As often happens with updates at Google – today we see another adjustment in Page Ranks of many of the sites hit in the last couple of days. For example both of my blogs have recovered and returned to PR6.
Not all have though – you can see a list of some who have and haven’t at Andy’s blog (by the way Andy has done a great job at following this story).
I’ve had confirmation now from two sources at Google that this latest round of updates was ALL about the selling of text links. You can see Jeremy Twittered the same thing here. Some of those who have had their updates reversed today were falsely penalized for selling links (like ProBlogger which used to do it but stopped months back).
This latest furore has all been about the selling of links and is a warning shot to bloggers and webmasters who engage in the practice. Of course not everyone who sells links has been hit (there’s no way Google will get everyone) but it’s a sign of what Google are continuing to crack down on.
So what Should Bloggers Do?
So what does this mean for bloggers who sell links? I guess it means there is risk associated with it and that the risk is losing page rank (at the least) from selling links. Whether this also leads to a loss of traffic we’re yet to see.
If you have been hit by the penalties and want to recover your ranking in Google’s eyes the way forward is simple. Remove the links and ask for a reconsideration from Google using the tool in Google’s Webmaster Tools. To do this you need to have your site registered in Webmaster tools and log in – you’ll then see a ‘Request Reconsideration’ link on the right hand side of the screen that allows you to report your changes and ask for reconsideration.
Of course many bloggers are not doing this because they haven’t seen any decrease in traffic yet and don’t much care about a PR decrease.
It’s a decision that bloggers need to make for themselves and something that I have mixed feelings on. On the one hand I see why Google wants to stop the practice as it makes their task of ranking sites purely based upon whether the site is seen as an authority more challenging.
On the other hand I see bloggers who struggle to make money using AdSense and other ad networks and who have come to rely upon the text link ads. Many bloggers have seen text links become their #1 income stream. I also see this as being somewhat of a slippery slope for Google to go down as it’s going to change the landscape and force text link sellers further underground (see below). There will also be plenty of inconsistencies in their carrying out of the penalization of text link sales and lots of people pointing them out.
My Main Advice
My main advice to publishers whether they decide to sell or not sell text links hasn’t really changed – Forget about Page Rank and Build a Better Blog. Build a quality site that builds community, attracts readers from as many sources as possible (relying upon Google traffic as a sole source of traffic isn’t a smart move) and build a blog that enhances people’s lives. This way you don’t need to rely upon Google (or any other single site) to send you traffic and keep you profitable.
Will We see More and More BlackMarket Text Link Selling?
The selling of text links has always had a black market kind of feel to it – however I think that what Google has done this last week means that we’ll see more and more of the text link selling go further underground. We’ll see it happen less using systems like TextLinkAds and more happening in less transparent ways.
We’ll also probably see more and more selling of links inside of posts or on single pages and less and less on sidebars/footers etc.
It may even mean that we see text link selling become a more valuable thing to do as the supply of publishers willing to sell links dwindles. I know that even in the last month I’ve been approached on three occasions by individuals wanting to buy links on individual posts on my blogs – and the monetary value of these links was significantly larger than anything I’d heard of being achieved before for single links.
I don’t know where this will all end – but I doubt it’s the end of text links and I can only see both those who are in the business of selling them AND Google becoming more aggressive in this little war.
I just realized my three weeks blog get page rank 1 today..@@
My blog has got a spanking new PR4 so I’m happy after the whole exercise – honestly, to me, the little green bar does hold some shine despite all the furore that was raised over it.
Not to mean that it would compromise content, but at the end of the day, it is a rating metric that is being used by the majority, something I don’t see disappearing in the near future.
hmm – is everyone excited or just pissed off – two factors here, I think we all need to make a better blog or website and not care about PR
YouTube has dropped from a PR8 to a PR3 in the last few hours according to most Google data centres. That’s a Google owned site, remember.
Add that to the fact that AdSense channel reporting has been screwed for the last three days.
Methinks it’s a Google brain fart. A brain fart that will be manually adjusted to cover some of the backlash but a brain fart all the same.
Maybe Big G are having fun with us. Who knows? I’m guessing they’ll never tell us. Who knows? Maybe I’ve created a nice cover story for them.
Whatever the reason, Big G have had more virtual column inches devoted to them over the last 48 hours than I can recall.
Then I guess I was “rewarded” today for not ever having text links on my static site (hauntedlights.com) or my blog. Both went to PR3 tonight.
Like Karthik says, it still means something, even though I get tired of hearing about Google ruling the (net) universe. I don’t think they were right in what they did…who died and made them king? But yet, as one who’s been around the internet since the days when there was nothing but REAL information on here and NO ads, I hope their slap will clean up some of the splogs, link farms and more junk. Yet still, I feel it had a lot to do with trying to eliminate competition with adsense. And that is just totally wrong.
There are many false positives – basically it originates from THIS list.
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/110901.html
It appears that all the spam team members nationwide have access to it as part of a Google Intranet and can comment on the sites being analyzed and added as link sellers
I was happy to see that my music blog got a PR of 5 for the first time. My personal blog got a PR of 3 and my celebrity blog, also a 3. I’m jumping for joy.
Glad to hear that your PR has been restored, Darren. This is good news.
well I just checked and after being bumped from a pr4 to a 3 in that last update, I got lowered all the way to a 2 in this one. Im not sure what did it either. I have two text links that Ive sold on my site, could that have done it?
Glad to see you bounced back. You’re right about Google declaring war on sites who sell text links.
The irony here is that the popular sites who were dropped received more back links in the process.
I was lowered to a PR3 from a PR4, with a pile more backlinks than I had last update, so I guess this is the only explaination. I am being penalized just for running the TLA code on my site, despite the fact that I’ve never sold a text link through the program… So the question is, do I take it off and bow down to the google machine, or do I plug on and hope to some day make money through TLA?
Google really screwed it up. They lowered my sites…
Especially the sites NOT selling links!!
They are killing me.
if you think they’ve stuff up Jake – I’d use the reconsideration request form to let them know.
I have on the sites that I can. Of course on moremerchant I sell links to which I should be able to sell links.
All the links I have sold directly go with the type of site which shouldn’t be a penalty but google says it should be…
UGH!! We have to throw out pagerank and alexa as a tool to see what sites to advertise on!!
“if you think they’ve stuff up Jake – I’d use the reconsideration request form to let them know.”
Did you use it Darren?
I don’t mind this. My Blogging Community went from PR0 to PR2, bit Robin Hood ‘eh – give to the poor by taking from the rich?
It is a JOKE, I think ! In Chia , the blog PR almost rise today! so? do you think!
I was a PR5 two updates ago. PR4 before this week. PR3 two days ago. Now I’m at PR2.
And yet I’m selling more and more text links than ever before as my PR drops. I think by the time this is over, I’ll be down to PR0 and be making $1 million a week. :)
I sure hope so Punny. :) I am switching to Yahoo for my searches. I can’t put up with this wishy washiness. (is that a word??)
Oh snap! Here I sit reading about the Google slap and get the idea of checking my 7 Blogs that have allways (for 5 months) been PR0 ( I have NO paid links, and have done NO SEO).
So what happens… they are ALL PR4-5 all of a sudden! Whee!
Anyone want to buy PR5 links :-)
I got excited after reading this post, thinking that my drop from a 6 to a 4 might be reversed, or at least put back up to a 5. But unfortunately my page rank was squashed to a 2. I guess I shouldn’t worry too much, and focus on the content, right? But at the same time I get a lot of traffic from Google, and my gut reaction is that this is purely a punishment for not using Adsense exclusively… but if I made more than $1 a day on Adsense, maybe I would. Instead, I sell hundreds each month through Text Link Ads and private buyers. I don’t like where this is going…
Google seems to put anything to do with advertising through sources other than Google on it’s bad list. It is a clear and present danger to the free market place for a major corporation already in control of the lions share of text link advertising to be able to bully others out of the business.
Bloggers and webmasters need to report this issue in droves to the corporation commission as it violates anti monopolization laws. Microsoft faced similar issues from trying to corner the market on operating systems and add ons in years past. There is absolutely nothing good to come by letting Google take hard earned dollars away from webmasters and companies like Pay Per Post that derive their income almost entirely from paid links.
Andy Zeus Anderson
Webmaster and internet marketer.
@Punny Money – LOL at your dilemma.. Or should I say luck? That’s pretty good news I guess.
Anyway, mine got a boot from PR0 to PR3. I was really surprised. I thought it was just a cache on my browser. Hehe
The recent PR update was a huge boost to quality content and I would really like to thank GOogle for punishing those who were abusing the PR algo.
I have been getting lot of link exchanges requests etc. but never really cared about it (though the competing blog used it and went up the ladder).
Now I am quite happy with the move from PR 3 to 5.
Sometimes, Google is not just evil!
I dropped from PR6 to PR4, and now I’m back up to PR5. I suspect I got hit, not simply for “selling text links,” but because of my strong criticism of nofollow.
Wow! My brand new blog has got PageRank 4!!
But at the same time, one of PR5 sites have dropped o PR4 :( Oh well, I guess that’s the way Google works.
I can understand why google hates selling text links since many sites like TLA are used primarly for the purpose of boosting PR and search rankings. Google can always argue that, they don’t provide value to surfers in its true sense. So google has the right to penalize people who use such services to sell text links.
But why is google selling them through adwords? So google wants to make money from people like TLA, but we bloggers are not allowed to use them. Don’t you think it is a kind of double standards?
I guess those who don’t sell text links will get back their rankings (hope so) but it looks like those who continue to do so will not be given a reprieve. Hmm just a thought. But it’s good to hear Darren got back his ranking.
Darren, what about all the b5 media blogs. It seems I;ve been hit for this because otherwise I have thousands of genuine high PR backlinks.
RT
Well, I got zapped harder on the second round. (Though a couple of newer pages got some benefit.) So, I took your advice to Build a Better Blog. Did a little exploring and found that the Yahoo Publisher Network’s search box fit better in my sidebar, the Yahoo Publisher Network had some great financial news & charts perfect for my blog and while I was at it, it just didn’t take much effort to whack the Adsense and stick those Yahoo Publisher Network ads in its place.
Glad to hear it Tom. I am doing the same on many of my sites.
This post is so valuable to me right now. I recently switched from a blogger hosted blog to a self hosted wordpress blog. I lost my page ranking it was a 4, nothing great, but I didn’t even realize or forgot to add my new site to google.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us Darren.
Wishing you and the fam well.
Danielle
I remember back in 1997 / 1998 Google paid a little for each search generated on a website. I made some money each month way back then on it.
If Yahoo could develop something like that they could really get their part of the market growing again.
Yahoo results are better than google these days in terms of accuracy of what I am looking for so it seems like it may be time for Yahoo to push it more.
Google needs real competition and Yahoo is the one to do it I hope.
Congrats on getting your PR back!
I have a statement from Google here:
http://travolution.blogspot.com/2007/10/selling-text-links-is-bad-for-travel.html
My 4-week blog still has only PageRank of 0. Hope it’ll be updated as soon as possible. When will the next update be? A lot of blogs mentioned that a drop in PageRank isn’t that significant. However, almost all if not all of the link buyers will pay based on PageRank of the publisher’s blogs because it’ll helps their PageRank significantly.
PR doesn’t effects on SEO that much. So PR is not the big factor.
————
http://paidforwritedown.blogspot.com
wow, nice! PR6 again.. congrats..
I’m putting rel=”nofollow” on all our self-sold links. The problem is with TLA.com ads and Bizrate boxes.
Darren, do you know if these have nofollow at source, or are they part of the problem?
Congratulations on the PR6 once again. Does this means that selling banners is alright?
Google can’t get all of them but I am sure there are a lot of people out there who are helping Google by reporting sites that are buying and selling links.
Congratulations Darren for your PR6 return. Mine just upped 3 notches from PR0 to PR3. I’m just happy to know. :)
Is this the climax or ?
I think PR doesn’t hold any value anymore, if it does not affect the traffic it brings in.
So far so good.
Cheers!
Mani
Yeah mine has been swinging between unranked and PR4 all morning. Such sillyness :-)
Hmmmm – I went from a 4 to a 3 – never even touched a text link ad. If anything my incoming links have increased since the last update – I actually thought I may get a 5 with the next one.
Just goes to show you I suppose !
my site today from pr 0 to pr 4. Congrat to you to pr 6 again !!
How can Google tell if a link was sold as a rank promoting link sale or just as a direct advertising space sale? May be they don’t care, if it is in competition with AdSence they mark it as evil?
I think it is none of Google’s business how we choose to make money with our sites. I have and will continue to sell links
BeachBum Michael
Hi Darren,
“We’ll also probably see more and more selling of links inside of posts or on single pages and less and less on sidebars/footers etc.”
One of my sites just got nailed from using Blogsvertise, a drop in 2 points. So selling links this way really isn’t a good alternative.
See ya.
~Jason
Hi Darren,
That was a great trick, to get back the PR. ;)
I started two of my blogs few months back and
My one blog got PR 4
and another got PR 3
For the time being I am happy. :)
There is absolutely no difference between a regular text link and those 125X125 banners everyone is showing off. They both advertise a company and send people/pr juice to the “buying” site. I think google is off here on this – so, just make all your text link ad buyers create small banners instead of words, as I guess this is OK by google standards.
congratulation darren!you are back to pagerank 6 again!this is truly well deserved.For my blog,my pagerank jumped from 0 to 5.quite scary but well predicted in webtool.I must be doing something real right!