Warning, this short post contains sexual innuendo (guess it’s too late for the warning now 
) as well as a completely unproven conspiracy theory.
Google’s Problem
People are selling links which influence search engine rankings. Google hasn’t found a real way to do anything about it. They can identify some links algorithmically but not most of them.
Result: smart link buyers / traders are getting away with murder and Google’s got their undies in a bunch over it.
Google’s Solution
Since they can’t find a real solution to this problem, they go for the next best thing: viral scare tactics.
Oogabooga!
So what they do is chop the PR (read little green bar) down for many of the prominent SEO and marketing blogs.
Big mouth belly button worshippers these bloggers are, they can’t resist bitching and moaning about it. Minutes later, the gyrating echo chamber some refer to as the blogosphere explodes with claims that paid linking is dead and definitive, final-word-last-notices that Google will NOT tolerate these slimy activities one moment more.
Either that or they had an editor subtract a couple of green pixels from an imaginary ranking system…
Bet you some egghead gets a cheap “creative thinker of the month†plaque for coming up with that one.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Best thing I’ve read in a while. I’m sick of hearing about this PR drop crap. Thank you for saying it just like it is. I personally use the word circle jerk for these PR fanatics.
Hey Chris,
Thanks. I’ve had it up the wazoo with this PR story but the John Chow Google handjob title was too good to resist posting…
To me:
First and foremost Google wants to get rid of the competition as much as possible! (what else is new right?)
What exactly is their Adwords? Basically the Same = Paid Text links!
Second: from my experience Focused Traffic brings me money not some invented artificial “page rank”.
Hey Dagmar,
Yup. that’s definitely a big part of it. Sometimes it’s just funny to watch them squirm
Lets put this into perspective.
I just looked at blogsearch and currently have 279 links to my main article.
Technorati say 281 links
If you are in the SEO niche, planning to launch something related to SEO, whilst you realise that that green bar is fairly meaningless for search results, it is part of your social proof.
But there are also some ranking drops for stuff I am not really trying hard to rank for, such as DayJobKiller where I am down to 4th – it is not like I am doing a link building campaign for the term, I just gained a couple of poor quality links.
I am still ranking 3rd for Jack’s Social Power linking, Jack finally overtook me by doing some category changes plus he was probably “bending the web” to try to rank for his own product.
I still have first page results for both Stomper Net (5th) at Stompernet (8th) again without too much effort.
Ist page also for widgetbucks, volusion and a host of others.
But…
I am no longer ranking for defamed by google, you need to put it in quotes, and that gained some decent links.
I drop in rankings on things like http://adage.com/power150/ – I should really be 10 places higher
Things are still in flux, they are certainly not “normal” but it is great linkbait, though I do feel the effect financially more than someone just looking for rankings.
“no proof, no launch” as Jeff Walker would say.
Hey Andy,
For the record, you’re not included in the “belly button monitoring” Google Crew.
I understand your plight and in fact Google messes with this blog too, despite it being much less linked than yours.
My most linked to post, which by any standard should have ton’s of authority has a PR of 0 despite hundreds of decent to high PR links.
My blog just went to PR 4 now even though it should have done so easily at the last update and since then I have participated in a low grade link scheme and not posted much.
I doubt you will lose much in real terms from the penalties, which seem to be fluctuating at the moment. The reality is that Google is lashing out like an angry teenager rather than any concerted or intelligent improvement to their methodologies.
I am totaly confused by this pagerank update. One site of mine which had PR 1 dropped to PR 0 and another site which had PR 0 went to PR 3?
Some links of this site have now PR 2 while they are nothing more than a .htm file generated with ‘affiliatelinkcloaker’. I have not one external link to these .htm files, they are only there for the users convience….
Hi Peter,
Seems Google is confused too.
Actually, a lot of the flux is likely due to viewing info from different data centers.
As for the PR 2, if you have a lot of affiliate links going through that page, it might explain it. Internal PR from a decent site is enough to make a page PR 2 easily.
Page Rank is getting to be an absolute pain in the know what! I recently reviewed a report from a Clickbank Guru who was complaining that he dropped from a page rank of 3 (on the first page) to 375. No explanation from Google and little had changed in the page rank listings except his. I should note that he had not made a change to his web page either.
His statement: “Who the hell can make a living online with this kind of nonsense!!!”
My question: Why bother with page rank and all the SEO nonsense when you can use the “payload” method to make money? You give arbitrage the same intense study and work getting a bigger reward overall. Am I wrong?
[...] Google Gives John Chow a Handjob Warning, this short post contains sexual innuendo (guess it s too late for the warning now ) as well as a completely unproven conspiracy theory. Google s Problem People are selling links which influence search engine rankings. Google hasn t found a real way to do anything about it. They can identify some links algorithmically but not most […] [...]
[...] Google Gives John Chow a Handjob Warning, this short post contains sexual innuendo (guess it s too late for the warning now ) as well as a completely unproven conspiracy theory. Google s Problem People are selling links which influence search engine rankings. Google hasn t found a real way to do anything about it. They can identify some links algorithmically but not most […] [...]