Well, well, well a lot of interesting things happened while I was napping last night. The Google overlords stepped in and did a world wide web sweep of PageRanks across the board for a LOT of high profile bloggers.
- ProBlogger.net – Now sitting at PR 4, from a 6, previously from a PR 7!
- CopyBlogger.com – A PR 4, I think it was a 6 before?
- JohnChow.com – Now at PR 4, dropping from a 5, who previously dropped from a 6!
- JohnCOW.com – still unranked
- Entrepreneur’s Journey – A PR 4 now, from a 5, which dropped from a 6 as well
- Me – Now at a PR 3, which was just recently a PR 4, that went down from a PR 5!
- Update: Engadget got knocked down as well. They’re a 5. I don’t think they care though.
Ironically
- Text-Link-Ads is still a PR 7!!!
- TechCrunch – Which has more ads than me, ProBlogger and CopyBlogger combined {well sort of, it just sounds more juicy} is still a PR 8. I guess it helps if you live in California?
- Other prominent tech blogs have remained unchanged, mostly.
So what’s the deal here? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a hiccup, or maybe they’re trying to send a message for something? What it is, nobody really knows. The Google datacenters are still showing varied PRs for all the above mentioned blogs. It will take a few days till the dust settles down. The PR might be different then, only time will tell.
Clearly though it seems that they are not happy with how some blogs interlink between themselves, and their networks. Of course the whole paid link thing is definitely a part of it as well.
But, I think it’s safe to say that if you are planning to make a living online don’t depend on Google for traffic. I guess they have realized that social networks now carry more weight in sending traffic to bloggers, than Google itself can. So this might be just they’re way of sounding upset, or spanking our hand for selling advertising on blogs.
Apparently traffic has not been affected, I jumped to the wrong conclusion there. My search engine visitor levels have stayed the same. I presume the blogs affected by the PR drop are also experiencing the same thing.
I would love for someone from Google to comment on this. Like that’s going to happen officially?
Thomas Sinfield on October 24th, 2007
1
There are rumours that google is ditching the Page Rank, I quite liked the idea, but it is getting frustrating that new websites are not getting ranks.
iamdms on October 24th, 2007
2
I have seen a difference in Google’s PR recently on different sites. I also noticed that the AdSense numbers are really incorrect (I have a set of three domains and though the impressions individually added up to 3,900 the other day, the total showed 5,000). Maybe Google is having some sort of math problems?
Thomas: Google is not ditching PR, there was a joke written by one blogger and a lot of people never read the whole post before running with the thought. PR is not going away.
PR is used by several other advertisers to determine the value of a site and thus it’s CPM. Unfair, but when you are playing with someone elses toys you need to just do what they want.
Wayne Liew on October 24th, 2007
3
Page Rank is nothing if we want to get Google traffic. Maybe we should just focus on our SERPs and Yahoo then.
I am not sure when will be the turn for Techcrunch and Text-Link-Ads. Again, a blogger like Dosh Dosh who didn’t sell any text links and paid posts got penalised. Is Google getting crazy?
James Wilcox on October 24th, 2007
4
I never counted on PR for traffic because Google can decide whatever they want about rankings. Part of the problem is the blogosphere is a tight knit community and we as bloggers tend to read the same blogs day in and day out because they are interesting to us. It stands to reason then, that those blogs are going to link to each other…and if Google is punishing us for that, there’s really no hope to raising your PR through link campaigns anyway.
The down side is paid review services use PR and alexa rankings as a way of determining your site’s worth.
Neil - Acopic Web Design on October 24th, 2007
5
S**t. Problogger and the rest of those guys must be gutted. I can hear their advertising revenue flushing down the toilet as I type.
Michael on October 24th, 2007
6
I’ve commented this before on many sites when they talk about pagerank. If Google is going to do something they need to do it, it has been too long since the last PR update and if they are going to stop using PR they need to debut the new system so we can all stop waiting for our PR’s to change.
Hyder on October 24th, 2007
7
I don’t think their earnings will dip much. They already have authority and advertisers know that. A little green colored line won’t change anything much.
Mike C on October 25th, 2007
8
This is a very interesting topic. It is hard to say what effect google is going for here. We will just have to wait and see what comes of this change.
Jalaj on October 26th, 2007
9
I remember once Google (in reference to link bombs) said that they don’t want manual intervention in the SERPs and that any changes required would be done on algorithm level… they deviated when they penalized John Chow and that might be manual one.
The recent PR drops however seems to be a change in the algorithm, rather than manual, that they have applied on a small set of sites. The algorithm as always would not be disclosed and that the SEO world have to find out be research.
andy on October 26th, 2007
10
well, i guess i am lucky ! my 5 month old site http://www.winvistaclub.com just had a PR update; jumped from 0 to 5. A search bought me to this fine article
andy on October 26th, 2007
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sorry please edit above ^ 0 to 4.
My-Article on October 27th, 2007
12
I also think google is not only the way for rank.
seo services mowglitech on October 27th, 2007
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As i know about search engines….all companies look forward for google updates and changes….but there are loads of search engines who can give you more traffic and PR is only google concern….rest never have such things but driving traffic and visibility too…
shnajafi on November 4th, 2007
14
I also think google is not only the way for rank.
web money on May 11th, 2008
15
My PR did not move on one of my blogs and I got a PR of 2 on my political blog
. A few of my other domains I do very little with actually received PR ranks of 1 and 2 also. I don’t know how much I care for Google PR either.
webmasters on June 25th, 2008
16
What about the websites that have recently created after the Google update. How long they should take to get their PR.