Poor old Mr. G. Of late, so many rotten eggs have been hurled upon him that anyone standing 2 kilometres away would have got a whiff of the stench that he brought upon himself. I even pelted a few myself, but I have calmed down a wee bit and was able to clear my mind to think rationally over this matter.
Was it Einstein or was it Newton who said, “For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction”? That is the basic law of physics. If you put a ball into a glass of water filled to the brim, the mass of water displaced by the ball will be in equivalent to the ball. Similarly, if you take away the livelihood of xxxx number of bloggers, you will get xxxx numbers of bad publicity. Well okay, livelihood may be an exaggerated word, but you know what I mean.
Let’s be fair and look at things at Googles perspective for once. What is happening now is different from what happened some years ago when Microsoft insisted that Media Player must be bundled into their operating system. The main criteria today is because of Google taking away the Ranks that they had given in the first place. If Google had let everyone kept their ranks but devised another way to deter them from doing what is harmful to their company, the lash-back would have been less severe.
From a blogger’s point of view, Page Rank is only useful in one legitimate way. Search Traffic. The higher your blog is ranked, the more chances your blog has of appearing in the top pages of the Search Results, so a blogger with good SEO skills will be able to manipulate his blog to the maximum if he has a good ranking of 4 and above and get tons of Search Traffic which is vital for the survival of many sites and blogs especially those involved in marketing and affiliate sales and to a certain extent, niche blogs which runs Adsense.
Taking away their ranks will mean no more Search Traffic. Even if the blogs are still indexed, their page will be buried so deep the search results that they will never see the light of the day. Other than this legitimate reason for wanting a high rank, the page rank is just an ego boosting number to show off to your blogger friends.
To determine the rank, Google have an algorithm that decides how high a Page Rank should be accorded to blogs and sites and it is an open secret that this algorithm is based on how many backlinks a certain blog gets. The higher the sites that the backlinks comes from, the more juice it has in giving your blog a higher rank. It’s like you have many powerful friends, so Google decides that you too, must be quite powerful yourself in you knowing so many powerful friends. It may be weak, but it works.
However, the algorithm do not have the logical sense of knowing that in this world, friendship can be bought with money. It also does not have the logic to differentiate a link that has been paid for and a link that has been given out of true friendship. Since the selling of links has become so rampant, Google have to make a “sweeping” decision that affected almost every blog in the whole world, as every blog has outgoing links. It might have been an arrogant act, but it would be impossible to check each and every blog manually.
Notice that Google did not wipe out your ranks totally in the first wave. Most got a demotion. There was a gestation period after that, and I felt the first wave was a warning from Google that it’s time to get rid of the paid links for those who has them. For those who doesn’t, they too will have time to appeal against the decision.
Notice again that when the second wave came, some blogs got back their ranks, some went down even further. That was the second siren. Many who refused to let go their links were hit harder this time. Then there was another silence. Again during that time many took the necessary remedial steps. Some gave in after seeing what a demotion could do and cleaned up their acts totally, but many also decided to stay put.
Then the final blow came. All those who decided not to give in during the first 2 waves, all those who figured that it was not their responsibility to let Google know of their innocence and all those who has made up their minds not to let Google rule their lives, has everything taken back. So, do you still think it is fair that Google gets walloped the way they have been now? At least now they can tell the people using their search engines that results in the first few pages will be more relevant.
I have written so many articles about the big G and this will be the last I am writing about this Page Rank Issue unless something else comes up.
I thought it is a myth that Page Rank will influence the search engine positions for a keyword? (I read in 1.4 of this post. This will make Google Page Rank nothing but for us to boast about and make money out of it.
I hope this whole euphoria will end as soon as possible.
I think there will be more popping up on the issue. Unfortunately.
I agree that Google had to do something about paid links. However, I don’t know if punishing publishers is the right approach.
Google is obviously able to determine if you are selling links, but I really think they should take a couple of different approaches to remedy this situation. First, if you are using a text link broker, like text link ads for example, then you have no control over the “no-follow” tag, so in this case I think Google should simply just disregard those links. On the other hand if a publisher is selling links privately and not using the no-follow tag then Google probably should penalize those publishers.
It’s their search engine and links are a big factor in how sites rank. They have to protect that and not allow sites to “game” their system.
My .02
Wayne
I don’t know it it is a myth, but I do know for a fact that when my PR 5 blog is no more, so are all the Search Traffic from Google. LOL.
Myth? I don’t think so. If the loss of Page Rank does not effect Search Traffic, then pros like Yaro who makes more than 10k from affiliate sales depending on the traffic he got from Search Engines will not be bothered to give in to Google after the second wave of demotion. Remember when the first wave came, he said he will not be giving in?
James
Yea, it’s a hot topic and it does makes good blogging material.
Trai
That was my view all along. Why not go after the brokers rather than the publishers. If there is no demand, then there will be no supply. Like if you get rid of the drug pushers, there will be no more drug addicts.
But then, bear in mind that Google Adsense is a the biggest Link Broker around! LOL.
Despite what i’ve written, I am not against G implementing penalty for the violation of their TOS. Afterall, pR is their toy.
I think alot of dissatisfaction is echoed around the blogosphere because of the fact G is not consistent in their steps taken to combat paid links or paid posts. If anyone selling links/paid posts are penalized with a PR0, fine. But then NOT ALL sites doing paid links/paid posts are penalized with a big zero. Especially the big sites, right?
I think people are upset about big G’s inconsistency in their quest to fight paid links/posts.
On one of my drupal sites I installed a text link ads module. No one ever bought a link and I just forgot about it. My PR dropped from 4 to 3 and I wasn’t even displaying any links. I just had the plugin installed. What’s the justice in that? I am sure I could beg and plead with google, but my site is still in the top results for my major keywords so I am not gonna bother.
As far as Google going after the brokers, I don’t think Google’s intentions are to shut them down. They would just like to see them add the nofollow tag. Without it Google just see’s it as blackhat because people are trying to game the system by buying backlinks.
Paid text links are not going away, and if Google tries to make that happen they are in for some rough times - no matter how much money they have. Paid text links have been around before Google ever hit the scene. If I were Microsoft and Yahoo I would be trying to take advantage of Google’s stance on paid text links and try to gain a greater market share.
I see, hmm, when you took out the example of Yaro, it makes sense to me. Scratching my head again…
Trai
Yea. It’s kind of puzzling. Like I said, those Google robots have no sense of logic to determine which are the good and which are the bad. I think they have been programmed to look for certain words and blogs with those words are deemed “dirty”. TLA is a dirty word to those robots.
And you are right, paid text can never be abolished. There are already many signs that it is coming on even more strongly and discreetly.
Wayne
LOL, better get your hairdresser to check for lice.
I agree with you recap of the PR tidal waves situation.
Let me chime in with a couple of thoughts.
Google almost owns the circuit switch of the internet now.
Their business and steadily increasing stock value depends on the increasing internet traffic and natural human need to search in order to find information.
Paid links by trying to “game” Google’s system, essentially creating niches where interlinked ecosystems are getting separated from Google’s ecosystems where all the links are fair and dandy. People entering Google’s ecosystem, changing the rules and whining about penalties are foolish I think, because Google is the judge here.
The thing is, these two ecosystems cannot co-exist with the PR algorithms as they are today.
If Google wanted to solve this problem, the solution was simple.
Stop showing people what their page rank is. Make everyone a n/a, remove the page rank indicator from their toolbar, and get on with life.
Did they do that? No, instead they embarked on what I can only call a campaign of terror.
Is Google The New Terrorist?
Snoskred