Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry
October 24th, 2007 by CourtGoogle apparently is coming after the entire internet marketing industry. They recently put a -1 on my site’s PageRank. What did I do? I refunded hundreds of dollars of text link advertising that I had already delivered, and stopped selling links that pass PageRank. I also did a reconsideration request in Google Webmaster Tools.
What did Google do? They hit me again today, and now I’m -2. I did everything in my power to comply. I was one of the good guys. Matt and other Googlers, do you guys not see that we need an explanation? What is even worse for me is that PageRank still hasn’t updated lol. If it would, I would at least be -2 and still have a 3 or something.
Industry Leaders Get Slapped
Problogger.net PR6 drops to PR4
Copyblogger.com PR6 drops to PR4
Andy Beard PR5 drops to PR3
Search Engine Guide PR7 drops to PR4
Search Engine Journal PR7 drops to PR4
John Chow PR6 drops to PR4
Yaro Starak PR6 drops to PR4
Courtney Tuttle (I’m not saying that I’m an industry leader lol) drops from PR3 to PR1
Update: Many other prominent blogs and publishers have also been hit. It looks like there are a lot of network blogs and sites that got slapped hard including:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6
http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4
http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5
Check out Search Engine Land for a more complete list.
Andy came up with some possible reasons and also found some other sites that have been hit lately. It seems that most of the sites that were hit were either internet marketing blogs that allegedly sell PageRank, or network sites that get large amounts of links from their other network sites. Andy doesn’t even sell text links.
Shoot I’m honored to be on the list of sites that got hit because they are the best internet marketing sites in the internet. No seriously. Come on Google, you’re going to slap Problogger? If you’re going to slap Darren and me on the same day I’m feeling like a pretty big deal right now.
Does Google Want PageRank To Be Irrelevant?
If they do, they’re doing a fine job. Seriously who cares anymore? I’m done worrying about it because Google hasn’t even said what they want people to change. Do they want people to stop making money with their sites? Apparently they do. Do they want people to stop using one site they own to advertise another? Apparently they do! What’s wrong with that?
Does Google not use Google.com to advertise their ad programs? Do they not use Google.com to advertise Gmail? Do they not use it to advertise Google Video? Google Maps? Google News? So Darren can’t use his site to advertise his other businesses but you can?
Usually I’m a pretty controlled guy but right now I want to blow shiz up. Update: I’m in a pretty good mood now. For those that are curious, traffic hasn’t dipped at all. This stuff isn’t changing search results at all.
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October 24th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Dang Court that sucks. I agree a lot of what they are doing does not make any sense at all. It hard to guess what they are getting at. Honestly who does care anymore. Anyone who cared about pagerank surely has been hit by it.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Hopefully this makes it so that advertisers have to shift. They shouldn’t be judging sites based on PageRank, and hopefully this will make them rely on it less.
Maybe that’s what Google is trying to accomplish with this, who knows.
October 24th, 2007 at 8:19 am
I really don’t get what they’re after with this either.
If there’s a good reason behind this, it must either be that they’re dropping PageRank altogether, or that there’s a massive algorithm change that they are having a test go with at the Internet marketing sites. I just can’t understand why to do this otherwise.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I guess they know that everyone is going to be reading about it today. You would think that they would define their message though because all we can do is speculate about what’s happening.
How hard would it be to just let people know what the hoopla is about?
October 24th, 2007 at 10:12 am
It’s not just the internet marketing world, Forbes, sfgate, and the Washington Post were hit as well.
I wouldn’t expect this to last very long but for now, I’ve got a few sites with higher PR than Problogger and CopyBlogger!
October 24th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Haha nice Ben! Sounds like it’s time to celebrate for you, that’s awesome. It will be interesting to see how this works out.
October 24th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I’m seeing this being blogged about all over the place now and the theme seems to be the same all around - drop, drop, drop. If everybody is dropping then surely everybody is still on the same playing field so who cares?
Is traffic being reduced? Is income being reduced? Have the end results changed at all? Because if so then everyone is getting their knickers in a twist over a little number!
Ok its easy for me to say that as I’m still unranked so none of this affects me at all
October 24th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Hey Caroline!
This is spreading around like crazy isn’t it? For the most part you’re right.
Search engine traffic isn’t being reduced at all. My traffic is reduced somewhat due to PageRank though. If Google did a true toolbar update I would likely have at least a 5, and that would place me in the top 10 on most of the make money online ranking lists. I get some traffic from those now, even though I’m ranked at about 20 on most of them. The difference in traffic would be pretty significant.
Some income is going to be reduced because it’s going to be a while before advertisers stop looking at PageRank as a criteria. I offer banner advertising on this site, and without question it will be affected by new advertisers that see a lower PageRank.
If Google keeps this up, that perception will pass after time, but it will probably take a while. In all reality, this could be what forces that to happen, and if that’s the case it will be a good thing for all of us, especially for the new sites out there.
In all honesty, it would be better for me if I had a PR0. My PageRank was updated in April, less than two months after I started this site. At that time I was given a 3, and my site has grown a lot since then. Now a -2 takes me to a PR1. Ironically Google is slapping minuses on people without updating the true PageRank.
If this was a true update I would be a lot more ok with it. If they’re going to slap minuses on people they should at least show was the true PageRank is.
That said, change is never a bad thing. Those that are able to adjust through change will always be the most successful. I suspect that some people that get slapped will give up - none of that around here. I will be figuring out more ways that I can use it to my advantage.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Caroline you are ranked the day you get indexed, what has not been updated is the number on the toolbar.
What has changed is the number on the toolbar but to use Court as an example he is still ranking the same for the key word “earn money online”
In my opinion this is done to not be able to use the number as a bargaining tool.
I agree with Court this is another example why companies like PPP need to stop using PR and Alexa for ranking our sites.
As an example my site still does not have a PR number but yet my real PR should be between 6-8, now how do I know this? Easy because I do my home work.
I consistently out rank pages with the number 6-8 in seo rankings. I know i can usually compete in searches of 1 million or less and be on page one.
“Because if so then everyone is getting their knickers in a twist over a little number!”
Actually we should have been pisst way back, the way PPP and others rank our sites can make a difference between $5 dollars a post to $150.00.
The way the system is now my site with a PR0 Technorati 201 and Alexa 152,123 get paid on the low end for PPP yet my site got over 9k unique and 29k pageviews yesterday.
At the same time there is a site with PR0 Technorati 343 and an Alexa 41,974 yet he receives according to his own post less than 300 unique hits a day. He still will make more money than me in PPP.
Now I ask you what site will the advertiser benefit more from the site with 300 unique hits or the one with over 9000?
October 24th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Well said, Vic. The entire system as we know it is total bull.
PPP and other companies are going to have to adjust to the current changes or they’re definitely not going to make it.
PPP’s system is all messed up, in fact I can make just as much with one of my test site (no traffic) as you can with your site that gets 9,000+ per day. What the?
Seriously this will be a good thing in the end, hopefully the reshuffle happens soon.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:02 am
[…] suspected cause is the selling of text links, blog posts, paid reviews, and other paid content. Some have even wondered if the discontinued display of […]
October 24th, 2007 at 11:08 am
You say that these penalites aren’t affecting SERPs; aren’t you terrified that they will? I am.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I’m not really afraid of that. If they take all of these sites out of the serps for internet marketing related keywords, what’s going to come up?
I think that Google knows better than to mess with the most relevant sites out there. If they screw up their rankings they don’t have a business anymore.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
[…] manual PageRank drops in the last two weeks to me and other sites, I have a new theory about the slapping that happened early this morning. The idea is actually quite simple, and if I’m right an entire sub-industry might be coming […]
October 24th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Google PageRank Update Penalizes Link Farms
If you engage in large scale link buying or your website sells text link advertisements it is likely that you lost Google Page Rank yesterday. The PR update on October 23 has wreaked havoc on the green line, and many website owners are forgoing green p…
October 24th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Court- How to use this to your advantage? well check out all the places selloing text links that didn’t get hit and don’t openly advertise that they sell links.
If they didn’t get hit they’re probably still under the radar. Google is actually helping us find the sites that still pass link juice to buy links from. All in all, thanks google!
October 24th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Suddenly I’m getting envious of everyone who DID get bitch slapped by Big G. I stuck at a PR4. Clearly I’m not worthy of a slap. Waaaaagh….
October 24th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Not targeting the “internet marketing industry” at all. Simply demoting websites that sell paid links like they fore warned they would do for some time now.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
I’m going to respectfully disagree Jaan. Almost all of the sites hit fall into a very small categorical group.
Most were either ‘make money online’, ‘blog about blogging’, or exceptionally influential sites. This wasn’t an even penalty across the board. It was targeted at the mentors and influential sites.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
You know Google means business when they start handing out -1 and -2 PageRank. Nevertheless, Everybody is getting it from all niches, not just Internet Marketing sites. Engadget dropped PR too.
October 24th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Jaan - OK. Let’s just say you were correct in your assumption that Big G are only targeting paid links. Explain to me, then, why Copyblogger and InstaBloke have both been hit when neither of them have ever sold a link.
October 24th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
You don´t know what Google wants?
How about that you buy ads from them?!
October 24th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
that really sucks…..I havent even gotten a pagerank……and ppl seem to be losing it. I guess it doesnt matter.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Mike why cant those websites PR go down for other reasons that paid links? Maybe they were nicked on accident. Really lots of this is just speculation right now.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
An accident? Jaan Jaan. Sorry but this was no accident.
You’re right that all of this is speculation though. Speculation is all we have right now, but without question the two main themes of all these sites are excessive linking and paid link selling.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Court,
I’ve started a thread about this post in the Warrior Forum and Authority Blogger with this post.
That’s how intrigued I was with googles pagerank slapped.
Carlo
October 25th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I’ll check it out Carlo!
October 24th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
[…] Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry […]
October 24th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
[…] prevent other companies from taking business away from Adsense and Adwords, and I think that Google PageRank is in danger of becoming irrelevant. Clearly, bloggers and Internet Marketers are not going to give up monetizing their sites. “I […]
October 25th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Jaan - Of course it’s speculation for the simple reason that Big G won’t ever publicly state why these sites got hit. Why should they? It’s their site, after all. They can do what they want and if, in the process, everyone starts to dump all of the AdSense alternatives for fear of losing their ranking, why should they care?
Obviously I wouldn’t be as cynical as to suggest that any of Google’s motives are about protecting their revenue stream at the expense of user experience. No. Why would I say such a thing?
Why would I scream HYPOCRITES at the screen every time I see AdSense units displaying messages such as “Guaranteed PR6 link for $19.99″ or “Use Text Link Ads”?
Were those sites nicked by accident? Those sites that have been vocal in their criticism of Google in the past? Maybe. Maybe it was the tooth fairy that did it.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Mike that picture of Cutts on your blog is completely terrible (in a good way).
Anyways, not sure why anyone even cares about the TBPR changes if traffic levels have stayed the same for targeted keywords on your website
The only real reason to have a decent PR for most all of these websites is to justify paid links prices….puke.
If Google just got rid of the TBPR values all together then the paid link market would shrink somewhat and only revolve around relevant link buying which I personally agree with.
For other websites that “seemingly” are not selling links, I would look at little deeper and see that they to offer “sponsored links” without the nofollow.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:03 am
TBPR is a useless metric. Always has been and always will be. However, many AdSense alternatives use it as the basis of their advertising models so a drop in TBPR means a drop in potential income. This drop in income suddenly makes using AdSense again a viable option.
Who wins? The publisher? The alternative advertising network? Google?
BTW I’ve left a comment for you over on your post so that you can see the original Matt Cutts pic in all it’s glory
October 25th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Good observation. Matt has gone wild. PageRank stood for popularity and quality of a site. Slapping high quality blogs for what? You said it. It might be a prelaunch of a new Google Product. Page Rank for Sale for Big Bucks. Some thing like Ad(d)PageRank. Yours John
October 25th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Google’s PageRank and Alexa Rank: Useful or Not?
Much has been written about another Google Slap in the last couple of days.
Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry (↑)Digg Favorites Slapped By Google (↑)
Goggle has reduced the PageRank of major, quality blogs by 2. You
October 25th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
blogaboutyourblog.com
from pr4 to pr3
October 25th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
so do you think it makes sense to drop TLA’s if you have them on your blog? thx
October 25th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
That’s a tough one! It depends 100% on whether you care about your Google traffic. If you do, it’s dangerous to use TLA.
I care about mine, so I am now running an ad program that is for traffic only. Every type of advertising I sell has nofollows on the links.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
OK. So do you run your own ad program or can it be done through TLA?
Perhaps that\’s what TLA will need to do to stay in buz if they don\’t already do that.
thanks!
October 26th, 2007 at 4:07 am
To do it you would have to run your own program! I started running my own about two months ago!
October 26th, 2007 at 4:45 am
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October 26th, 2007 at 9:21 am
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October 26th, 2007 at 11:53 am
[…] Google has been making some changes to Page Rank recently. Many blogs have had their page rank reduced. I don’t want to rehash what has already been said, so check out Courtney Tuttle - he has a good summary and lists some of the affected blogs. […]
October 26th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
[…] 3. well alot of people have been talking about the Google punishment but I just liked this article and how courtney tuttle puts things in his own words so check him out talking about Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry […]
October 26th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
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October 26th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
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October 26th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
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October 28th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
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October 28th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
[…] but I have to tell you. Those 3 months couldn’t have past slower for me. Reading the rants of people who are getting punished in this update, I have to tell you, they are wrong! Pagerank is […]
October 28th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Just want to let you know, you’re back at a PR3 now.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:41 am
I am fully confused guys.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:43 am
[…] like a week of Google slapping, PageRank drops, and PageRank updates to get you thinking about the future of your online business. […]
October 30th, 2007 at 9:42 am
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