The Page Rank Fiasco.

The recent Page Rank Dance by Google has created a small fiasco of sorts for some high profile blogs. All of them got demoted and each have came up with their own theories as to why this has happened. After reading some of their posts, I came to realized that they all have the notion that only high profile bloggers that ranks highly in Google were slapped with a demotion. What they did not realize was this recent exercise by Google was across he board with even minor bloggers like me with only a handful of visitors got hit too.

The confirmed official reason for this across the board demotion was as stated in a very interesting post by Search Engine Land’s blog – Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google It seems that if you have really been hit and felt it was not justified, of if you have decided to forgo your text link dollars for a better page rank, you can get Google to do another review on your blog and hopefully get your rankings back. As quoted:

Google says that most people hit with a PageRank decrease will likely notice this, and then they can request a review. Eventually, it may be something flagged within the Google Webmaster Central system.

I particularly liked the conclusion of that post. Below is the image I ripped form Search Engine Land with the quoted last paragraph.

See the “Get A PR6 .Edu backlink!” ad? Expect those firing back at Google over the selling links issue to poke at the hypocrisy here. Of course, the search quality team and the ad sales sides are completely different parts of the Google house. And more important to the site owner, you can argue the points all you want, but they won’t help reverse a Google ban. If Google traffic is important to you, don’t sell links.

Maybe Google is trying to kill of the competition and keep all the text selling business to themselves. Imagine the scenario where if text links sold via Google is “legal” and links sold via other sources will cause your blogs to vanish into the thin air from their Search Engines.

According to Shoemoney, I should not even consider talking about Google this way if I know what is good for my blog. In the video, he plainly stated, Don’t Make Google Look Stupid – Period Naah… it’s not making them look stupid by talking bad about Google, rather it is making them look stupid by selling you link juice to others and in the event, the buyer of these links fools Google that he has lots of high ranking incoming links, thereby awarding this link buyer an unjustified high rank, which he wants for one reason or another. Google don’t like to look stupid that way by awarding someone with something that they don’t exactly deserves.

The funny thing is, why not penalize the buyer instead? Why target the seller? Or do they both get penalized? I would think so not. Link buyers will never be penalized because if all those who buy links gets whacked, then no one will be buying anymore links. Be it from Google or whoever.

As it is, every blogger who depends on Search Hits for survival is at the mercy of Google, as in the case of graphic designer David Airey, who has to painfully remove 4 of the simple text links that he has on his blog in hope that Google will re-instate his blog into Google’s Search Results.

Andy Beard went a step further to prevent Google from touching his blog by posting in big bold letters that He Don’t Sell PageRank I sure hope Google reads his declaration before doing anything.

Finally, I am very surprise that John Chow has been tight-lipped over this matter. When Google took his blog off their Search Results a couple of months ago, he threw a big tantrum. Many who did not like this guy was clapping their hands with glee, saying this will be the end of John Chow. However, he has proven them wrong and maybe he did mean what he said and he wants nothing to do with Google no more. He even ditched Adsense. He is “big” enough to survive without Google, but unfortunately, there are not too many like him.