What if Google Had to Rank in Google?
Posted on October 17th, 2007 by DotComMogul under Google, Most Recent, search enginesA friend sent this today … Had to laugh … it’s so true. What if Google Had to Rank in Google?
Not so funny is Google dropping PageRank on numerous sites for selling text links.
Included in the Google Slap are:
netscape.com pr9 -> pr7
washingtonpost.com/ PR7 -> PR5
forbes.com/ PR7 -> PR5
suntimes.com/ PR7 -> PR5
sfgate.com/ PR7 -> PR5
statcounter.com/ PR10 -> PR6
masternewmedia.org/ PR7 -> PR4
autoblog.com/ PR6 -> PR4
engadget.com/ PR7 -> PR5
problogger.net/ PR6 -> PR4
copyblogger.com/ PR6 -> PR4
joystiq.com/ PR6 -> PR4
tuaw.com/ PR6 -> PR4
searchengineguide.com/ PR7 -> PR4
searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 -> PR4
johnchow.com/ PR6 -> PR4
quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 -> PR3
weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 -> PR4
andybeard.eu/ PR5 -> PR3
seroundtable.com/ PR7 -> PR4
blogherald.com/ PR6 -> PR4
Personally, I think it’s intimidation to prevent other companies from competing with Adsense and Adwords. With heavy-handed tactics like this, I predict that Google PageRank itself will become irrelevant. Clearly, bloggers and Internet Marketers are not going to give up monetizing their sites and I don’t really think that PageRank is going to affect the popularity of those blogs and sites that are affected by Google’s slap. Additionally, I hardly think that advertisers are going to care about a drop in PageRank when their ad is getting seen by hundreds of thousands of people who will continue to visit the sites and read the blogs in spite of it’s PageRank.
I’ve been told I’m wrong about it being about text ads and I concede, I may be wrong about the reasons behind Google reducing PageRank on some of the top sites on the Net. Nevertheless, I think that the end result will be to just make people care a great deal less about PageRank. I just removed my Google toolbar so that I am not aware of PageRank …. feels liberating … life without PageRank. This blog is new enough that it doesn’t have any PageRank, but I have one site that managed to creep up to PageRank 3 … it is now 2 … nothing changed, no text link ads, no links in creepy neighborhoods, a lot of content … who knows why it went down. It just did because Google decided that whatever was right with my site before … is now less right. Screw you Google.
TechCrunch’s article, Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms seems to imply that the loss of PageRank is due to blog farming rather than selling text links. Ironic since TechCrunch itself is a blog farm and I don’t believe their PageRank was involved in the PageRank Massacre. As an example, with just a little investigation into the linking structure of the TechCrunch network of sites (blog farm), I discovered:
TechCrunch linked to
* InviteShare
* CrunchGear
* CrunchBoard Jobs
* CrunchNotes
* TalkCrunch
* MobileCrunch
* TechCrunch UK
* TechCrunch en Français
* TechCrunch en Japonais
* TechCrunch
CrunchGear linked to
TechCrunch
also CrunchGear features “Fighting Software Piracy in Third-World Countries”
and yet Invite/Share has links to numerous torrent sites notorious for pirating software, music, TV, Movies
Crunchboard linked to
TechCrunch
MobileCrunch
CrunchGear
CrunchNotes linked to
TechCrunch
TalkCrunch linked to
TechCrunch
CrunchBoard Jobs
TechCrunch en Français
CrunchNotes
MobileCrunch links to
CrunchBoard Jobs
TechCrunch
CrunchNotes
TalkCrunch
TechCrunch en Français
MobileCrunch
CrunchGear
TechCrunch UK links to
itself- TechCrunch UK
TechCrunch
MobileCrunch
CrunchGear
TechCrunch en Français links to
CrunchNotes (EN)
TalkCrunch (EN)
MobileCrunch (EN)
TechCrunch en Japonais
TechCrunch (EN)
CrunchGear(EN)
TechCrunch en Japonais links to
* TechCrunch en Japonais
* CrunchNotes
* CrunchGear
* TalkCrunch
* MobileCrunch
* TechCrunch UK
* CrunchBoard Jobs
* Invite Share
October 27th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
They didn’t make the change for selling links… That’s VERY tough to guage, even for a powerhouse like Google. But that’s what they want you to think. I know of plenty of sites, including my own, that dropped a point in PageRank, and none of them sell links whatsoever, and they never have nor ever will. So what’s Google’s excuse there? Ohhhh I know, it’s because they have no real reason, just some fabricated excuses to divert your attention away from the real changes. I won’t go into it, because I just blogged about it, and I’m so anti-conspiracy theories, but this is just plain truth, and I would prove it, but it would also crack into a lot of what I learned from my TrustRank research over the last 12 months already, so no free lunches. But yeah, it’s a total crock. They are just using sites that will bitch about it on their blogs or sites that people will notice changes on it, simply to divert their attention elsewhere. Sneaky sneaky, but it works.