SmashingMagazine.com: 6
• Copyblogger.com: 7
• EnGadget.com: 7
• Amazon.com: still 9

So, what’s Google done this time? Did they update the toolbar PageRank? Did they update their algorithm? It seems that most of the sites that had been penalized recently have been restored to their prior ranks.