Tks for the heads-up, Larry.
I wasn't aware of this and checked my sites.
My blog is still PR5 and all my other sites are PR4 (some of them might've been PR3 before...)
I haven't been involved in buying text links, simply because building free, quality links isn't an issue.
In my opinion,buying a link is easy and cheap, and can get a new site spidered and indexed quickly. But once you've built your first PR3 site, you shouldn't have difficulties getting the rest of your network up.
I guess it gives credence to the old adage to build your empire on a foundation of brick, rather than a foundation of sand...
PS: in my opinon, if you're into PR, "Live PR" reported by PR datacenters is a better metric. check your live rankings at:
Live PR | Live Pagerank | Check Your PageRank | PageRank Checker
Toolbar PR (reported by the google toolbar) is based on the last PR updates (rather than your live/current PR).
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I did a Live PR search on JohnChow.com and it shows a combinations of PR4s and PR5s. (There're even a couple of PR0's in there...!)
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I've also looked at TrustRank and a couple of other factors and have seen PR0 sites take #1 on google, edging out a PR5 or even PR6 site.
So there's life beyond PR...