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.
Update – Andy Beard and Daniel Scocco are compiling lists of blogs and other sites impacted by this PageRank ‘update’.
I’m still at PR5 and I sell links. I left off my link just in case someone is watching. ;)
My Pentimento blog was a PR 4 until a couple weeks ago. Now it is a 3. This is the blog I mainly use to write for PayPerPost and by changing my PR it means that I am offered less opps and lower paying opps than before. Essentially, taking money out of my pocket. Now, if PPP would stop using Google as their guide to good blogs that would be helpful. ;)
Hey folks, it is all about GREED on the part of Google. Cutting out the competition ‘because they can’. What really got me is that now Google has a place where people can “report” you for selling text linked ads. Now we have the Google Gestapo?
I wish Google would get rid of the whole PR thing. They have not been doing a very good job of keeping it updated in a long time.
Let’s hope Google is changing that soon
Page rank no prob….. who cares……..
Is this like a new PR order? maybe to many sites getting too high PR, so now everybody is like “starting again”?.
Darren, I don’t understand how Google figure this (Larry)PageRank. Some of the crappiest cookie-cutter sites around have ranks of 4 or 5. When you check their links you find they’re mostly coming from one or two sources. And yet Google gives them a PageRank? As for the Search Engine rankings, they are often a complete joke. Have a look at “Affiliate Elite” in your Google browser. See who’s at the top? Not Brad Callen’s own affiliateelite.com but a graphic designer from Greece with the URL affiliateelite.org (and why Callen didn’t secure that has got me beat). The site is 4 months old, no PageRank and has a lousy 42 links – from 2 or 3 sites with PR3-5.
Work that one out. Callen’s affiliateelite.com only made it to the front page this week – at #6 or #7.
So I dunno…it doesn’t make any sense at all to take you from PR7 to PR4. Maybe you should ask Matt Cutts on his blog WTF is going on?
More on this here Who’s on First?
My site’s been up for 6 months with very good traffic (120K visitors during one particular month) and Google still hasn’t gotten around to ranking it. Seems to me that a lot of Google products, including pageRank, spend a lot of time being broken. I just wonder if they’ve diversified beyond the point of manageability.
If you check your PR on multiple data centers, you will find that you still have a PR 6 on some data centers. How long will that last though?
Check this out: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/i-requested-reconsideration-and-got-my-pagerank-back/
For those asking about sites that went up in PR. My site http://www.anmolmehta.com went from PR2 to PR4. Perhaps the adjustments have to do with the growth in the number of sites in particular niches? Seems like sites in popular Blogging categories were the one’s that took most hits. My site is on Yoga & Meditation which is not a very common Blog topic.
I see that Problogger is back up to 6, which is where a great site like this belongs :-)
Yep, mine went from 0 to 4 so I am happy
So I’m not alone after all. I took a dip from 3 to 1 despite doing all I can to promote my blog. What a bummer!
Oh.. it’s sad.
———–
http://marketingtraffic.blogspot.com
My whole subdomain went from 3 and 4 to PR0, and my subdomain contains various independent sites that perform different functions: blogs, directories, etc.
Maybe Google is fouled up, and some of my pageranks may change again very soon. For example, when I query a variety of Google datacenters using http://www.digpagerank.com, I get many PR0s and a few PR2s. My site was a PR3, so maybe PR2 will be where it ends up for the time being.
I do not see how selling text links is such a crime. Big guys like the New York Times and USA Today sell advertising to the highest bidders — period. For them, advertising revenue is the deciding factor, not relevance, not Google, not Matt Cutt’s stupid blog. Google is just an upstart compared to the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., and I’m sure they just ignore Google’s petty shenanigans and just invest in Google stock. (After all Google is quite willing to accept revenue from the big guys — and from all the guys it penalizes, that is, from those small, “bad”, independent webmasters who buy and sell links.)
P.S. Selling links is a lot more profitable, sustainable, and dependable, than Google Adsense and Google Referrals, especially when Google mucks around with pageranks.
Also, my site is about web hosting, advertising, affiliate networks, referrrals, and making money. Almost any link is relevant, but Google (or it’s pagerank algorithm) is not smart enough to realize that fact.
After putting in a lot of hours on my sites, and then finding that they go up and down in Google’s search results over a period of a year or more, I generally just ignore Google and trust that links and newsletters will bring me traffic.
Yes but how can you sell links if you show no rank?
I have not seen an official from Google warning re. paid links, so I continue to give Google the benefit of the doubt and I continue to ignore Google pagerank and I continue to buy Google stock/shares.
@Dave, here’s a confirmation from Google confirming it.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-confirms-paid-links-google-pagerank-update/5906/
I mean if Google wants to give all the sites under my subdomain ledbetter.freepgs.com PR0 because of a few paid links or because of affiliate/referral links, I will just cut my losses, quit working on those sites, and create new sites/domains. I mean the Internet does not pay the small guy that well to begin with. I have better things to do with my time than to worry about all the changes going on in SEO and pagerank.
Here is a good response to it all: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-confirms-paid-links-google-pagerank-update/5906/#comment-694491
I said a few days ago that I was still at PR5 with paid links. Not today. I finally got the hit to PR4.
This is going to wreck havoc with TLA.
Well, it seems to be across the board on majority of sites. I watch our rank monthly and record the positions (twice this month due to the changes going on) and found the following. Some went up, some stayed the same and many went down. I don’t know what to make of any of it.
We recently performed free directory submissions on each of these sites to approx 150 directorys (yes yes I know…). It worked like a charm in the first set of october results and now…well lets just say I’m not so sure.
PR Aug PR SEPT 25-Oct 30-Oct
1 1 1 3 – Standard Site
0 0 0 3 – Standard Site
4 4 4 4 – Directory
0 0 4 0 – Standard Site
1 3 3 3 – Standard Site
0 2 2 3 – Standard Site
0 2 2 3 – Standard Site
0 4 4 0 – Standard Site
1 3 3 3 – Standard Site
0 4 4 1 – Standard Site
0 0 2 1 – Standard Site
0 0 4 0 – Standard Site
6 6 6 5 – Directory
Our results don’t seem to be suffering in any way, I guess the question is now whether to do any damage control or just wait and see what happens.
Many sites dropped their PR. Google’s algorithm is working
Well Darren, it looks like Problogger is now back at 6/10 – congratulations!
Pagerank is useless it always has been I still cannot believe some people still get hung up on it at one time it served a purpose but not really not much anymore.
I see everywhere domains with a pagerank of 1 beating the pants off sites with a pagerank of 5 and even 6!
And as far as selling links go who does Google think they are telling people what they are allowed to put on their website?
These days all pagerank will really do for you is get your site spidered more often thats really about it but it sure made a lot of people rich telling people thay had to have a high pagerank and showing them how to do it.
If anyone has noticed Google is slipping a little in the search engine wars and this will continue since they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars snapping up other companys left and right.
Remember folks Google IS NOT THE GOD OF THE INTERNET but they act like it.
Jim
Several sites that I read like this one have gone from 6-7 to a PR4 or 3. I can’t figure out what is going on.
Luckally, it has gone better for me as I have an un-released site (codexplorer.com) that just went from 0 to PR4 without ANY content on the site or links to it?!!!
What is going on…?
I was told by my partner this was nothing more than another google slap and would pass just like the past google slaps. i could be wrong but unless google tells us, how do we know for sure?
Tom Koziol
Executive Blogger
http://smartmoneyconnection.com
unbelievable change in my page rank for the positive. my shit blog no one used to visit but thanks to this change in page rank i am getting visitors now. thanks google.
http://lethaljokes.blogspot.com
My blog’s PR going up from 0 to 5 this Monday, but my SERP is dropped to almost zero.
Since Tuesday, google sent no visitor to my blog.
Well… there are some visitor coming from images.google.com tough.
is there any relation beween PR up and SERP down ?
I am really hoping Google has changed something and its going to take time for things to adjust. At the moment its not just people selling paid links that have been hit, its everyone and lots of people are really really pissed off. There jerking down there Google adsense adds and screaming boycott(not that it would do much good). For some people Pr doesn’t matter but unfortunately advertisers put a lot of stock into Pr and it affects what you get paid for links. I’ve gone from getting paid really well for links across my 11 sites to making as much as my old desk job used to pay and having to work just as hard. In the mean time I’m going to keep my fingers crossed.
If a wonderful site like ProBlogger is being knocked down, I would say something is wrong within Google’s rating system. Especially concidering you’re not selling any links. Doesn’t fit with the theory that this is the reason so many of us are losing PR.
I’ve had 3 blogs knocked down and 1 increase in PR. The one that increased virtually has no audience yet. Of the other 3, 1 gets a lot of traffic and I don’t sponsor any posts from it at all. The other 2 are heavy with sponsored posts, but I get ok traffic. So, who knows what’s going on here.
In any case, whatever Google is doing, I guess we all have something to talk about. I for one have decided to follow this, but not change my blogging habits at all, except to work even harder on generating quality posts and making as much money as I possibly can in the process. Google doesn’t scare me!
Wendy
With the PR rules for google now changed the whole paradigm is in the process of shifting. Everyone concerned about rankings is trying to figure out: What exactly is the best approach to gain maximum top PR exposure? Recent changes are forcing blogs and other websites to now rethink exactly what needs to be done strategically to gain PR and more importantly, if you currently have a high PR, how do you hold on to what you’ve achieved? Time to listen to the experts.
Well It seems this no long applies as your PR has gone back to 6. It almost seems that you had to make some noise and google would then bring your PR back.
I myself have been hit from PR 5 ro PR 3. The strange thing is that I dont make a lot from my site, just enough to actually pay the server bills and site design.
At the end of the day is a toss up, follow inline with Google and the site goes down, or take the PR hit like a man and keep rolling.
Thanks anyway for your pointers.
I think google’s systems is being hacked by your competitor. They try to lower everyone’s pagerank. LOL!
Hey! This is nuts! What the hell Google is? This is unfair! May be you should make a campaign to fight google back.
Something happened to our site, GadgetGrid.com, today. Our goggle hits are down about over half. Keywords that brought in hundreds of page hits just disappeared? Our new posts seem ok, but any older then the Nov 24rd will not even come up when you google search (image search is still working fine). This is killing us at the most profitable time of year! Thanks Google!
We haven’t changed a thing, so I would assume Google has?
Any ideas?
Scooter
http://www.gadgetgrid.com
It’s absurd that Google would penalize people for the manipulation of the page rank system. In the first place, this won’t happen if they did not put too much prime on page rank. There will always be enterprising people who will make an opportunity out of other people’s needs. I for one would love to have a page rank so I may qualify for paid blogging, and if there’s an affordable and quick solution, it will definitely be welcome.
I love your site. Very informative for newbies like me :)
Cheers!
Jing.
http://www.myfabuniverse.com
Looks like justice have been done to your blog, it was updated to PR 6 in this update. Great work!
Regards,
James Burt
http://www.nhse.org
Just noticed that my page rank has dropped from 6 to 4 :(
Jason Fox
http://www.swisswatchboutique.com
Gawd, mine had gone to N/A too, I hate the fact that they have to reduce our PR’s just because we monetize our blogs. What’s the catch anyway? They do the same thing, too I guess on their ‘other’ websites perhaps. Damnn, it makes me go all crazy. –,
This is exactly the same as Pay Per Post.
Google is stopping other methods of people advertising their website, forcing people to spend huge amounts of money on their adwords system, which is completly and utterly flawed in that more people = higher bids, but not nessesaraly more traffic !!
Hmm, here’s a passing thought from someone that is just learning the makeup of PageRank. PageRank is an Al-Gore-Rhythm right/wrong? (sorry, compensating for spelling) In any case, I’m guessing that the pagerank number is defined by applications that run either on demand as needed or scheduled as a regular event. These could call other apps in the process. And, they don’t necessarily need to be run sequentially either.
I would suspect that the process of calculating PageRank is done by a slew of specialized applications (niche in their own right) that run to create a single numeric output for a given page. If true, this means that one change to anything in the middle could potentially change the pagerank.
Pure speculation of course, but this might explain why the change was so dramatic. If what you say is all that you changed, seems very odd to me.
Could just be a monkey in the server room or behind the keyboard. Perhaps. Cheers!
I just got shock today that my PR4 blog has experienced a free fall to PR 0.
What’s wrong with google anyway?
Is this kind of rankin parameter truly works out there?
Just had a dip in PR today. I think PR is over rated ;)
My blog’s PR drop from 5 to 4 last week
And today fall to 0 …:(((
Will my PR climb back to 4 or 5 ?
PR is too much overrated, you should not worry too much about it. Your traffic is still there that’s what counts more
Does the PR actually have anythingthing to do with actual views or is it just an indicator of popularity?
Wine Insider Wine Reviews
Keep blogging guys, don’t let the PR Bug bites!!
problogger this time is pagerank 6
http://www.4weblog.com/multiple-pagerank-checker.php?u=www.problogger.net
Man, in four months i got page rank 4
i dont believe it.
I wouldn’t judge a site’s clout by it’s PageRank. It may have some effect, but other factors matter more. The following may be of interest.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors