Google lowering PageRanks

Apparently, this buzz has been out in the web lately, I'm just surprised that I just noticed it now -- Google has lowered my PageRank too. I think this just happened a couple of hours ago. I could still recall seeing my PageRank as it would have been yesterday.

Naturally, I googled all about it and found that there have been a lot of articles already out about it. I'm not an expert on Google PageRank and the system behind it so I can't really discuss the details as to why this sudden change occurred. But, Matt Cutts of Google has confirmed that there was indeed a change --

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

Lately, I have been doing my best to increase my PageRank, and it has increase by 1. And this event has instantly nulled and voided my efforts so effortlessly. I think you can imagine how I would feel right.