Google updated PageRank, the algorithm by which it ranks the importance of pages online. As a direct result of the update, Twitter profile pages have suffered a fall in PageRank merit, according to The Next Web.

So Web, Blogger's own blog, noted that the profile for Twitter's co-founder Evan Williams (@ev) fell to four, as did the page of Chris Brogan's, whose Twitter profile page previously ranked 7. Barack Obama, also a 7, is now a significantly-lower 4.

Oddly, the homepage for Twitter.com itself rose in PageRank from 8 to 9, suggesting popular pages under the Twitter URL should in fact have improved, not suffered.

At least one SEO strategist, Andy Beard, argued it is too soon to determine whether the PageRank change directly resulted in a devaluation of Twitter profile pages. The long-term repercussions of a PageRank change actually take some time to determine for certain. But the changes raised speculation about the relative importance of a user's Twitter profile page.

"Whilst not often a consideration, it’s interesting to think the value of a link from a Twitter profile to a webpage," wrote The Next Web. When a user "retweets" a link from their page, most people gauge the value of that retweet by the number of followers that click on the link as a result, not by the ultimate value that link might bring back to their Twitter profile pages.

But because regular Twitter users tend to update often throughout the day, the Twitter profiles of zealous updaters now appear fairly high in organic searches for their name — often within the first page of results, lending long-term questions about whether a given person's Twitter page is more "important" when data about that person than, for example, that person's blog or online biography.

This week witnessed the launch of Topsy, a search site that furnishes real-time results to queriers. Topsy determines the importance of tweets and other dynamic data by the number of retweets they generated, among other criteria.