Written on October 27th, 2007 at 01:10 pm by Darren Rowse
The Google Page Rank Pendulum Swings…. Again
As often happens with updates at Google – today we see another adjustment in Page Ranks of many of the sites hit in the last couple of days. For example both of my blogs have recovered and returned to PR6.
Not all have though – you can see a list of some who have and haven’t at Andy’s blog (by the way Andy has done a great job at following this story).
I’ve had confirmation now from two sources at Google that this latest round of updates was ALL about the selling of text links. You can see Jeremy Twittered the same thing here. Some of those who have had their updates reversed today were falsely penalized for selling links (like ProBlogger which used to do it but stopped months back).
This latest furore has all been about the selling of links and is a warning shot to bloggers and webmasters who engage in the practice. Of course not everyone who sells links has been hit (there’s no way Google will get everyone) but it’s a sign of what Google are continuing to crack down on.
So what Should Bloggers Do?
So what does this mean for bloggers who sell links? I guess it means there is risk associated with it and that the risk is losing page rank (at the least) from selling links. Whether this also leads to a loss of traffic we’re yet to see.
If you have been hit by the penalties and want to recover your ranking in Google’s eyes the way forward is simple. Remove the links and ask for a reconsideration from Google using the tool in Google’s Webmaster Tools. To do this you need to have your site registered in Webmaster tools and log in – you’ll then see a ‘Request Reconsideration’ link on the right hand side of the screen that allows you to report your changes and ask for reconsideration.
Of course many bloggers are not doing this because they haven’t seen any decrease in traffic yet and don’t much care about a PR decrease.
It’s a decision that bloggers need to make for themselves and something that I have mixed feelings on. On the one hand I see why Google wants to stop the practice as it makes their task of ranking sites purely based upon whether the site is seen as an authority more challenging.
On the other hand I see bloggers who struggle to make money using AdSense and other ad networks and who have come to rely upon the text link ads. Many bloggers have seen text links become their #1 income stream. I also see this as being somewhat of a slippery slope for Google to go down as it’s going to change the landscape and force text link sellers further underground (see below). There will also be plenty of inconsistencies in their carrying out of the penalization of text link sales and lots of people pointing them out.
My Main Advice
My main advice to publishers whether they decide to sell or not sell text links hasn’t really changed – Forget about Page Rank and Build a Better Blog. Build a quality site that builds community, attracts readers from as many sources as possible (relying upon Google traffic as a sole source of traffic isn’t a smart move) and build a blog that enhances people’s lives. This way you don’t need to rely upon Google (or any other single site) to send you traffic and keep you profitable.
Will We see More and More BlackMarket Text Link Selling?
The selling of text links has always had a black market kind of feel to it – however I think that what Google has done this last week means that we’ll see more and more of the text link selling go further underground. We’ll see it happen less using systems like TextLinkAds and more happening in less transparent ways.
We’ll also probably see more and more selling of links inside of posts or on single pages and less and less on sidebars/footers etc.
It may even mean that we see text link selling become a more valuable thing to do as the supply of publishers willing to sell links dwindles. I know that even in the last month I’ve been approached on three occasions by individuals wanting to buy links on individual posts on my blogs – and the monetary value of these links was significantly larger than anything I’d heard of being achieved before for single links.
I don’t know where this will all end – but I doubt it’s the end of text links and I can only see both those who are in the business of selling them AND Google becoming more aggressive in this little war.
119 Responses to “The Google Page Rank Pendulum Swings…. Again” - Add Yours
Blogging Success Journey
October 27th, 2007 1:12 pm
I just realized my three weeks blog get page rank 1 today..@@
Karthik
October 27th, 2007 1:21 pm
My blog has got a spanking new PR4 so I’m happy after the whole exercise – honestly, to me, the little green bar does hold some shine despite all the furore that was raised over it.
Not to mean that it would compromise content, but at the end of the day, it is a rating metric that is being used by the majority, something I don’t see disappearing in the near future.
Iantrepreneur
October 27th, 2007 1:34 pm
hmm – is everyone excited or just pissed off – two factors here, I think we all need to make a better blog or website and not care about PR
Mike
October 27th, 2007 1:37 pm
YouTube has dropped from a PR8 to a PR3 in the last few hours according to most Google data centres. That’s a Google owned site, remember.
Add that to the fact that AdSense channel reporting has been screwed for the last three days.
Methinks it’s a Google brain fart. A brain fart that will be manually adjusted to cover some of the backlash but a brain fart all the same.
Maybe Big G are having fun with us. Who knows? I’m guessing they’ll never tell us. Who knows? Maybe I’ve created a nice cover story for them.
Whatever the reason, Big G have had more virtual column inches devoted to them over the last 48 hours than I can recall.
Sue
October 27th, 2007 1:39 pm
Then I guess I was “rewarded” today for not ever having text links on my static site (hauntedlights.com) or my blog. Both went to PR3 tonight.
Like Karthik says, it still means something, even though I get tired of hearing about Google ruling the (net) universe. I don’t think they were right in what they did…who died and made them king? But yet, as one who’s been around the internet since the days when there was nothing but REAL information on here and NO ads, I hope their slap will clean up some of the splogs, link farms and more junk. Yet still, I feel it had a lot to do with trying to eliminate competition with adsense. And that is just totally wrong.
Search* Engines Web
October 27th, 2007 1:42 pm
There are many false positives – basically it originates from THIS list.
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/110901.html
It appears that all the spam team members nationwide have access to it as part of a Google Intranet and can comment on the sites being analyzed and added as link sellers
Roberta
October 27th, 2007 1:42 pm
I was happy to see that my music blog got a PR of 5 for the first time. My personal blog got a PR of 3 and my celebrity blog, also a 3. I’m jumping for joy.
Glad to hear that your PR has been restored, Darren. This is good news.
bob cobb
October 27th, 2007 1:42 pm
well I just checked and after being bumped from a pr4 to a 3 in that last update, I got lowered all the way to a 2 in this one. Im not sure what did it either. I have two text links that Ive sold on my site, could that have done it?
esofthub
October 27th, 2007 1:43 pm
Glad to see you bounced back. You’re right about Google declaring war on sites who sell text links.
The irony here is that the popular sites who were dropped received more back links in the process.
Kevin
October 27th, 2007 1:49 pm
I was lowered to a PR3 from a PR4, with a pile more backlinks than I had last update, so I guess this is the only explaination. I am being penalized just for running the TLA code on my site, despite the fact that I’ve never sold a text link through the program… So the question is, do I take it off and bow down to the google machine, or do I plug on and hope to some day make money through TLA?
Jake
October 27th, 2007 1:57 pm
Google really screwed it up. They lowered my sites…
Especially the sites NOT selling links!!
They are killing me.
Darren Rowse
October 27th, 2007 2:19 pm
if you think they’ve stuff up Jake – I’d use the reconsideration request form to let them know.
Jake
October 27th, 2007 2:23 pm
I have on the sites that I can. Of course on moremerchant I sell links to which I should be able to sell links.
All the links I have sold directly go with the type of site which shouldn’t be a penalty but google says it should be…
UGH!! We have to throw out pagerank and alexa as a tool to see what sites to advertise on!!
esofthub
October 27th, 2007 2:30 pm
“if you think they’ve stuff up Jake – I’d use the reconsideration request form to let them know.”
Did you use it Darren?
Community for Bloggers
October 27th, 2007 2:34 pm
I don’t mind this. My Blogging Community went from PR0 to PR2, bit Robin Hood ‘eh – give to the poor by taking from the rich?
sofish
October 27th, 2007 2:42 pm
It is a JOKE, I think ! In Chia , the blog PR almost rise today! so? do you think!
Punny Money
October 27th, 2007 2:42 pm
I was a PR5 two updates ago. PR4 before this week. PR3 two days ago. Now I’m at PR2.
And yet I’m selling more and more text links than ever before as my PR drops. I think by the time this is over, I’ll be down to PR0 and be making $1 million a week. :)
Jake
October 27th, 2007 2:51 pm
I sure hope so Punny. :) I am switching to Yahoo for my searches. I can’t put up with this wishy washiness. (is that a word??)
Daniel
October 27th, 2007 2:58 pm
Oh snap! Here I sit reading about the Google slap and get the idea of checking my 7 Blogs that have allways (for 5 months) been PR0 ( I have NO paid links, and have done NO SEO).
So what happens… they are ALL PR4-5 all of a sudden! Whee!
Anyone want to buy PR5 links :-)
Jason
October 27th, 2007 3:02 pm
I got excited after reading this post, thinking that my drop from a 6 to a 4 might be reversed, or at least put back up to a 5. But unfortunately my page rank was squashed to a 2. I guess I shouldn’t worry too much, and focus on the content, right? But at the same time I get a lot of traffic from Google, and my gut reaction is that this is purely a punishment for not using Adsense exclusively… but if I made more than $1 a day on Adsense, maybe I would. Instead, I sell hundreds each month through Text Link Ads and private buyers. I don’t like where this is going…
Andy Zeus Anderson
October 27th, 2007 3:08 pm
Google seems to put anything to do with advertising through sources other than Google on it’s bad list. It is a clear and present danger to the free market place for a major corporation already in control of the lions share of text link advertising to be able to bully others out of the business.
Bloggers and webmasters need to report this issue in droves to the corporation commission as it violates anti monopolization laws. Microsoft faced similar issues from trying to corner the market on operating systems and add ons in years past. There is absolutely nothing good to come by letting Google take hard earned dollars away from webmasters and companies like Pay Per Post that derive their income almost entirely from paid links.
Andy Zeus Anderson
Webmaster and internet marketer.
McBilly
October 27th, 2007 3:14 pm
@Punny Money – LOL at your dilemma.. Or should I say luck? That’s pretty good news I guess.
Anyway, mine got a boot from PR0 to PR3. I was really surprised. I thought it was just a cache on my browser. Hehe
Ashish
October 27th, 2007 3:27 pm
The recent PR update was a huge boost to quality content and I would really like to thank GOogle for punishing those who were abusing the PR algo.
I have been getting lot of link exchanges requests etc. but never really cared about it (though the competing blog used it and went up the ladder).
Now I am quite happy with the move from PR 3 to 5.
Sometimes, Google is not just evil!
Michael Hampton
October 27th, 2007 3:32 pm
I dropped from PR6 to PR4, and now I’m back up to PR5. I suspect I got hit, not simply for “selling text links,” but because of my strong criticism of nofollow.
Mohsin
October 27th, 2007 3:42 pm
Wow! My brand new blog has got PageRank 4!!
But at the same time, one of PR5 sites have dropped o PR4 :( Oh well, I guess that’s the way Google works.
Asian Blogger
October 27th, 2007 3:59 pm
I can understand why google hates selling text links since many sites like TLA are used primarly for the purpose of boosting PR and search rankings. Google can always argue that, they don’t provide value to surfers in its true sense. So google has the right to penalize people who use such services to sell text links.
But why is google selling them through adwords? So google wants to make money from people like TLA, but we bloggers are not allowed to use them. Don’t you think it is a kind of double standards?
Markk
October 27th, 2007 4:02 pm
I guess those who don’t sell text links will get back their rankings (hope so) but it looks like those who continue to do so will not be given a reprieve. Hmm just a thought. But it’s good to hear Darren got back his ranking.
Rt the fitness guy
October 27th, 2007 4:14 pm
Darren, what about all the b5 media blogs. It seems I;ve been hit for this because otherwise I have thousands of genuine high PR backlinks.
RT
Tom Hanna
October 27th, 2007 4:37 pm
Well, I got zapped harder on the second round. (Though a couple of newer pages got some benefit.) So, I took your advice to Build a Better Blog. Did a little exploring and found that the Yahoo Publisher Network’s search box fit better in my sidebar, the Yahoo Publisher Network had some great financial news & charts perfect for my blog and while I was at it, it just didn’t take much effort to whack the Adsense and stick those Yahoo Publisher Network ads in its place.
Jake
October 27th, 2007 4:47 pm
Glad to hear it Tom. I am doing the same on many of my sites.
Danielle
October 27th, 2007 4:49 pm
This post is so valuable to me right now. I recently switched from a blogger hosted blog to a self hosted wordpress blog. I lost my page ranking it was a 4, nothing great, but I didn’t even realize or forgot to add my new site to google.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us Darren.
Wishing you and the fam well.
Danielle
Jake
October 27th, 2007 4:49 pm
I remember back in 1997 / 1998 Google paid a little for each search generated on a website. I made some money each month way back then on it.
If Yahoo could develop something like that they could really get their part of the market growing again.
Yahoo results are better than google these days in terms of accuracy of what I am looking for so it seems like it may be time for Yahoo to push it more.
Google needs real competition and Yahoo is the one to do it I hope.
Malignition.com
October 27th, 2007 4:55 pm
Congrats on getting your PR back!
Kevin May
October 27th, 2007 5:40 pm
I have a statement from Google here:
http://travolution.blogspot.com/2007/10/selling-text-links-is-bad-for-travel.html
Ginn Wei
October 27th, 2007 5:43 pm
My 4-week blog still has only PageRank of 0. Hope it’ll be updated as soon as possible. When will the next update be? A lot of blogs mentioned that a drop in PageRank isn’t that significant. However, almost all if not all of the link buyers will pay based on PageRank of the publisher’s blogs because it’ll helps their PageRank significantly.
EarnMoneyOnline
October 27th, 2007 6:38 pm
PR doesn’t effects on SEO that much. So PR is not the big factor.
————
http://paidforwritedown.blogspot.com
Glenn
October 27th, 2007 6:45 pm
wow, nice! PR6 again.. congrats..
John Evans (Syntagma)
October 27th, 2007 8:00 pm
I’m putting rel=”nofollow” on all our self-sold links. The problem is with TLA.com ads and Bizrate boxes.
Darren, do you know if these have nofollow at source, or are they part of the problem?
Wayne Liew
October 27th, 2007 8:26 pm
Congratulations on the PR6 once again. Does this means that selling banners is alright?
Google can’t get all of them but I am sure there are a lot of people out there who are helping Google by reporting sites that are buying and selling links.
charles
October 27th, 2007 8:46 pm
Congratulations Darren for your PR6 return. Mine just upped 3 notches from PR0 to PR3. I’m just happy to know. :)
Mani Karthik
October 27th, 2007 8:48 pm
Is this the climax or ?
I think PR doesn’t hold any value anymore, if it does not affect the traffic it brings in.
So far so good.
Cheers!
Mani
Caroline Middlebrook
October 27th, 2007 8:51 pm
Yeah mine has been swinging between unranked and PR4 all morning. Such sillyness :-)
Alistair
October 27th, 2007 11:07 pm
Hmmmm – I went from a 4 to a 3 – never even touched a text link ad. If anything my incoming links have increased since the last update – I actually thought I may get a 5 with the next one.
Just goes to show you I suppose !
Azah
October 27th, 2007 11:20 pm
my site today from pr 0 to pr 4. Congrat to you to pr 6 again !!
Birney Summers
October 28th, 2007 12:00 am
How can Google tell if a link was sold as a rank promoting link sale or just as a direct advertising space sale? May be they don’t care, if it is in competition with AdSence they mark it as evil?
Beach Bum
October 28th, 2007 1:21 am
I think it is none of Google’s business how we choose to make money with our sites. I have and will continue to sell links
BeachBum Michael
Jason
October 28th, 2007 1:43 am
Hi Darren,
“We’ll also probably see more and more selling of links inside of posts or on single pages and less and less on sidebars/footers etc.”
One of my sites just got nailed from using Blogsvertise, a drop in 2 points. So selling links this way really isn’t a good alternative.
See ya.
~Jason
Tech Blog
October 28th, 2007 1:59 am
Hi Darren,
That was a great trick, to get back the PR. ;)
I started two of my blogs few months back and
My one blog got PR 4
and another got PR 3
For the time being I am happy. :)
Wendy Piersall
October 28th, 2007 2:38 am
What doesn’t make sense is that my blog has stayed at a PR5, but my home page went down from a PR5 to a PR4 today (I’m not losing any sleep over this).
But not only do I not have any text link ads on my home page, I have NO ADS on my home page.
What the HECK??
Happily, my authors now all have page rank between 2 and 4. For having only 6 weeks to build their inbound links, I’m quite thrilled.
David
October 28th, 2007 3:18 am
There is absolutely no difference between a regular text link and those 125X125 banners everyone is showing off. They both advertise a company and send people/pr juice to the “buying” site. I think google is off here on this – so, just make all your text link ad buyers create small banners instead of words, as I guess this is OK by google standards.
constructicle boy
October 28th, 2007 3:35 am
congratulation darren!you are back to pagerank 6 again!this is truly well deserved.For my blog,my pagerank jumped from 0 to 5.quite scary but well predicted in webtool.I must be doing something real right!
Olympic Blogger
October 28th, 2007 3:48 am
Great news about your PR6 being restored Darren. If Google can just snap it’s fingers and change yours in a zip. I think there would still be some more adjustments in the later days for some other bloggers.
BTW, I started my blog 8-3-2007 and it shot up from N/A to PR4! The consistent blogging really pays off…
Online Presence :: Make Money Online
October 28th, 2007 5:06 am
Online Presence moved to a PR4 :-)
Paul
October 28th, 2007 5:24 am
I think that Darren has pointed out something extremely important to all of us – dont rely on Google as your only source of traffic. Incidently I came back to the problogger site after reading about the recent update on another site – needless to say I imagine that any of the sites reportedly affected have actually seen traffic explosions in the past few days – with their brands being further exposed through blogs etc. For the big players they must be rubbing hands together at the exposure, for the smaller guys yet to become established independantly – dont try to sell links or pass traffic until your brand is big enough to cope with a google sneeze.
Brian Clark
October 28th, 2007 6:38 am
David, there is a difference if the links are run through an ad server like Darren’s are.
In other news, Copyblogger went up to PR 7 rather than down to 4. Not sure that means anything, but 7 is such a nice number. :)
igizmore
October 28th, 2007 6:50 am
i don’t know about you guys but i just moved from a PR0 to a PR4 :D
Elena
October 28th, 2007 7:26 am
Hmmm… do I delete all of the Paypepost postings that I have that I’m getting read to be paid over $100 for, or do I remove them to make Google happy, and get paid nothing just to have a higher page rank. I think it’s a no brainer.
Andrea >> Become a Consultant
October 28th, 2007 9:43 am
I’d been at PR5 for months. Even yesterday, I was a 5. Today, PR4. No text link ads on my site.
Audrey the Coffee Sage
October 28th, 2007 9:55 am
OMG! I dropped to a 4. I have not been that low in years. Sickening. Glad you got your rank back. I’m just sick.
Gary Grant
October 28th, 2007 10:14 am
We sell text links and we have a vast quantity of quality content. We dropped from pr5 to pr 4.
Not impressed, but at least traffic is on the rise, even though we are having some very weird server problems that keep leaving us with a dreaded white screen for hours on end!
Tom Hanna
October 28th, 2007 10:43 am
Any class action lawyers out there interested in this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
Triimart
October 28th, 2007 5:13 pm
I don’t what’s happening with Google Page rank. Google Page rank have making changes in Google Page rank algorithm resulting in Fluctuations.
Ahmed Mohamed
October 28th, 2007 6:00 pm
I 100% agree with this one.
Markk
October 28th, 2007 6:06 pm
Darren, I got a nice number like you. But I’m not sure how it came about. Would love to have your input. Anyway, it’s a nice feeling.
Michael Woo
October 28th, 2007 8:20 pm
I think that this would be the last update for the third quarter.. since new sites also have their PR updated as well..
Smart websites make money
October 28th, 2007 10:31 pm
Well, I have also been hit but not right that very moment when everybody complained about it, but 2 days later. I am not selling links but I don’t stress myself too much since everything else is the same
Audrey the Coffee Sage
October 28th, 2007 11:06 pm
As I mentioned, I did drop to a 4. I DO sell links text links. 6/10 right now. I did not have them last pr update. hmm… I also suspect some may remove their links due to a drop in rank. It will be interesting to find out. I guess this will give me the incentive to work on a different blog for a while. With a different subject matter. Sort of depressing and discouraging. I done complaining about it now. On with life.
CompuWorld
October 29th, 2007 12:07 am
I have a PR of 3 even though I registered this URL 2 months back. I guess the reason is that I shifted from blogger to wordpress and migrated all my posts to wordpress which helped me earn backlinks very quickly..
PR3 in 2 months…I am loving it!!
thoughtworks
October 29th, 2007 12:33 am
Congrats on getting your PR back. Has been following your posts. I gained a PR3 from PR0. Not bad since I just started blogging for a month plus.
YouShouldKnow.com
October 29th, 2007 1:23 am
I think that some of the sites that have been selling links are going to think twice about continuing, specially the ones that have been hit the hardest. We’re going to see many of these sites not living to their obligations to those who bought links from them, dropping their paid links and running for the reinclusion queue.
If you are worried about some of your paid links being dropped, you may want to consider looking at http://www.LinkSnitch.com
Alistair
October 29th, 2007 1:29 am
I have noticed blogger sites have higher PR although less back links !
Vittore Buzzi photographer
October 29th, 2007 2:27 am
Strange effects on my site. Only the PR of english pages seems to be affected by Google Page Rank Pendulum…
I don’t sell links…
Rahul
October 29th, 2007 3:39 am
I fully concur with the your advise,
it is precisely what google has said time and time again
“Make sites for users and not search engines.”
M.
Peter Morrow
October 29th, 2007 6:24 am
My blog was boosted to PR 4 this morning. I am not sure where Google is going with this, but I definitely believe this is Google trying to directly control the direction the internet is taking economically. This may be their way of enforcing a Keynsian economic principle – in that they do not want want websites ganging together to control page rank (and thus profits), and it may also be their way of speeding up the marketing industry. Evidently, many websites will need to be more aggressive in buying ad space to maintain their profits. Am I on to something, or is this simply them trying to legitimize the original theory which PageRank was formed upon? I wrote a short article about this and would like to hear from you all. http://pmmoney.blogspot.com/
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.
October 29th, 2007 7:04 am
Loose?
LOSE.
Come on, people!
Andy Zeus Anderson
October 29th, 2007 8:48 am
The sad part about adding no follow to sold links is that they become worthless to the buyer since the search engines can’t follow them and rank popularity. One of the first things i learned about exchanging links that they have little to no effect if the search engines can’t read and follow them.
I have added a new blog page to my site to allow link exchanging. I call the program RSS links and it allows the party exchanging links with my website to write 500 or more words describing the content of their website. This establishes related content to their website on my website, and offers a bit of a pre-sell to their offers and information.
In addition I have set up Feed Burners ping services to instantly blast these articles and links to the search engines meaning faster inclusion. All the links are rated higher because they relate to text on both websites. I get the benefit of higher quality links and partner added content.
Andy Zeus Anderson
http://www.andyzeusanderson.com
Viral Electronics
October 29th, 2007 9:28 am
I had a new blog I started and it has a big pr 4 so I was very happy about that. Dosn’nt mean that anything has changed but it does make me feel good. My site is still growing which is great and its growing more rapid now than it has sense it launched.
Leon
October 29th, 2007 2:29 pm
Hooray for you! Mine has a pathetic PR of 2.
Friedbeef
October 29th, 2007 4:12 pm
I’ve gone down from 5 to 4 and now to 3!!!
Mark - London Hypnosis Guy
October 29th, 2007 9:01 pm
I jumped from PR2 to PR4 (site launched 6 months ago) – and 2 other sites I manage went from PR0 to PR3 (sites launched 3 months ago). As I’m new at this I’m pretty pleased with that!
Those that dropped for “no reason”. Quite possibly some of your more authoritative inbound links have been hit. e.g. I had some comments on blogs and forums that dropped from PR5 to PR2 (they were no-nofollows) – so that might explain why you’ve dropped
Loretta
October 30th, 2007 1:26 am
Okay this whole PR mess has me looking at more individual pages this morning trying to tweak and optimize etc.
And I realized that ALL my pages have PR assigned to them. Including new ones that I just made today. Every single page of my sites are displaying PR values in the toolbar.
So is it changing to being whole site PR as opposed to single page PR?? Or is it just one of Google’s many wonderful dancing glitches?
I looked all over this morning and didn’t read about that anywhere. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and other bloggers thoughts as well about this.
Loretta
October 30th, 2007 1:30 am
Now that I’m clicking around other places I think it was just a toolbar glitch. Sorry for confusing everyone LOL
Travel Guy
October 30th, 2007 8:12 am
This is definitely interesting. Had a couple blog sites just bumped up in PR, an ecommerce site fall off by 1, and a couple others stay the same. No text link ads on any of them. I suspect there’s more to this than just selling ads.
Jens Meiert
October 30th, 2007 10:04 pm
I may continue to emphasize that it’s probably a definition thing since links to donors or technology partners might also be considered “paid” …
vic berggren
October 30th, 2007 11:46 pm
So what’s the Path forward if you have honestly not sold or even purchased any links? That’s my situation.
John Evans (Syntagma)
October 31st, 2007 2:16 am
One of our sites with quite a few TLAs has just been put back up to PR5. Is the start of a Google rethink?
vic berggren
October 31st, 2007 3:34 am
John do you do the “reconsideration” request or did this update back on it’s own? And Darren, how do you make such a request?
Busy Mom
October 31st, 2007 3:51 am
In the past few hours, I’ve gone from 5 to 3, to 4, and, back to 3.
I have 4 paid links.
I’m dizzy.
James (Dolphin)
October 31st, 2007 7:41 am
I have noticed on a few of our sites that it seems quite easy to get a PR4 from just a few links. It’s stepping up to PR5 that seems harder. As long as my rankings dont drop I am not really that bothered how big my PR is.
Victoria
November 4th, 2007 4:55 am
My website dropped from page rank 4 to 3 last week and is now 2 :( I have NO paid links on my site and never have done. Can anyone help to explain this for me? Can google tell if the links are paid or not? I have 4 non paid links. Thank you for your help!
RS
November 9th, 2007 7:37 am
If Google continues with these changes many of us will stop using AdSense and just have other ads. When we cant rely on Google and cant trust them, whats the point of using them?
And when most of us leave them, they will have huge problems.
snwop
November 10th, 2007 9:19 pm
I fully agree with Aaron Wall: as long as Google benefits from selling links (AdWords), it will be OK; but if someone else gets the money, Google will try to penalize you.
Manuel Gallego
December 24th, 2007 11:01 am
Google is not identifing correctly selling sites…
i never sold a link from my site ucables.com, but this summer i put a link to my new girlffriend website about real estate: ibizaloft.com to help her to get some traffic and from october i lost my pagerank from 5 to 0.
i have send some messages to google to reconsider my site, but i have not received any response after 2 months. My traffic decreased 20% and continue decreasing. I have removed this link already from my site.
I think google should try at least to contact with owner before to do this type of action.
Why not decrease rank of payed links from adsense too?
Some years ago, when google was created we love google because, all service that offers was free, and contributed to the original internet spirit to share all, with easy and simple way.
Actually google seems to be corrupted and bad directed for the money.
Sorry my bad english i hope you can understand me.
Happy Xmas!
vidor
January 3rd, 2008 2:30 am
I just read a report from Jon Leger mentioned that High PageRank Doesnt Means Good Rankings.
Maybe this is a good info.
e-leaguers
January 9th, 2008 12:39 am
Very helpful info. Will help on working my way up to SE’s. Thanks a lot
Oora
January 17th, 2008 2:55 am
I just drop my TLA code from my site since it drops my PR from 4 to 0. By the way how to remove site/account from TLA ?
Anthony
January 29th, 2008 6:42 am
So let me get this straight…….
If Google lowers a page’s rank for having purchased text ads doesn’t that mean less traffic to the site and in turn, less visitors to click on Google Adsense ads? Google is shooting themselves in the foot.
Darren Rowse
January 29th, 2008 8:08 am
Anthony – that’s one way of looking at it. However AdSense state many times that their AdSense and Search ranking departments are separate and that they make decisions on how sites are ranked without considering their use of AdSense.
Also – when one site goes down another goes up, so no matter who is on top ad networks will be making cash.
Sy
February 7th, 2008 8:18 pm
In regards to your main advise, I agree with the fact that google isn’t the only sources of traffic or viewers, and that your page or site should have the appeal to draw your readers attention. Nevertheless you still have to get your site or blog to the readers in order for them to decide whether or not they choose to read or disregard it.
Max
March 2nd, 2008 3:54 pm
This is what ticks me off about Google…
Mike Andrew
March 3rd, 2008 9:51 pm
I didn’t experience any fall in PageRank around the time of the October PR update by Google, but in late February 2008 I have seen many sites, including my own SEO company site experienced a drop in PageRank. I understand paid links can cause a site’s PR to fall but I can confirm that no inbound links have been purchased and no outbound links have been sold.
In all the years I’ve been engaged in SEO work this is the first time I’ve ever taken a hit in PageRank.
What other explanations are there for a drop in PR?
London Photographer
March 5th, 2008 8:46 pm
What is Google doing with its PageRank? My site has just dropped down from a PR2 to PR1.
Kudos Investment Property
March 6th, 2008 5:56 am
I too have been penalised by Google during this most recent update in PageRank. I wonder why Google is being so harsh this time around?
Jenny (staylakes)
March 8th, 2008 1:50 am
I want to keep hold of my PR4 so I’m definitely going to steer clear of buying directory links.
enfopedia
March 17th, 2008 9:11 am
What can a new site expect to receive from Google in Terms of Ranks, ex: PR 3, PR4..etc
Any comments would be great.
cd
March 21st, 2008 6:24 am
This is my best site: good quality, unique subjects. Still I have cover the cost + my time spending blogging it. PG has dropped from 4 to 0. That’s freaking nut!!!! I do sell TLA + Linkworth and have Amazon affiliates. But what is it that we suppose to do. Spend a huge chunk of a day and provide information for free? Geez! So let say I removed Linkworth which is at the sidebar. Will TLA embedded in post + Amazon affiliate link hurt my side?
Thanks
Grasmere bed and breakfast
April 3rd, 2008 7:46 pm
Can anyone tell me how long it will take before my site gets a PageRank and appears well on Google. I have just taken over a Guest House in Grasmere and I have a brand new domain and the site only went live yesterday. I have started building some directory links, but I am wanting to know roughly how long it will take before the site is generating bookings?
Alistair
April 4th, 2008 3:17 am
Hi there Grassmere bed and breakfast,
Can I suggest you submit your site to google…please read:
http://www.google.com/submit_content.html
Do not worry about Page Rank – you can have a very high page rank but score very low in google search results.
I also suggest adding your site to places like:
http://www.iknow-lakedistrict.co.uk
and
http://www.bedandbreakfasts.co.uk
(they are top of google when Grasmere and Bed and Breakfast is googled)
Hope this helps
Alistair
Lake District Cottages
June 27th, 2008 11:19 pm
this is an excellent article, but what can I do to increase traffic to my site, if not increase PR ?
Dr. Barnes
June 27th, 2008 11:54 pm
Our 6 year old site http://www.medassistant.org just went from a PR4 to a PR 2 overnight, yet we are ranking well for keywords. Does anyone have a theory and is this something we should be concerned about? thanks!!
Lake District Accommodation
July 22nd, 2008 4:41 pm
I personally think PR is not as important as it was. Google seems to be steering down a lexical keywords / page keyword density route (back to the old days of excite! in 96). Link text is still as important as ever, both internal and external. Whatever, Google is doing these days they seem to be purposefully leaving themselves open to increased manipulation by SEO professionals and weakening the index as a whole. I mean bulk cross-linking and lexical keywords stuffing in titles, they should have an algorithm to kick that stuff out, shouldn’t they? but I plead guilty on all counts;)
Lake District Accommodation
July 22nd, 2008 6:10 pm
Another point is this, how does google determine linking/cross linking against paid for links? One way they could do this is to check whether links are between sites on the same IP block / IP address – if so they are highly unlikely to be ‘paid for’. However, there are tonnes of sites linking to each other without penalty. The thing to bare in mind is that Google has always stated that it rather solve the problem via the algorithm as opposed to direct intervention as this is the only long-term solution for a viable index.
Tony
July 23rd, 2008 1:17 am
Re : Alistair’s comments – I get LOTS of traffic via this one – a bit like some of those you mention but much more personal – see http://www.uk-expo.com/bnb/
David Bradley
August 5th, 2008 12:54 am
Anyone been affected by the Jul-Aug 2008 pagerank swing…? Expecting to regain ground if you lost it in this round?
ThorpeCottage
September 26th, 2008 7:40 am
I’m not so sure the page rank has as much weight as it used to have. Low ranked sites can be on page 1 of Google and higher ranking sites with more daily traffic can be indexed further back on Google. Its not getting any easier, thats for sure.
SEO Alchemist
November 15th, 2008 5:01 pm
I’m pleased to say that that update didn’t do me any harm, although some webmasters I knew weren’t so lucky. A year on an the same Google Dance is being played.
Matthew Clark
January 5th, 2009 11:06 am
Thanks for the information, I have been working on increasing my Page Rank for sometime and had made some great headway and then in one day to go back to the beginning. The comments and the story make me wonder do I need to focus on Page Rank as much as I have been and I guess the answer is no.
Luxury Hotels
March 21st, 2009 12:07 am
I really don’t think PageRank plays a very big part in a site’s overall placements on Google. I’ve been lucky enough to retain my PR4 whilst competitor sites have seen their PR decrease, but I can’t say it’s had much impact, if any, on our placements.
Stephen C. Rose
June 24th, 2009 9:05 am
Thanks for the clear help on requesting reconsideration. I got bumped from 5-4 and it does make a personal difference to me. All I have done is add a few blogs to my blogroll and I do that regardless of their page rank. If I like them it makes no difference.
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