Some of you may have noticed over the weekend that BloggingExperiment.com’s PageRank score dropped from 4 back down to 0. Apparently the consensus in the blogosphere is that this is Google’s latest attack on paid links and centers around blogs doing paid reviews specifically through PayPerPost and ReviewMe. Obviously I’ve done reviews on this blog, however, none of them have gone through either of those two sources. I am listed in both marketplaces though and I suspect that may have been enough to do me in.
What’s been affected?
So far only my PageRank score has dropped. At the time of this writing I’m still receiving traffic from Google and in fact still ranking fairly well for several different terms. For example, I’m currently ranked 6th for the term “make money blogging” and have received an average of 50 visitors a day from Google over the past week. Obviously I won’t be able to use PageRank as a selling point for any advertising, but I think my Technorati and Alexa along with my traffic numbers should be enough to allow me to march on toward my goal of a full time income.
Where to from here?
I’m not sure whether it comes through in my blog posts here or not but those who know me well will tell you that at times I’m stubborn as all hell. I like to think that I’m not usually that way but if you push me, for whatever reason my natural tendency is to push back. If I sense that someone is passionate about a topic, I instinctively pick up the other side of the argument. The worst part is, I don’t have to care, or even agree with the point I’m making, just as long as I can argue the point effectively. So, what does that have to do with this post? Whether they intended to or not, Google has pushed me yet again. I mean, it’s not like I was terribly fond of them to begin with, but my passion on the subject had died down quite a bit. Now, not so much.
Needless to say, I won’t be changing anything that I’m currently doing on this blog. While I’m not particularly attached to ReviewMe, I’m not going to delete my listing on their site. I have deleted my listing on PayPerPost, simply because the offers I qualified for simply weren’t worth my time and I’ve never had much success with them on other blogs. In fact I think the only PayPerPost offer I’ve ever done was the review of their service you’re offered when you first sign up. I guess that could be viewed as a minor victory for Google in that respect. 
However, I’m also going to revive my activity on Gevil.org. That’s one of those abandoned blogs I’ve talked about in the past but I think now is the perfect time to breath some new life into it. Hatred of Google is at an all time high (largely due to their draconian tactics and lack of transparency) and I think it’s time I capitalized on that growing trend. And who knows, if a few of my new ideas for that site pan out, I might end up making more than enough money to cover any income I lose due to my lack of PageRank.
Author: Ben
Updated: May, 2012
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Does the page rank really matter? I don’t know. However, If you keep doing what you are doing and your traffic is continuing to grow, you have your answer. Look at all of the “A List” bloggers that took page rank hits. They are still getting traffic. The only thing that has changed is some (increasingly arbitrary) number that was assigned by a company has been lowered. It’s not like your links out on the wed disappeared when the big bag “G” dinged your PR.
I think that it will get worse with Google before it gets better. How much information can they control? The answer is, ALL of it if we let them.
Although I have written a post about this, the weird thing is the lack of passion on this topic. I simply do not care what Google gonna shot down again.
I just got my PR on the last update which is to soon to see any benefit. I will still write whatever that please me, sponsored post or not.
I have friends telling about my stubborn streak too. Arguing for the sake for arguing. Ha, that seem to be someone I know.
Ben, just don’t let your self down because of the pagerank, I see you are doing very well with this blog and the posts are of value, as long as you do have the traffic and the readers you should not let you down just because of the PR.
Keep on going, there are advertisers that need traffic also and not only PR hunters, hence increase the traffic and your goal will be met, you still have 207 days to go. Instead of wasting those 207 days to fight Google or blast on them, work on new techniques to sell your ads, increase your traffic and readership and build trust with your readers. Ok, from time to time you can blast them either
I am sorry to hear about you losing the pagerank, i heard they were after PPC and other blogs that use reviews as source of income but this won’t lead them to nowhere, there are thousands of other ways to value a website or blog, and if the reason to kill a blog or remove it from Google’s index just because they are making money of of it than the one who will be losing is Google (big companies really don’t like to make mad their supporters, it can just turn against them).
bmunch, if you got a PR on blogmunch.com on this last update, seems like you have already lost it…
@ SEOblog – Yes I know. Thanks for the “painful” reminder.
Well, I am not gonna lose sleep about it.
Since no one else will play the gevil’s advocate, I suppose I should. No one cares about the PR drops because rankings/traffic haven’t changed. Therefore, everyone ignores the continuous warnings, which I believe these PR drops to be. You can’t go lower than PR0, can you? So what can Google do next to those who refuse to listen?
The only thing they can do next is affect your rankings/traffic.
Will that matter to you?
Sorry to keep hijacking this comment stream.
@DazzlinDonna – There is actually a lower rank than PR0. It is call “unranked”. You will get that when you are not being assigned any PR at all, whereas PR0 is what you get when you get slash by Gevil.
I didn’t even know what my page rank was until I turned the PR button on today. Come to find out that I have a page rank of 2. What exactly does that mean?
Although I don’t necessarily agree that no rank is worse than zero, I won’t bother to argue the case. If you want to believe that there is one more penalty before ranking drops, fine by me. Hey, I could be wrong all around, but I just think someone needs to think beyond today, is all.
@ Donna, I think you highlight an interesting point. While Google has no doubt scared some bloggers back onto what G would consider the “straight and narrow”, they’ve also illustrated how completely pointless PageRank is to millions of bloggers and blog readers. I don’t think that’s what they intended to do and I think it’s going to hurt their FUD efforts in the future.
Right, Ben. So now Google has two choices:
1. Give up and accept the fact that most people didn’t heed the warning.
2. Throw a bigger punch and hurt their rankings.
Which do you think they’ll do? Which would you do? Give up? or punch harder?
What I would do and what I think they WILL do are likely very different things. I wouldn’t have gone down this road to begin with to be honest. I think Google underestimates the online public and thought that this tactic would work and people would give them the benefit of the doubt. In reality, people have seen it for what it is (a FUD tactic) and it has hurt their image.
I hope Google is smart enough to realize punching harder will only lead to even more backlash and would likely galvanize the resistance against them. However, they’ve shown no signs of “getting” that aspect of this situation so I fully expect them to continue to pound away.
Weird-
My page rank icon is showing that the blogging experiment is now at 5/10… maybe it was temporary?
Hi Ben, same thing happened to me. Your other site should be popular right now. Try not to get discouraged. We’ll see how this plays out. Good Luck, Emma
@ James, I think that must be a glitch with your plugin or toolbar. It might very well be something temporary but I’m seeing a PR of 0 across all the data centers checked.
@ Emma, yeah, I think I’ll finally get off my butt and post over there some more. I’m not all that discouraged really, more annoyed and frustrated at Google’s continuing behavior. They really get under my skin.
Hey Ben when did you check your PR? I think google is updating or something, I just check several web-based pr checkers, and in all of them, every single site I entered has a PR0 or PR?. For example, Wikipedia, SourceForge, Digg, even Google Images. I think its still early for the verdict.
Stavanger, I checked it last night and again this morning after the post went live. I use SEOlog.com’s PageRank Checker and I’m seeing different values for different sites. For example, gevil.org the anti google site I mention in the post still shows a PageRank of 3. It may well be too early to come to any conclusions as Google has a tendency to drag updates out over weeks or release and then correct changes but this sure looks like a smackdown to me. I guess we’ll have something to keep our eyes on for a while.
That’s interesting, I use http://livepr.raketforskning.com/?u=wikipedia.org to check multiple data center. That site, like many other PR checker I found from google isn’t showing PR for any sites, but SEOlog & SEOmoz does…
@DazzlinDonna, you have a good point. If we expect the big bad Google-opoly to continue to pound (and lower bloggers’ traffic/rankings), then it seems bloggers should be looking for ways to make those attempts ineffective (besides blogging about how much we hate Google.) What do you suggest? Are there some technological advances that bloggers should be looking for to outfox the big G?
It would make no sense if Google penalizes quality blogs or sites just because they are selling links, that would be so blatantly monopolizing the online advertisement money where are being spent.
As I said, it is not smart to get all the air (traffic) from one same basket, even if Google is a great source to drive some healthy and targeted organic traffic this does not mean that your blog dies because of a PR penalization or even a penalization in SERPs.
What I am trying to point out is not to let your self down, you are doing great and you have some really good posts and a really nice way of writing.
@bmunch sorry..did not meant to be mean, even tho I am keen
Google needs to bring PR back into itself. IF Google simply stops allowing people to see Page Rank and leaves it as an in-house statistic no one will be able to sell Page Rank and the problem will go away.
Google will never do this because it likes to use PR as a carrot and a stick. Do what Google likes and you get PR. Do what they do not like (sell advertising without them) and they slap you around.
Right after I commented on an earlier post on your blog about running TNX ads on my site I got hit with the PR hammer. My site went down to a PR3 and ALL of my indexed pages went to PR0. Yeah, I dumped TNX after that.
Page Rank no longer holds any meaning to me. It has become an arbitrary value assigned (and taken away) at the whim of Google. I look forward to the day when Google makes PR an internal only metric again. If no one can see PR advertisers will stop using it as a metric to judge advertising prices.
I sell advertising for traffic purposes not linking purposes. I do not use no_follow. It is up to Google to become smarter.
I might be a little late to the party, but my opinion is do not worry about page rank. In my opinion it does not matter where google ranks your page, the proof is in the traffic you get.
It’s sad to see you lost PR. No matter what people seem to be saying, PR is important. I mean, just think at the amount of money you’ll loose because of this.
It’ll be much better if Google made this an internal metric, but I doubt if they’ll ever do that. After all, Google has found a better way to finally get back at people for selling links: lower their PR so they can’t sell at a high price.
You know, those paid review and link selling companies should quickly get another way to measure a blog’s popularity (like PPP’s RealRank)…
Ruchir, it remains to be seen how much money this will cost me. A lot of advertisers look at Alexa rank and Technorati rank and I still deliver in those areas. Also, the true PageRank is already an internal metric. The values we see publicly are snapshots from months back and now are apparently a tool of intimidation and FUD.
I think all they’re going to do is send link buying for PR underground, much like speakeasys during alcohol prohibition in the 1920′s in the US.
PR… once again so many people won’t swap links with a site with a PR. But anyone ever notice how many pages with a 0 PR rank highly in the search engines. Relevance is key… money is key… there is no point in swapping links with a site with a high PR if there is no hope of generating traffic.
Well said Robert.