However I was GoogleSmacked today. I had been PR5 for a whole 3 weeks or so and today I saw this blog get dropped to PR3. 3 not 4 like it had been. Nope a 3. Flatwater dropped to a 2, BenSpark 2 dropped to a 3 and The Wired Kayaker dropped to a 3. They had all been 4s and 3s prior to this.
So why did it happen? I don’t know and I do care because that just meant that I lost an income source. I was literally submitting a post that a PR5 blog could take with PayPerPost and when I submit it I was told that my blog did not qualify. I had been able to reserve it so my blog was PR5 when I started the post and no longer PR5 when I submitted the finished post. That was within a 15 minute period. The timing on that sucks.
I thought I had been passed over by Google and actually was rewarded with building a better blog brand.
But it is important to remember that Google is not God. There are other search engines and I have great readers. Google cannot take my blog away or my readers. So guess what, I’m still here Google.
someone should create a button we can all share called “Googlesmacked” that leads to an article about there !@#$% Pr cuts
I just registered Googleisnotgod.com and parked it on blogger. Hah Hah
Ha! The same thing happened to me last night – I started a post as PR5 and by the time I submitted it I was PR3. That really was a kick in the pants!
I thought I’d been passed over for the change too. I’ve been a PR5 every since I first was aware of my page rank. And it dropped from 5 to 3 in minutes. That really sucks.
Don’t worry, with SocialSpark google doesn’t matter.
Being an atheist, I can definitely agree that Google is not God because well, we tend not to believe in this whole “god” thing anyway 🙂
On a more serious note, yes, the recent Google PageRank slap certainly sucks, at least for those who were affected. It did not just affect link sellers or Pay Per Post types of blogs either- I noticed that the Libertarian Party site lp.org dropped from PR7 to PR6, and Homeland Stupidity at homelandstupidity.us dropped from PR6 to PR4.
Fortunately, my own blog’s PR actually increased from 0 to 3, so this was good news. However, I still seem to have about 80% of my post pages in Google’s (now somewhat hidden) supplemental index, and this seems to be a more significant factor than PR alone as far as actual search engine traffic goes.
Somehow I feel lucky that I only have a PR of 0, cause I just started blogging one month ago. It ssems that life gets harder once your PR is getting higher 😉
Anyway, with Google juggling around with those PRs the pay-for-blogging services should start to look for other sources to check out if a site has enough traffic for their purposes. They sometimes even differ from Google’s PR!
Greets Julia
Hi Karl, you have been very active on my blog today, thanks very much for all the insightful comments. I appreciate that. Yeah PR got everyone, I thought I was actually safe and was rewarded because I went from a 4 to a 5, I had worked for it so I should have gotten it right? Oh well.
I think that blogging for the PR isn’t worth it. Blog because you love it. MY blog is still here and that is a great thing. I have awesome readers and that is even better. If I get paid that really is a bonus for me, not a necessity.
I think Google can do what they want with pagerank. For awhile that pagerank also could be used by those who were interested as a quick estimate of web page authority. But that is no longer true, now Google’s pagerank just reflects a value Google gives that really doesn’t have much value for others. I posted on this awhile back, someone else needs to fill the gap and provide a tool we can use as a measure of web page authority.
I’ll give you that, Page Rank is Google’s thing. But it is rather arbitrary. I’ll have to read that article of yours.
I came back from Vegas (I don’t have a laptop so was not online much), and saw that ALL five if my blogs lost PR…when most had gained before. This seriously sucks.
But Google seriously need to get over themselves. They seem to want to be the ONLY ones to allow bloggers to make money (with AdSense, which I personally REFUSE to ever use, ever). I despise this control freak sort of thing. We all have the right to do with our blogs as we choose, and profit from them, as well.
I’m glad to hear that the new SocialSpark will move away from the Google monster, and I know that PayU2Blog is moving away from PR as well. There are other ways to see the quality of a blog besides stupid Google. So we should still be able to make money, and flip the vird to Google!
Christine,
I’m so sorry to hear that your time in Vegas was marred with being sick. I take it that when I saw you on Thursday that was the last time you went anywhere till your flight home. After fighting so hard for the trip it is unfortunate that you couldn’t even enjoy it.
I think you will find that with SocialSpark things are going to be much much different.