scriptygoddess

28 Oct, 2007

Pagerank

Posted by: Jennifer In: Announcements

So I've seen a few blogs talking about how Google is now punishing sites that sell link advertising, by downranking their sites. I've now seen this firsthand on scriptygoddess. It used to have a page-rank of 6 – and now it is a pagerank 43. I've seen other sites (good sites with good content) get downranked.

I know I'm probably stating the obvious – but I think its outrageous that Google wants to hurt sites that have good, valueable content, just because they'd like to make some cash for their work. What exactly is "wrong"/"bad" by my making some money for my effort? For a long time I had scriptygoddess remain up, and posted information I had learned – out of the goodness of my heart. But when I started working for myself to help make ends meet – it made sense to put up advertising on the site to help that end as well. I tried to be clear about which links are sponsored links. While it would have been lucrative to use those “inline” advertising links (where they link text right in your own post to advertisements) I didn't go that route because I felt it gave a bad user experience. Some links were intentional – and others were advertising and how could you tell the difference without mousing over or clicking on it? Annoying.

The biggest joke of all this, is of course, Google isn't punishing sites that ONLY contain GOOGLE advertising (which, by the way, pay the least/worst of any advertising I've contracted with)

On the whole, and up until now, I thought Google's been a pretty cool company but this move is just plain bad. Back before the dot-com bust – many sites were designed to draw revenue strictly from advertising. The business models didn't work out quite right – but I think I've been seeing a revitalization to that idea – the right advertising can support a website. And what is Google trying to do? Completely smush it and stop progression.

And I think it will eventually come back to bite them. I've found recently that when doing searches strictly through Google, I've found myself going back through their pages a lot more than I used to – and in some cases never finding what I had needed to. So by downranking sites with valuable information, they've pushed them further back in the list of pages, and maybe in some cases, pushing some sites so far back that you'd never find them *making their own search engine not as useful as before*.

I hope they re-think this idea.

Edited to add: The more I think about this, and the more I read, the more I have to laugh. Google is playing "link-police" from what I understand because their complaint is that selling links puts less-relevant sites up on top when you do searches – and that you're not allowed to "buy" that position. Right. That's why when I do searches on Google, top of the page, and all along the side are links for sites that BOUGHT that position. So really what they're saying is it's only ok when you're paying GOOGLE. *no one else should be making money* except for them. I think it's definitely time to change my default search engine!

15 Responses to "Pagerank"

1 | Billy

October 28th, 2007 at 3:01 pm

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I'm not sure what your point is. Google isn't telling you that you can't buy text links. They've just adjusted their algorithm to say that purchased text links aren't worth as much as earned text links. That makes perfect sense to me: I'd much rather have the top search results include sites that everybody links to because their good sites, rather than because those sites had enough money to buy enough links to get to the top.

And the results at the tops and sides of search results are clearly marked as advertising. If you pay to get to the top of the organic search results, how does a user know you didn't actually earn that spot?

2 | Jennifer

October 28th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

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My point is they are de-valuing sites with good content – on the sole fact that they are selling text links on their site. If they want to give less importance to the sites I link to because of that, that is one thing, but they are basically saying that because I'm trying to make some money from my website by selling advertising – my site's content is not as relevant now.

And this will also have another effect – when I'm searching for information, unless the site is free of sold text links, it may not come up in the earlier pages – despite the fact that regardless of how GOOGLE sees it (ie. they've sold advertising on the site so the site itself should be de-valued) – the content IS relevant to me…

3 | valerie

October 28th, 2007 at 4:50 pm

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"it’s only ok when you’re paying GOOGLE. *no one else should be making money* except for them."

I hadn't really thought of it this way before, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's really what it seems to be boiling down to here.

I have personally seen a drop in all of my sites, even those that didn't sell advertising. I can only assume there's more to it than the paid links or that they were affected because my bigger sites with paid links went down. Wish I knew more about this…

4 | valerie

October 28th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

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I have more thoughts on this, too, but not sure where I'm going this…

My blog site used to rank #1 on Google when I'd search my name. Since the drops, I've gone from a 6 to a 3 or 4 (not sure, it was 3 the other day but I and others are seeing 4 now) and have completely left the first page for that search. Heck, I don't know where I am anymore, I've gone through the first five pages and not found a single one of my sites.

But what I find to be strange is that in the #1 spot is now a MySpace profile with a PageRank of 3. Secondly is another MySpace profile that has a 0 ranking. After that? Two YouTube videos.

I know next to nothing about SEO and am not really positive what to make of this, but it does certainly stand to reason that Google is looking out only for themselves.

5 | rolygate

October 30th, 2007 at 10:16 am

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Hey Jenn,
I was thinking of advertising on your site maybe. But now you are only PR3, I guess I'll wait till Feb and see.
Chris :)
p.s. check out that wiki…

6 | Jennifer

October 30th, 2007 at 11:44 am

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@chris 😛 lol

7 | Luke

November 1st, 2007 at 5:08 pm

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Change your default search engine to what exactly?

Google has become ubiquitous and very powerful – gmail, google docs, search, calendar, even picasa and blogger. I use all these tools. But it's naive to expect them to behave in a totally balanced, unbiased fashion. They're a business.

8 | Luke

November 1st, 2007 at 5:13 pm

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Actually I should clarify this, as I have no huge love of global corporations. Being a business gives you the right to change your product (search) to weight sites differently. It shouldn't give you power (only checked by the shareholders) to exploit offshore labour and ripoff consumers, which is how this 'its business' argument is used.

9 | rolygate

November 1st, 2007 at 6:12 pm

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I believe you have 2 problems here:
1: You have to be a little bit careful about having G. Adwords and other ads on the same page;
2. G. obviously don't like text ads. They are probably OK if you JavaScript mask them, since then they are not direct links. Or, you could turn them into gfx and mask the link.
What they don't like is any attempt to increase PR – which translates to paid links. If you mask the links, so they don't appear as direct links, then that is within their TOS. You should have no problems then. If people are paying to get a direct link from a high PR page, that is basically a paid attempt to increase PR. I don't think you can complain if G. don't like that, as it is a clear breach of their TOS. You can play their game and get their approval, or take the money – your choice.
With luck, you might be able to get the best of both worlds by masking the links. You're a coder, code it…

10 | Redefine

November 20th, 2007 at 10:34 am

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I was just thinking about this the other day and I stumbled on your blog looking for information about PHP & Urls.

Google used to be an incredible search engine. Now Greed has turned it to something almost useless. Try doing a search for "Registry Cleaner Freeware" and you will find NOTHING that is Freeware.

Goolge needs to take the High Ground and fix that before they penalize folks that actually have usefull information posted.

Yar!

11 | wellsmall

November 26th, 2007 at 3:45 am

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I don't really agree with your understanding on the reasons your site dropped in rank. On my website I use a few "affiliate" links and some Amazon Associate stuff, namely the product cloud which sucks and the automatic link creator widget which is even worse but I've never used G advertising. Frankly, I don't want visitors finding me by my ads because then they won't stay, they won't come back, and they won't use me as a reference [reciprocal links].

If G evaluates advertising the way it evaluates regular content, my understanding is that this is what causes a site that has nothing but ads to appear before a site that has real, unique and useful content. Lots of keywords pull up sites that are basically links to other sites that again, link to other sites and you end up with nothing in the end and a lot of time wasted.

With this change, and again this is just my understanding, is that G is just giving USEFUL CONTENT a priority over useless (in the visitor's position) advertising. They're just raking sites based on what will benefit users as opposed to what will benefit the owner. Though, receiving visitors that come to read YOUR CONTENT are the only real visitors you should want. The others are virtually useless.

Every for-profit company is just out to make money. Google is no different. They just have a different business than us. All the other search engines out there are in it for the same reason, they just pick up the technology at different times. Yahoo and AOL and MSN have and will continue to change their practices just like Google does…we will forever fight the battle of the rank. This business of search engines is free advertising for us. If you want your site in a certain position, either follow Google's protocol or pay for the privilege of being number one.

12 | Jennifer

November 29th, 2007 at 11:12 pm

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My issue isn't with them down-ranking sites that have nothing but spammy links – my issue is the fact that I dropped from 6PR to a 3PR because of TWO links on my site. TWO. vs the MANY other VALUABLE links and content I have on this site. By dropping my PR, as far as I understand, that puts me lower in the search even when someone is specifically searching for the content on my site. Lets review the YEARS worth of content I have collected on this site vs TWO LINKS they feel shouldn't be there. I'm sorry – I just don't think it makes sense – even for them and their business.

13 | Linda

November 30th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

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Another interesting topic Jennifer.

From its inception I have been a huge fan of google. Of late that fan status is dropping. The ranking system is competitive and has been from the beginning. Where there is a buck to be made as usual business owners, developers and of course the SEO experts will sell their mother for some edge.

It is not a far stretch to realize google is also doing that.

As a surfer looking for information I want the most viable for my time.
I have learned to skip the sponsored links at the top and side and when I land on a site that even hints of more sponsors than pertinent information I am gone before the page fully loads.

Websites such as yours that is packed with content I would probably spend hours on research.
Advertisements on the side are fine I can look or not.
As a consumer I am more likely to click a link from a product you recommend from personal experience than just a paid sponsored link.

I was talking to a representative of a company called NettSolutions the other day. I was told they have cut a deal with both google and yahoo where they contract for position 1, 2, or 3 at the top of your (interested company) keywords. Those positions go for $200 upwards a month.
What does that logically tell you before google or yahoo would even consider such a contract?
That they will get more for those spots than what they would get from any other sponsored ad from clicks or any other means.

This young man was shocked that a consumer might skip the top placements for any reason.
Imagine what the business person would think who is paying by the month.

The consumer is not totally stupid and neither is the surfer looking for information.
So you are right sooner or later google will lose its important support base if it does not watch its P's and Q's

Personally if I were google any spam link domain would have a -0PR

14 | Dave

December 5th, 2007 at 7:52 am

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From what I understand, they haven't actually decreased PR directly of sites that sell links – they've just diluted the PR those sites pass via those links.

The problem is, half the web has been caught up with (paid) link trading for the past x years. I doubt your PR went down because *you sold links* – it's more likely sites that linked to yours *also sold links*, and the PR you got from them has decreased accordingly.

If it's any consolation, I found your site through google right near the top for a PHP query. What I reckon has happened with this fairly substantial change is a LOT of sites have lost PR, so the overall effect on individual sites probably isn't quite as dramatic as "argh I just went from PR6 to PR3" actually seems.

Good luck with the blog :)

15 | extreme webmaster

February 3rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm

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One of my websites got bitch-slapped even though it contained only AdSense. They are hypocrites like every big company.

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