Google PageRank Penalty Confirmed, Causes Blogger Panic
October 9th, 2007
It looks like the buzz all around the blogosphere today is the recent confirmation that Google is now penalizing sites for paid links. Google’s interest in paid advertising comes from how Google PageRank is calculated, which uses inbound links to determine page relevance. While this has been rumored to be in the works since Google announced that it was against their policies to have paid links and sponsored reviews, it seems to have taken many bloggers by surprise.
So, now that the penalty has been confirmed, what does this mean for bloggers? I think it is to early to tell, but I have noticed several bloggers dropping Text Link Ads all together and quit doing paid reviews over the past few months in preparation.
The problem is, this doesn’t leave a whole lot of options for part time bloggers who rely on Google to send them traffic. If you don’t feel like sacrificing Google PageRank in order to monetize your blog (beyond Google AdSense), it looks like you are going to have to use rel=nofollow with any of your banners, text links, or other advertising to avoid possible penalties.
Part of this site’s income actually comes from Text Link Ads, so I definitely have an interest in this. About a month ago, I noticed my Google PageRank actually dropped from PR5 (which I had been at for over a year), to where it is now at PR3. I thought it was due to a major overhaul I did to this website, but now it looks like I could have been penalized. At this point, I don’t have any plans to drop TLA, as it encompasses a large portion of my income, but I will definitely be looking into this further.
Has your site been penalized by Google over the past two months?
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This worries me quite a bit, especially since I haven’t really had much luck monetizing my blog and have resorted to doing the occasional sponsored review just to pay for hosting.
I find it hard to be upset with Google because it is their search engine, but I do think that they should take a different approach to this, instead of penalizing websites for selling payed links, figure out a different way to build search results. I don’t know what they could do to change their algorithm because it would obviously be huge but I think that such a large company with such a high R&D budget would be able to come up with something that didn’t hurt part time bloggers all over the world.
This is a cause of concern for me too as i also make quite a money with TLA and sponsored links . Do you think using the nofollow tag on Sponsored links will help .
Michael – I understand your concerns, but part of the reason Google is where they are today is because of there accurate search results. I don’t know that there is a better way to determine importance of a page than with backlinks, so it would be hard for Google to do. With that said, if anyone can do it, it is Google!
Madhur – The reason Google has a problem with this is that people are buying better search engine rankings when they purchase links. Matt Cutts has recommended on a few occasions to add rel=no follow to any sponsored links to avoid penalty from Google. With no follow, the purchaser of the link won’t get any link juice from it, only the potential traffic.
I don’t know that this is possible with TLA because of how it works with the widget, but it would be easy to add no follow to any sponsored links or links in paid reviews.
Kyle.. I didn’t know your PR had dropped! Sorry to hear that.. when did you notice this change? I have been waiting to hear about the next PR update but did it just happen silently?
This is an interesting development and something anticipated by many.
I haven’t monetized my blog yet besides a little Google AdSense. I guess it’s going to pay to learn a little bit more about this.
Do the sponsored reviews require you to have the nofollow tag removed? If not, as you said it should be easy to remove.
Well, I made light of the situation and broke out of my little “I follow the google rules” and created a blog meme that pokes a little fun at Google. It’s titled, “The Top Ten Google Keyword Blunders” and its about visually illustrating that sometimes the Google traffic we do get isn’t what it should be. If life is about relevant links and relevant content, then how come we get traffic from stupid and silly keywords!
All in all, this can simply put, be a stressful time for many including myself. So, I figured we all needed to have a little fun and poke some fun at Google.
Take care,
Garry
It just keeps getting more and more complicated for the average blogger, doesn’t it? Personally, other than for vanity reasons, I don’t see why anyone should worry too much about the penalties. After all, if you are trying to earn online, who cares what your pagerank is?
You know, this just sucks. There’s no other way to say it. It sucks, it sucks it sucks. Ha ha. This is probably why we shouldn’t rely on PR right? Thanks for the reminder Google!
K – I think it has been a couple of months now, or at least a month since my homepage dropped to PR3. I need to check some of my individual pages to see where they stand. Its tough after being PR5 for over a year
I’m not sure it was due to this, because I made some internal changes to permalink structure and such, so I figured I might take a hit on PR temporarily. Now I’m not sure which is the culprit!
As for Sponsored Reviews, half the time they don’t even want mentioned that its a sponsored review, so I don’t believe there is any rule against no follow. I would need to check into it more before I added no follow to any links.
Garry – I know a lot of your income comes from search, so I can see where this would be stressful. I appreciated the post you made!
Leo – It sure does! PageRank actually indirectly influences your ability to make money online, as many advertisers use this when decided whether to advertise with you or not, or to determine how much they will pay to advertise with you. Also, a good portion of this blog’s income comes from Google AdSense, and my readers don’t click the ads, so I need search engine traffic to be successful with Google AdSense.
no kidding there is no other way to say it but this jus sucks. This is what happens when google controlls everything they can make crazy decisions like this one. This will put a damper on some sites who rely on paid links and reviews. Crappy deal man, thanks for sharing this is news to me
Shaun – Sorry to be the bad news provider
Looks like I would have to remove TLA from my blog, though I actually want to keep it but I am thinking about the price that I would have to pay for not complying with google.
One thing that I’ve been wondering about is that, should we assign a nofollow tag to 125X125 graphical ads?
Kyle,
Are your sure you have been penalized for using TLA? Did you confirm with Google?
Shiva – Its tough to tell. If your site doesn’t care about Google, then keep TLA and the other stuff. If you like traffic, but don’t care about your PageRank to much, you are probably also okay to keep it. I think the concern is primarily with full time bloggers who need the PageRank to stay up to keep advertising deals and such.
Kiltak – I’ve been wondering about that also. Google just classifies all paid links as a no-no, so I would think they probably should contain a no-follow. I think most people that purchase banners and buttons are more concerned about clicks than the link juice associated with the advertisement, so you may want to poll some of your sponsors.
Nirmal – I made some big changes “under the hood” over the past few months, so I can’t be sure what exactly caused the drop. I do suspect it involves these paid links, but I just can’t be sure. I suppose we’ll see how this site rebounds during the next PageRank update.
My pagerank dropped too. It was 4 and now it is 3. I feel angry about that because I only had a TLA banner (affiliate banner) and one tiny link.
It is not fair because I tried to used Google AdSense and it was like hell. It took an year to get $100.00 and they sent me a check. Since I live outside the States I couldn´t cash it anywhere.
I am making more money in a week with paid posts than I could have done in a year with Google AdSense.
I didn´t think Pagerank 3 would hurt my site now because I had already subscribed to many pay per post programs and now it doesn´t matter (I guess), but from what I am reading in comments it seams that I am wrong about that.
Well I just need some money to pay my server and buy a script for my new site. I hope I will get enough.