I’m furious 
My google pagerank has gone from a 3, to a 2. Ridiculous. Absolutely unbelievable…
I probably have about 10 times as many incoming links than i had at the previous update (when i went from a PR0 to PR3). I’ve also re-jigged my SEO strategies since then, leaving nothing to chance. I’ve blogged more consistently and all of this has resulted in record RSS numbers and Alexa ranks, plus Technorati ranks.
Google have slapped me, just like they’ve done with JohnChow (now a PR4 from PR6), TylerCruz (PR3 from PR5), ProBlogger (Pr4 from PR6), Ades (Pr5 from PR7)… you name it. Any blogger out there seems to have been hit hard by this update and Google really are starting to play games. Even engadget have been hit, going from a 7 to a 5 
What the hell is going on 
Pagerank doesn’t mean anything on it’s own, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s bloody annoying.
I don’t think there’s one person out there who would say this blog has deteriorated since April/March when the last PR snapshot was taken. Certainly all of the other stats don’t suggest that. The fact i’ve been blogging solidly in those 5/6 months since that, plus building up legitimate backlinks, surely should be rewarded, not punished
It’s a bold move by the PageRank police. I’ve mentioned before google do not want to get on the wrong side of webmasters,but over the past 6 months or so they’ve certainly lost an awful lot of respect from me and i know some other people feel the same.
The most logical explanation for this drop is due to the fact i’m a member of PayPerPost. I can’t think of any other reason. Matt Cutts has spoken before about paid links and how google don’t like them. John Chow got battered by Google by basically being sandboxed and then stripped of his pagerank 6.
Google also pulled the plug on text-link-ads by sandboxing them in the SERPS. It’s no secret that google don’t like paid links. If they go after bloggers for using sponsored posts or links, well they’re not doing themselves any favours in the long run. Websites running google adsense haven’t been crippled… adsense is, in effect, a method of getting paid to blog/run a site
Granted, adsense holds no link value or power in terms of SEO or pagerank, but then again CPC ads, in my opinion, deliver poor results for advertisers compared to sponsored posts. They also, in general, deliver poor results to the small publishers who own a little blog, with maybe 20 hits a day.
Bloggers aren’t going to stop using advertising networks, i’m certainly not going to bow to the Google Machine. I lost my ‘Google can do no wrong’ attitude after they banned me from adsense, which i still maintain wasn’t my fault and due to their lack of openness with statistics/tracking, it would have been impossible for me to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ clicks.
This latest sucker punch from Google isn’t as big a blow, simply because all other stats are on the up. It’s annoying though, even if it just dents my pride more than anything else
About Sean MacEntee:
I'm a 23 year old Irish student, blogger & IT addict. I love building websites & then playing with them!
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I can imagine how frustrating this is. Doing the work to earn a higher PR and getting dropped down instead.
Google really aren’t your friends are they??
they certainly are not, not after this
at least other people are getting dragged down with me this time though
interesting times ahead with regards google.. perhaps they are doing the morally right thing by punishing people who buy success, time will tell.
it *could* be a case of biting the bullet and ‘putting up’ with poor PR until the next update, at which stage the ‘made for PR sites’ might have vanished and we may then have more honest/hard working sites getting what they deserve at that stage.
in other words, they could be testing to see who will ‘give up’ or who will continue to work despite the loss of PR… it’s all a guessing game at the minute.
Google may be shooting themselves in the foot with this one – if they continue to demeen Page Ranks for little to no reason, basically big networks, bloggers and many others will simply abandon the Page Rank following.
Instead websites/blogs will be judged by Alexa rank etc… (I’m more focused on Alexa nowadays though). Good thing too, as Alexa is constantly updating itself (I’ve had my rank upgraded three times this week alone!), which will make it a more competitive market – instead of waiting 6 months+ for your Page Rank to maybe (or in mosts cases – Not!) upgrade to a higher rank.
Google will continue to throw the toys out of the pram, they see companies like PayPerPost, Alexa, TLA, etc… as threats! They don’t like the big time bloggers, as most of them have abandoned Adsense.
Speechless I am …..
Your site is still showing a PR of 3 on my Google Toolbar.
Haha
I echo Mulley. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day, and all your (superior) peers have been affected similarly, yet you’re pissed-off?
Stop making irrelevant posts about car dash cameras and stop selling us inferior services because you’re getting paid to do so, and you might find yourself bucking the trends which WOULD be something to post about.
Perhaps a little harsh there, Ha
If i wanted to, i could accept about 10 times more reviews than i do for cash, but i don’t as i keep them tech related.. i’d say on average 1 in 20 posts are sponsored, if even that.
On a personal blog, nothing is ‘irrelevant’, it may be off topic however but deal with it, the definition of a blog is basically a diary so it’s about me, my life, what i’m doing. Granted, i can de-rail things somewhat and talk about wierd stuff, but at the end of the day i’m experimenting, doing something new with my ‘dash cam’ experiments and trying to be ‘unique’ and different.
I don’t think that warrants criticism.
for little laugh with John Chow
http://anidrawing-1.blogspot.com/search/label/John%20Chow
New update man
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I totally agree with your post. Google hates competition as far as their advertising business goes. But instead of trying to promote their stuff over the competitor, they simply just took the competitor out. They have gone too far with this one. I was shot from a 1 to a 0 in just four days, all because I signed up with PayPerPost. I know that because I rarely updated my blog before signing with PPP and I always had a 1, but once I started PPP, immediately got shot down. Google apparently has done aways with it’s policy of “Do No Evil”. Check out my Google rant at http://www.lifehappensblog.net/2008/02/i-got-googled.html