Google PageRank and Jealousy

Google has definitely done something with Page Rank - a LOT of sites have dropped precipitously recently and this site is one: we went from a PR6 to PR3.

Rumor has it that this is punishment for selling text links. If so, it's utter hyprocisy: what is the difference between Googles Text Link ads and those I sell on my own? Obviously the difference is that Google doesn't get the lion's share of my ads..

However, this may be just speculation. Google themselves hasn't said anything to confirm this, so it is still entirely possible that they are just adjusting PR to give more value to the really important sites. I mean let's get real: on a scale of one to ten for web site importance, how on earth could this site be a six? No, actually, if I look at it objectively, a 3 (or even a 2) would make a lot more sense.

Frankly, I don't care about PR. I care about overall income, and that hasn't changed. If it does - if Google stops sending me traffic - maybe I'll kill the "unapproved" advertising that makes Google so green-eyed. Until then.. no.

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Fri Oct 26 15:55:37 2007: Subject:   Niall


I don't think they'll penalize you for paid links if you add a rel="nofollow" to the anchor tag, that way they know it's a paid endorsement (which is not useful for calculating relevance) and not a natural link (which is useful).



Fri Oct 26 16:28:47 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Possibly.. I never thought about that. but you might be right..





Fri Oct 26 17:07:53 2007: Subject:   Adrian


This has been well known in the SEO community for some time and Google have told people this. They will not punish for text ads if this is purely what they are for but they will not judge the importance of a page based on the advertisers on a site. In reality, it would appear that sites that have dropped in pagerank are merely dropping down to the level that Google sees as appropriate. Pageranking is supposed to be a very vague way to judge the relevance of the content of the site which I'm sure you'll agree, often has little to do with those that advertise on a site. As the previous poster mentions, use nofollow on links that are adverts and this works well. It does not mean however that you will regain ranking necessarily but the big G might look more favourably on a site that is not pretending to be more relevant than another, whether intentionally or not. Googlebots do not follow their own Adsense links so why would they follow any other advertisers links. If anything thay are now giving sites a more accurate pagerank that people can work with as opposed to one that gives you a false sense of grandeur. The same applies for many other SEs but Google have been the best to inform the community about it in advance.



Fri Oct 26 17:13:31 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Adrian, I agree 100%.

This site never should have been a "6" and neither should hundreds of thousands of others - it just made no sense when looking at the internet as a whole.




Mon Oct 29 21:31:32 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Funny Page Rank stuff here:

http://www.sportsayer.com/google-pagerank-victims.php



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