Sudden Loss of Page Rank - How to Protect Yours
November 16, 2007 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing
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Last night I got home from work logged into my PC and checked HomeBizBlogger.com; why I checked it I’m not sure as I was online all day at work. I noticed that the blog had Page Rank 0 and began to think what’s going on here…
Courtesy of Flickr
I guess I’m an eternal optimist because I thought oh maybe google made a mistake and this blog really deserves a BETTER pagerank. I should of known it doesn’t typically work that way. So here we are I have Page Rank 0 on this 1 year old blog; lovely. I checked some of Eve’s other sites and noticed that they had also lost all of there page rank as well.
At first I was a little disappointed, than a little hurt and now sad. (Just kidding about the last two parts). I told myself; if you stress about losing a page rank 3 on a blog you just bought than you need bigger problems in your life buddy!
Why did I lose the pagerank? I have one idea and only one idea. I believe Eve used to mark at the bottom of sponsored posts “This is a sponsored post” and talk about making decent money selling sponsored posts. If you do that on your blog I’d take it away immediately. I know it sounds paranoid but wow George Orwell 1984 on the net!
Basically google does not like paid listings of any kind. It is their index and they can do as they please they just don’t understand that webmasters need to make money as well and selling reviews, text link ads are a very common method. No wait they do realize that but they just don’t care because in theory it can screw up their index and lets not forget that google is first and foremost an advertising company that runs off a search. If the search results started lacking we’d find somewhere new to search and they know that.
Checking Your Page Rank
I was visiting these sites today and lots of them said system temporarily unavailable. Maybe something is up and my PR will come back tomorrow. (being optimistic)
What can you do to protect your page rank?
1) If you do any sponsored reviews; ONLY do reviews of sites you would do for free as it is that relevant to your blog and make sure you mention it at the bottom being “sponsored”. Also use No-Follow to link to them; they should be paying you for traffic; not page rank! If you get greedy with these you’ll ruin your blog and alienate your subscribers. Use with caution.
2) If you are going to sell text link ads don’t publicize it and it is best to do private sales in my opinion. Put them under “Advertisers or Sponsors” with no-follow but let them know that ahead of time. That $20 a month could ruin your page rank
3) Only do exchanges from sites that are directly in your niche or a compliment of it. Links from sites that aren’t related don’t hold much weight at all anymore. Also makes it look obvious that some outside force was behind the linking as there is no natural reason. A blog that sells crafts wouldn’t have a casino in its blogroll would it? (Maybe but…
Ultimately page rank is more for show than dough as those two adorable cats above are eluding to. Page rank is inherently valueless except for helping to some extent in search engines unless you are selling it which you obviously can’t now. It is weird how page rank became a massive market with money being traded left right and center and now it’s gone or almost gone. Also I wonder how many people really prospered financially from a higher page rank if they didn’t sell it; when is the last time page rank clicked an add or bought a product? Making your goal high page rank is vanity; making your blog high traffic is sanity.
Regarding search engine ranking positions I don’t think that page rank plays as large a role as google would like you to think. I have been competing on the terms “blog directory” and “blog forum” for a long time now. I’ve never gotten onto page one for blog directory but I’ve been top 10 out of 525,000,0000 for blog forum for quite some time. I found that sites ahead of me on both were lower page rank.
I think that if this blog continues under my direction it will get its pagerank back (did I mention I was an eternal optimist already) but it is no doubt a bit of a setback; everyone loves looking at the green bar when they visit a new site including yours truly!
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8 people have left comments
Sorry to hear your PR is 0. Mine is too. But I don’t see what’s the problem… Really. It’s time to move on from PR, to something better!
PR used to be a good indicator of the quality of your backlinks, and thus gave you an indirect idea of your search engine results positioning “juice”.
With the penalties lately, it isn’t even that anymore, so is truly meaningless. PR is a good thing to forget about these days.
No offense, but articles like this irk me. The only way to know what is going on with Google’s PR is to work at Google. You don’t have any idea how to protect yourself from a zero any more than the next guy. It’s all guesswork and speculation.
Just like the tech bubble burst, so did the PR bubble.
Even sites that do not do sponsored posts of any kind lost PR this time around, so you can’t say having text saying you do sponsored content was the catalyst.
Hmm, yes..,. and this article seals the deal on whether or not I keep you in my RSS feeder.
Honestly, you can’t possibly believe that your theory is the end all be all. Many sites lost their page ranks, paid posts and links or not, as the previous commenter pointed out. Everything you say here is pure speculation based on fear. Pointing fingers at the previous owner won’t get you any points in your reader’s notebooks, either.
Google is as Google does, and they do what they want. It would do you well to take a look through the antitrust suits going on right now because Google has decided to run itself in a monopolistic fashion.
I agree with LaDonna, the only way to know what’s going on with PR is to work at Google.
A very large percentage of the internet got knocked down to 0 PR. Visit some forums or something and you’ll see how many people were really affected. There’s quite a discussion at WebmasterWorld.com all about it.
Blaming Eve for things she would have zero control over, like Google’s decisions, will definitely lose you the reader base she built with care. Don’t be a jerk man, be realistic.
There is obviously a misunderstanding here. I never stated this was the end all be all theory and that I had the answer; I only said it was my idea as to why. I definitely think it has something to do with PPP or I wouldn’t have posted it. I’m active on webmaster forums as well and in many of the threads the people who were affected mentioned they were using some form of pay per post program.
I didn’t blame Eve for anything I merely stated that her practice of using pay per post and talking about it could be the reason. Using PPP services is common play and used to be acceptable; now just seems the rules have changed. Eve and I are on friendly terms I’ll forward this to her; sorry if you misinterpreted what I had to say.
John Chow seems to think similarly as well. Just today he made a post about buying and selling links in a google controlled internet and just broke a story minutes ago about how google has gone after pay per post and it’s USERS. – johnchow.com
Best Regards,
Rob
Because John Chow works for Google and would know that.
It’s all speculation based on anecdotal theory.
And why did you remove my last comment?
I’m sorry to know that you lost your PR. You should contact Google about this issue.
As far as the importance of Google PR is concerned, I think you’re wrong by saying that Google PR has lost its value. Google is a powerful search engine and it must maintain its quality. If they are punishing some people for playing with Google Search algorithm, they’re doing pretty good. It’ll only improve the search quality.