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ProBlogger – PageRank 4

Posted By Darren Rowse 24th of October 2007 Search Engine Optimization 0 Comments

Wow – this is an interesting one.

ProBlogger’s page rank is currently at a 4 – and so is Digital Photography School.

I’d heard blogs had been penalized in their page rank recently for selling text links – bizarre thing is that neither of these two blogs sell links. I’ve never sold text links at DPS and haven’t on ProBlogger for months now – perhaps I was penalized for taking them off!

Both had page ranks of 6 yesterday and previously ProBlogger was a 7. Even jobs.problogger.net has been hit and it’s on a subdomain. Looks like something’s going on over at the Googleplex – is anyone else noticing changes today or did someone over there take offense at something I said? Maybe they don’t like that I took AdSense off ProBlogger (joking).

PS: just noticed Copyblogger is a 4 now too – hmmmm.

UpdateAndy Beard and Daniel Scocco are compiling lists of blogs and other sites impacted by this PageRank ‘update’.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. it could be something to do with blog networks if engadget and weblogs inc blogs are down – although it’s a little odd as my DPS blog doesn’t link out to any of the blogs at b5 – so it must be a penalty because it’s being linked TO by other network blogs….. which I find odd.

    Perhaps we can be linked to too much?

  2. Wow, sorry to hear that Darren. It seems anyone can fall victim to the big bully that is Google. lol.

  3. Victor – you’re right, ultimately I don’t care what PR this blog has. The only people who seem to really care these days about it are those that make money as a result of it (either by selling links or reviews) – but it is odd that some fairly high profile blogs are all being re-ranked in the eyes of the biggest search engine in the world over night – yet others are not.

    One more thing on the blog network interlinking thing. I’m still not convinced. For example TechCrunch has a list of links in some of it’s network’s blog all interlinking them yet there’s no penalties over there. Same thing over at Gawker’s blogs like Lifehacker which links to every other blog in the Gawker network. Seems like a pretty hard thing to police – people linking sites that they own to each other.

    Anyway – ultimately it doesn’t change anything around here. Our traffic continues to go up, we continue to gather new readers and more links from others who like us – if Google want to change how they ‘rank’ us because I link to my coworkers and the projects that I work on – then that’s their right.

  4. So far so good for my blogs and sites. Maybe I’ll get some popcorn and watch the fireworks over the next two weeks… It should get interesting. Frankly I’m just glad to see Google doing SOMETHING. I’m tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  5. PR4 seems to be the magic number. My blog dropped from PR5 to 4, too. Not sure if it’s related, but I just added text links.

  6. My site dropped from PR 5 to 3, I’m not running a blog and I never had paid links, just AdSense and affiliate links. But my other site with AdSense only is holding the same PR 4 as before…

    Both sites are similar paintings galleries and the second PR 4 site is much younger with only 70+ backlinks vs. 1500+ for the first PR3 site. I’m confused…

  7. Whilst we’re strictly speaking not a blog – http://www.deeperblue.net – got hit with a PR reduction from 5 to 4 in last couple of weeks. It definitely seems related to selling text link ads. Spoke to TLA about it and got a very non-productive answer of:

    “Google is a business just like we are a business. They choose to operate the way they wish and we operate in our way.”

    Not particularly helpful.

    Traffic doesn’t seem to have been hit in any way but we just don’t know how it is going to impact us in the long run.

  8. Ours dropped from a 6 to a 4 as well.

  9. My main blog was a 5…and dropped to a 4 two weeks ago, and I woke up this morning to find it was a 3. My PR 4’s have dropped to PR2.

  10. I dropped from 6 to 3. Well that was quite a shock….

  11. Yep, my rank is also down from 5 to 4. Still, it doesn’t seem to be affecting my visitors and position in searches.

  12. Don’t worry Darren, you are still number one on google on a search for “about me.” :)

  13. Yes, we’re being hammered too, and have been over the last two monthly changes, some 5s reducing to a ludicrous 2, for example.

    We do sell a lot of links, but then we are a commercial operation, that’s what we do. Adsense is mostly text-link based.

    Why should almighty Google decide what price we can get for our space? If it’s true, it’s definitely a restraint of trade.

  14. I keep hearing lots of reports of rank going down down down and no reports of it going up anywhere. Just another crazy day on the internet!

  15. It doesn’t matter really, we don’t need pagerank to know if a site is popular or not, if a site is popular we’ll know about it soon enough :-)

  16. John – feel your pain.

    I can understand the text link penalties though – people buy text links so that they can increase their ranking in Google. People buy AdSense because they want traffic. Google don’t want their search results manipulated so they work against text links. I don’t like it any more than you do – but I can see their reasoning.

    Linking within a network is different in my eyes. At b5 we link to other blogs in a channel in our sidebars – so that people can find more content on similar topics – it’s about giving readers more content that they can use and showing them what else we do. If it helps with SEO I guess I could see why they might disallow he power of such links – but to penalize for them is a little bizarre as they are a legit part of our business of showing people where they can read more content that we produce.

  17. It all went to my site :)

    Yeah that’s really strange – but I wouldn’t be particularly worried about a Page Rank of 4. I’m sure it’ll work itself out soon.

  18. Darren, we also link across the network and have done so for some while without penalty.

    I take your point about text links possibly being different from Adsense links, except that most have anchor text advertising commercial services. I really don’t see how a distinction can be made there.

    I’ve just contacted Brock Boser at TLA. I’ll let you know what he has to say about this meltdown — and possible attack on the TLA business.

  19. I guess the Google Dance is taking place…
    But I just did a check on https://problogger.com/ using iWebTool’s PageRank Checker and you had a bunch of fours, and a handfull of sixes.
    Hm…
    I wonder…

  20. The Chief Operating Officer of Text Link Ads has just told me they will not reduce their prices for links despite PRs melting down across the board.

    I suppose they will remove the PR element in their algorithm.

    Just noticed our top trafficked site, which gets up to 20,000 uniques on a good day, has been reduced to 2. Wow! No comment necessary.

  21. Goes to show traffic is more important.

    And now i’m just as popular as problogger ;)

  22. John – TLA have been under attack for a while now from Google – I think that most of the penalties for text links happened a week or two back – this one seems a little different to me. Like I say – a lot of the sites being penalized don’t sell links – seems more to it.

  23. And I was waiting for a step up in my PR…

  24. My site went from a PR5 to a PR4 a few weeks ago, but like others, my traffic hasn’t been affected. I do sell TLA links, and was told by someone I trust a lot that that’s why: google is reducing PR for sites that sell links.

  25. Two sites of mine went from 6 to 3. Awesome.

  26. John Chow got cut down a couple of notches also.

  27. Mine wasn’t exactly very high– only a 3, but it’s down to 2 now

  28. Well you do have Text Link Ads as a sponsor and im pretty sure google doesnt like them, that could be the reason?

  29. I have worked hard for my content and I hoping my pagerank atleast does not dip below PG4. I’m happy to be there or higher.

  30. My sites are still the same. However, a blog I haven’t blogged on for months (I closed it) may have went *up*. I wonder if Google is updating their algorithm or something?

  31. Got demoted from PR 5 to PR 4.

    I sell text link ads…

    Doh.

    Oh well… I get mullah! :) $ $ $

  32. I suspect it’s temporary, since I’ve also seen a great decrease in the number of indexed results (circa 50%) for certain keywords. Looks like the beginning of a more major change?

    On the other hand, in support of the Google paranoia hypothesis, my own blog, which is a little minor local thing, has retained its PR6 rank, and one feature of it that may be germain is that I’ve never sold ANY kind of ad, period.

    I really think it’ll sort itself out and you’ll be back to a six or seven at the next PR export.

    Cheers.

  33. When you think of it, it is kind of scary how Google is totally free to make or break anybody’s business.

    Way too much power in so few hands IMO. :)

  34. Digg Favorites Slapped By Google. It seems something big is going on…

  35. Brem said: *When you think of it, it is kind of scary how Google is totally free to make or break anybody’s business.*

    The raw truth is that *if* one chooses to base an online business on revenue from Google ads, one is at the mercy of Google. You are the one who made the choice, and you succeed or fail as a result – no different than in any other advertising-based business.

    I think the question bloggers should be asking is: “Does my blog add real value to the Internet, or am I merely aggregating interesting things I’ve read elsewhere?” A frightening number of blog fall into that category, including Engadget and most of the high-profile tech blogs. The end result is that those sites often have archive that are of dubious value – thousands of “OMG, the iPhone is here!” posts, and repetetive “Hey! Check out this Darth Vader maske made out of fig newtons!” posts that don’t age well.

  36. Would you buy a text link ad if it had a nofollow hard coded in it? That’s the question.

    No offense to the guys at TLA, but how is your current model going to survive if the rumors are true?

  37. That’s weird. There’s definitely something going on at Google. My site is still at a PR1. As long as it doesn’t get any lower, I’m happy.

  38. I dropped from 4 to 3

  39. Hopefully this will finally show everyone that you can’t rely on a Google PR to determine the value of a site, how good it is, or how much traffic it gets.

  40. I think it’s as much to do with Google realising that they created a monster and wanting to destroy it as it is paid links/excessive linking.

    Jim Krukal makes a valid point regarding TLA’s business model. I’ve asked Patrick in the past to clarify where they stand on this but, alas, to no avail.

  41. I have to say, Darren, that to drop your blog down in PR is probably the best example of a company biting off their nose to spite their face I have ever seen.

    As far as I can tell, you have always done exactly what Google has told us to do – provide valuable content in a targeted niche.

    I realize they are sending a message that PR is moving towards irrelevancy. But including ProBlogger & DPS in this “message” is probably about as irrelevant a move as you can get.

    In the end, I think they will have truly hurt their cause by hitting ProBlogger. You have always focused on giving back to the community – and now you are penalized for it.

    Some “message”.

  42. PR is an outdated figment of everyone’s imagination. By the time you see your “new” PR, it’s 3-4 months old. The mechanics of PR have been gone over in exhaustive detail by Matt Cutts numerous times.

    PR is, funny enough, a PR term (where the latter stands for Public Relations). For all of you getting in a frenzy about your dropping PR, check your server logs and your SERP positions to see if there have been any changes – those are the only real factors that matter here.

    The conspiracy theories here are terrific reading though – no AdSense, selling TLA, etc. When in doubt, go back to the hard metrics of your site – uniques, pageviews, server load, ad clicks, conversions, etc. If you’re worried about a number that Google has told you time and time again is a factor you shouldn’t be paying too much attention to, you aren’t administering your site the right way.

  43. I dropped from a 4 to a 2 in PR. Reasons I think this may have happened.

    1) The hit ProBlogger took: I had many inbound links from the Group Writing Project you did a few months ago. If all those blogs took a hit, obviously that is going to drag me down.

    2) Netscape changing to Propeller. I had quite a few stories submitted to this service. I wonder if that change hurt my PR some.

    3) I had a “Buy Links” link to Text Link Ads on my site. All my direct sponsors are text links purchased directly from me also.

    Primarily I think my drop in PR comes from 1 & 2, but I removed my link to TLA for now, but kept the paid links from them up. So far my Search results haven’t dropped.

  44. Steve Broadleigh says: 10/25/2007 at 3:07 am

    Yep, one of my sites dropped from a PR7 (been that for at least two years) to a PR6 last week and then this week I find it’s a PR4. It’s had text links on there for years even from the time it went from a PR6 to a PR7…very curious

    sb

  45. I also turned “No Follow” Back on in my comments to see if this makes a difference.

  46. My PR went down from 5 to 4 last week and to 3 today. As someone said before, it does not affect old posts that brings a lot of trafic, even if I saw a small drop in some positions, but it could affect new posts…

  47. I’m a stable PR4. No ads, but I did receive more inlinks.

  48. Wow… scary to see such big changes across the board. Visible page rank changes are just a sign of things of the past. So did anyone notice any traffic drops from G a few months ago? That would/might correlate to the new published PR you see today.

  49. any word on new sites getting a pagerank for the first time?

  50. I wish Google had introduced some clear-cut was to deduct paid links for our pages. This could easily be added to Webmaster Tools.

    Instead of penalizing us, they could just compile a list of paid links and remove it from their index or perhaps, penalize them instead of us.

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