PageRank update on it’s way

October 27, 2007 by

Just a quick note.  It looks like the pagerank update is finally happening.  After dropping down to a 3 last week, I’ve bounced back up to a 4 now.  Was at 5, so it’s a bit of a drop, but better than a 3 any day.

It looks like a few of the other sites that got hit this week have gotten most if not all of their pagerank back as well.

Two things that could have happened here.  Either last weeks drops were some sort of rollback to a previous pagerank data, or it really was a “penalty” drop that Google thought better of.

Maybe all the negative buzz had something to do with it.  I’m sure we’ll never know.  The site I’ve been using to check my PR is digpagerank.com.  There are several more out there, that’s just the one I’ve been using.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , ,

Selling Links? Google is Gonna Spank You!

October 8, 2007 by

There’s a bit of a dust up going around the techie-seo-search blogs that started sometime Saturday.  It’s been building for a little while now, but is finally getting some talk.  It seems that Danny Sullivan got into contact with someone at Google and confirmed that the recent PageRank drop that many sites have seen is actually a bit of a spanking for selling links and paid reviews.

There are many people talking about it, but I think the person I most agree with is Andy Beard.  In his post entitled “Dancing with the Gevil – Defamed by Google?” (great post title btw) he makes it very clear that he thinks what Google is doing weakens the use of PR and makes a mockery of it’s purpose.

The general public look on the little green bar on the Google Toolbar as a signal of quality, that is what Google tell them.

Here it is in Google’s own words

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar’s PageRankâ„¢ display to tell you how Google assesses the importance of the page you’re viewing.

But a penalty on my visible Toolbar PageRank isn’t what Google are telling their users. Google users think my content is of less value, and has less authority. They don’t understand that Google also apply modifiers to the green bar which may be for reasons other than quality.

I have to admit that he makes a very good point.  Why is a indicator metric like PageRank that is supposed to be all about the authority or trustiness of a site doing using factors that have nothing to do with that into factor? I’m sure that they will say that selling links is a sign of being untrustworthy, but if that is so, then what about sites like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and even Google’s own search results?  Selling ads is the exact same thing.

Sam at ReveNews seems to think that what they’ve done is A-OK.

When you play the Google game, you have to play by their rules, arbitrary or not… fair or not. You’re in their sandbox after all.

Jim Kukral seems to think along the same lines, saying that

You know what I think? I think that Google is gonna get what they want, regardless of what some bloggers or seo’rs say or do or think.

And yet, I still can’t help but feel like the little kid on the playground with blood dripping from my nose because the big bad bully of the school just shoved me into the monkey bars.  I have clearly stated each month for the last three months, what my monthly income is.  Compared to what Google makes from their paid links, it’s minuscule.  And yet,  they feel that I need to be penalized because I’m trying to pay my hosting bill with advertisements?

There’s a word for that.  And whether you like it or not, it’s called dictatorship.  The Golden Rule so to speak.  Google has the market share, so most of us cannot afford to ignore them when they penalize us.  If we want to avoid having our sites show up lower in the SERPs or worse, getting deindexed, we have to follow their rules.

I think it’s time we quit that.  So, for all of you that are willing, we need to brainstorm and find a way to overthrow the dictatorship that is our search world and start fresh with a republic of search.  With real authority passed to sites that deserve it.  And real trustiness conveyed to those that can be trusted.

How?  I’m not entirely sure.  It starts by trying to balance the ship a little and getting engines like ASK.com and Live a little more market share.  I’m going to try and make an effort to use alternative search engines for a while.  It’s not going to change the world, but maybe if we all do it, we can make a bit of a dent in their revenue.

This post was sponsored by: Viagra, Mesothelioma,  Girl taking it Hard, free prescriptions, and Business men needing help to transfer African Millions.

Ok.  I had to do it.  Please take the time before you comment on the sponsored bit to actually hover over the links and see where they really point to.  I’m making a point.  Just because I say that they are sponsors, doesn’t mean that they are.  And yes, I realize that I can be penalized for having those words linked on my site.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Don’t like PageRank? Get above it.

October 1, 2007 by

With the recent months and the great delay in the latest PageRank update (rumored to be starting now) there have been numerous articles around the web about how PageRank is a outdated metric that we really need to get rid of.  While I can’t argue that nothing should be based solely on the one metric, PageRank has become a standard that many, many people use to gauge how well they are doing.  It also is used by nearly every advertising company that deals with web information as a metric for pricing their clients.

In short, you can whine and moan all you want, but it just isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon.  And even if it did go away, there would be a replacement in place within weeks.  Maybe not from Google, but from somewhere.

So, how do the great masses of PageRank dissenters get away from it’s evil (do no evil) clutches?  Get above it.  That’s it.  Get above PageRank’s influence.  One of the best examples of this lately has been JohnChow.com.  John started out a little over a year ago and has since managed to make over $20,000 in one month from the blog at JohnChow.com.  He’s gotten a little bit of talk lately for being Google slapped.  He got a majority of his links from a link campaign that was (in Google’s eyes) a bit shady.  He traded reviews of his website with links and appropriate anchor text for a link back.  Very simple link exchange of sorts.  Well, turns out Google didn’t like that much and John stopped showing up in the search engines for a while.  He’s mostly back now, but the funny thing is that it didn’t affect his income hardly at all.

I say he’s above PageRank because he just recently (last few days) dropped from a displayed PR6 to a PR5.  Will that affect his income at all?  Not likely.  Most of his money now comes from private sales and reviews.  Both of those will be independent of the PageRank because those buyers will know the following that John has amassed.  They aren’t just going to go away because Google decides that JohnChow.com is a 5 instead of a 6.  He no longer depends on his PageRank for income levels.

How do you and I get above PageRank?  I haven’t quite gotten there, and I’m guessing that most of you haven’t either.  I don’t have the ability to sell private adspace to the great success that John has had.  Rather than sacrifice income, I’ll end up sticking with the commercial avenues for now.  Maybe one day, when all you readers out there have multiplied by a couple times.  But not now.  For now, we have to keep grinding away and remember that not every one can be a shooting star like John Chow or Mike Arrington.  Some of us have to climb our way up.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,