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Are you a fiend for Google Page Rank? Check your toolbars, because a re-ordering is under way.

The Search Engine community is abuzz with news that Google has dropped the page ranking for a number of highly-reputable sites, including the Washington Post online, the San Francisco Gate and popular blogs. Both the Post and the Gate have a nice shiny new page rank of 5, much lower than I imagine either is happy about.

The New York Times still sports an 8, but I believe they dropped from a 9, which is substantial.

Online marketer Andy Beard says the reshuffling may related to Google’s very public stance against paid linking or advertising without the use of nofollow. Think anyone is going to be unhappy about this drop in ranking? Says Beard:

Some of these sites have been known to add or knock millions off of the price of Apple shares in the past, what do you think it is going to do to Google?

SEOmoz is collecting a list of sites that have been affected, and points to Duncan Riley at TechCrunch, a tech blog that is reporting “the only clear change appears to be among large scale blog networks and similar link farms.”

Could news sites be jumbled in with link farms? Is the paid linking and advertising screwing them up?

With many news sites dependent on online advertising and many site producers unaware of the nofollow attribute and Google’s preference, will more news sites face similar smackdowns from the great and powerful search engine?