Google Dropping Toolbar PageRank Manually For Selling Links
October 9th, 2007 by CourtHere’s a short-list of sites whose visible PageRank has been dropped for allegedly selling links (keyword allegedly because I have no idea whether they do or don’t):
- CourtneyTuttle.com - visible PR dropped from PR3 to PR2
- JohnChow.com - visible PR dropped from PR6 to PR5
- Statcounter.com - visible PR dropped from PR9 to PR8
- AndyBeard.eu - visible PR dropped from PR5 to PR4
- Stanford Daily - visible PR dropped from PR9 to PR7
- NetBusinessBlog - visible PR dropped from PR5 to PR4
I’ve managed to get myself on quite a list, not that it’s a good thing! Now we all are going to have to scramble to undo the damage. If your site’s PageRank has been hit during the last two weeks, this is probably why. There hasn’t been a regular PageRank update.
How Google Figured Out That I Was Selling Links
It wasn’t too hard, because it said so on my advertising page. Many of the other sites that were hit also have advertising pages where they offer their text links for sale. I’m pretty surprised that someone at Google went to my site - to tell the truth I didn’t think that I was a big enough fry to be seen by them. I didn’t really think that it was a big deal, but now that it’s been made into a big deal, everyone will have to reconsider what they’re doing.
This Could Be The Tip Of The Iceberg
What people are going to have to consider is that Google could have made this penalty a lot worse. As far as I can tell, this penalty hasn’t affected my rankings. Google could have banned everyone, or they could have at least penalized rankings. For sites that don’t fix this issue, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google came up with something that did a lot more damage.
What I’m Going To Do To Fix This
I’m going to take this as a warning from Google. So far, my site’s rankings haven’t been affected. The only effect so far is that it looks like I have less PageRank in the toolbar. I’m hoping to keep it that way so I’m going to start abiding by their rules which means no more paid links on this site. People that purchased links for October will be given the option to get a refund or have a ‘nofollow’ placed on their links, which would make it so that the links’ sole purpose is for advertising, and not to pass on link juice.
What Are You Other Guys Going To Do?
The question I had to ask myself during the last few days is whether I need Google traffic or not. John Chow’s blog might be big enough to forget about Google traffic. Mine isn’t, so I have to play their game - by their rules. I personally am going to start selling links with ‘nofollows’ so that they are for advertising only. I won’t be able to sell them for as much money, but at least I won’t be risking the loss of my search engine traffic.
Save to del.icio.us
Digg This!
Post to Facebook
StumbleItRelated Posts:
2 Reasons Google PageRank Still Matters
Some of the most heated debates I've seen in the comments of Court's Internet Marketing School have ...
Why Google Refunded My PageRank Slap
As you may know, CourtneyTuttle.com was part of the mass carnage PageRank slappage gone double slapp...
Now For The Real Toolbar PageRank Update
It looks like the real toolbar PageRank update is now underway folks. For all of you wrote that Page...
Google PageRank is Updating
Activity across my sites is showing that Google is currently updating toolbar PageRank, which is the...
Google Refunds My PageRank And Slaps John Chow Harder
Three months ago I wrote a post about how I was able to get Google to refund part of the -2 penalty ...
Ongoing PageRank Update!
It's about time Google did a PageRank update!
In case you haven't heard, Google is in the process...
October 9th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
That is crazy Court! I would have never thought something like this would have happened. You said you have not noticed any of your rankings drop. Do you think this is because it has not happened yet or do you think it indeed is just a warning? I don’t think its fair to penalize someone for selling links although I do understand the nofollow thing it makes it so websites can’t buy there way to the top they actually have to earn it the hard way.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
It’s a warning. They didn’t penalize high ranking sites yet because that would hurt their relevance.
I really thing that they will though if people don’t comply.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptI’m pretty surprised that someone at Google went to my site - to tell the truth I didn’t think that I was a big enough fry to be seen by them. I didn’t really think that it was a big deal, but now that it’s been made into a big deal, … […]
October 9th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Google dropping visible PR??? PR fluctuates all the time man. I would suggest taking a chill pill on this one. Google’s penalty on you would not be a visible PR decline. I assure you it would be much worse.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Sorry Mert I appreciate your point of view but you’re wrong on this one. Danny Sullivan was able to get some feedback from someone at Google that confirms: http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php
October 9th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Hey Court is there a reason why your front page dropped to a 2?
October 9th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Yeah, Danny Sullivan got confirmation from Google that they are dropping visible PageRank for sites that sell text links. I got a -1, but some sites got a -2.
From what I understand it’s possible to get it back by losing the paid links.
October 9th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Court what paid links do you have??
October 9th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I don’t have any now! People could pay $25 per month to be listed in my Rockin’ Sites section. Now I’ve had to do away with that!
October 9th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I really disagree with Google. By their definition of PageRank (and it is their definition), Pagerank is NOT influenced by the fact that you do or do not sell links. Also, your site doesn´t loose “relevancy” if you sell links either. Google is confusing the “search engine” with the “advertising company” is this is a very dangerous thing. Will they soon start penalizing sites that don´t have Adsense?!?
October 9th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I agree with that CFernandes! It’s too bad that they have so much power, but the sad fact is that they do.
October 9th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
[…] SitePro News, Google is coming down hard on blogs and sites with paid ads other than Adsense ads. Courtney Tuttle’s blog talks about sites whos page rank has nosedived since Google “found out” they had paid […]
October 9th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
that`s a hard hit for every site to drop pr. well i think even the big sites are really hit by this because a lot of ads pay you by pr too. let`s see what happens the next pr run.
October 9th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
No doubt Hoto. It’s kind of crappy because it’s going to affect the amount people can make with their sites. Oh well, it’s one of those times where we have to use our brains to figure out something different!
October 9th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
What effect does this have on services such as Text Link Ads? Should we avoid them now?
October 9th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
That’s a really good and really tough question Greg. I personally can’t really use them anymore, and I think it’s going to become a lot harder for sites to use them.
It’s definitely safer not to!
October 9th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I guess this goes back to Google call for people to rat out sites selling links like a good communist would inform on a friend.
I thought that as long as the link was labeled as a sponsored link it was ok? After all, labeling as a sponsor informs the reader, isn’t that what is supposed to be first for Google?
October 9th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Google Lowers PR on Some Sites
Word on the street is that Google has reduced the PR of several popular sites due to them selling links for the purpose of passing page rank. Courtney Tuttle mentions this in this article, Google Dropping Toolbar PageRank Manually For Selling Links, an…
October 9th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m sure the drop is just a momentary thing. If Google started penalizing people for selling links, then anyone that used PayPerPost, Text Link Ads or anything else non-Google would need to be penalized, and that would be a huge PR nightmare (Public Relations rather than Page Rank).
I’m sure you’ll be back up to 3 or more in no time
October 9th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I wouldn’t be so sure. A lot of people think those are kind of shady to start with. I don’t think Google would have any problems putting the smack down on anyone using those services.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit. Google wants everything to be natural and organic, as long as it’s natural and organic their way.
October 9th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
What do you think this means for paid posts like those offered by PayPerPost, Court? I am rather worried about this because I have spent the past 8 months working my butt off on my blogs in order to be able to earn money with them, but if I can´t use anything except Adsense, then it simply isn´t worth it! The only methods I´ve had any luck with so far are text links and paid posts.
October 10th, 2007 at 5:42 am
My friend, start looking into affiliate marketing. You can do much better with that then you can with text links.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
A few of my network websites were hit with a PR drop and they were all selling some sort of textlinks. Your list is actually a LOT bigger than that.
Like you said, my rankings haven’t changed and one poster made a good point. If google penalized every website that sold links via payperpost, etc, I don’t think there would be many websites worth going to
October 9th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I know that a lot of high traffic sites/blogs have been getting penalized but I didn’t know what the cause of it.
This is huge for those people that want to monetize their site by text link ads.
October 10th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Sorry to see you got hit, Court. I hope you get your PR back. I’ve been reading about even smaller sites getting slapped too.
October 10th, 2007 at 5:01 am
[…] Situation So here’s what is a happemin’ - I originally read about the situation on Court’s blog, and it seems that the big G is laying the smacketh down on sites that are selling text links. Now […]
October 10th, 2007 at 6:01 am
My main personal website dropped. I have one advertiser on my website. I didn’t use a service for it. I got that one on my own. I’m not taking it down. That’s a six month contract and they paid well.
I don’t rely on Google for the majority of the money I make online. The majority of my money is made through affiliate sales. I consider my personal blogs my “part-time” job. I made quite a bit of money with it.
October 10th, 2007 at 6:45 am
I think it’s better to play safe when you still need them. They are the king, anyway.
It’s better to go along with their rule for now first. and change direction when we have got sufficient source of traffic without their help.
I cannot imagine what the web would be without Google’s organic traffic! How beginner could survive?!
Or the best is, forget about PR, Just keep creating content and keep building relationship with others. there should be a better solution in the future.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I’ll never get pagerank - what is wrong with my site???
October 12th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
No H1,h2,h3 etc….
lots of blank lines with no content
template?
just from a quick glance…
October 10th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
[…] This morning I was reading Court’s ”Make Money Online“ blog and saw where Google had penalized his blog with a PR penalty for selling links. […]
October 10th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I think at this point it really comes down to what your purpose is…if selling ad space such as a job search engine does, is what your personal finances depend on then PR would be a secondary factor…
After all if you can legitimately show the traffic exposure their ad would have and can niche it also to send targeted leads…you would still have a selling point…
It really all comes down to content and what you are providing your users.
I can’t see it lasting long either as it just doesn’t seem fair when you think about how every other company or advertising medium out there…such as tv, radio, magazines etc use paid advertisement to supplement or support their businesses…jmho
Veronica Routtu
October 10th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
[…] with JohnChow.com when his PageRank fell from 6 to 5, but it has spread to other blogs, including CourtneyTuttle.com, NetBusinessBlog.com (where I have a Text Link Ad), and Sabahan.com (where I also purchased a […]
October 11th, 2007 at 2:16 am
[…] Beard, who wrote a post about being defamed by Google, and Courtney Tuttle who also reports about losing visible pagerank. He also lists some other websites which lost visible […]
October 21st, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Hi Courtney. Just wanted to let you know that I featured this post in the Super Link Sunday - Batch #5 post!
Shine on,
Aaron
February 24th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Tv On Internet
tv on my computer
April 21st, 2008 at 1:53 am
Dear All,
Here I am willing to find the exact response for my website page rank, few months back my website having good page rank, but now my website page rank fully lost, it’s seems 0. Here I want to know why my website page rank sucks drown.
Please help me out there, how to rejuvenate web rank, and why Google done this.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Hi Amir,
Please take a peer on that, as we all SEO Know Link development can be very difficult to imitate. Sure, a resourceful software engineer can create artificial links and imitate them many times over. Getting multiple, identical links from a reputable news source is difficult. The idea behind link farming is to increase the number of sites that link to yours because search engines such as Google rank sites according to, among other things, the quality and quantity of sites that link to yours. In theory, the more sites that link to yours, the higher your ranking in the search engine results will be because the more links indicate a higher level of popularity among users of the Internet.
However, search engines such as Google consider link farming as a form of spam and have been implementing procedures to banish sites that participate in link farming, so the term link farming has garnered negative connotations across the Internet.
June 28th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Yeah, this is tricky, but I think you did the right thing, especially with the way you’re heading with the blog now. It’s interesting to see the development of linking and how much the SEs determine the direction we all take. I’m always wondering what’s coming next lol…