Google blogs and forums recent downgrade

[igorb]

Hey guys how are you holding up?

Google is on the lose again choping off heads in fury.

It is a total pendemonium in the Blogosphere, blogs with PR 7 goimg to PR 4, PR 5 to PR 3, overnight.

My Travel in Asia forum slide a nutch down. But I reckon I deserve it anyway. Let's not dwell on PR so much, it is the number and the quality of users that visit your sites that is important.

Maybe my PR went down but because of different articles that I am posting I got more visitors and better audience.

Well do not give up, it is not armageddon.

Looks like SEW is not effected, guess Danny is doing a good job.

Igor The Troll

[Dan01]

A lot of sites dropped.

I used this tool to determine page rank (I didn't want to install the toolbar).

http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php

Google ranked 10, but Yahoo ranked 9. Yahoo gets more traffic, although google provides more search results.

1 http://www.google.com 10
2 http://www.yahoo.com 9
3 http://www.forbes.com 4
4 http://www.msn.com 8
5 http://www.microsoft.com 9
6 http://www.alexa.com 7
7 http://www.ebay.com 9
8 http://www.go.com 8
9 http://www.iwon.com 7
10 http://www.ask.com 8

http://www.aol.com 9

The page ranks are over to the right.

There was a recent article I read about this.

http://www.webpronews.com/node/41561/print

The leading theory is that these sites sell links that pass PageRank and that Google is enforcing its policy. However, some claim they do not sell links and that Google has singled them out for a different reason.

Just what that reason is varies, and includes some conspiracy theory about recent posts the company may not like.

"Many of the reputable sources that have received a penalty are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common," writes blogger Andy Beard. "They have massive interlinking between their network sites."

Over at Copyblogger, Brian Clark claims to have never bought or sold a link, yet was busted down two spots anyway. He wonders if it was something he said, and relays what it might have been in skit form:



Dude 1: “Wait a minute. Didn’t that Copyblogger guy just put out a free report saying we should move away from business models that rely on Google?”

Dude 2: “That’s right… he did. That’s a strange coincidence, isn’t it?”

While that seems unlikely, other bloggers have mused about whether this is the end of PageRank relevancy, or just a slap against marketing publications.



"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," writes Courtney Tuttle. "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."

Whatever the reason, a few note that the decrease in toolbar PageRank has not affected traffic yet. "My search engine visitor levels have stayed the same," says Hyder Jaffari. "I presume the blogs affected by the PR drop are also experiencing the same thing."

Here's a list of the online publications affected, gleaned from several blog posts:

· 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
· http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4
· http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4
· http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 to PR4
· http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 to PR4
· http://www.searchengineguide.com/ PR7 to PR4
· http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 to PR4
· http://www.johnchow.com/ PR6 to PR4
· http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 to PR3
· http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 to PR4
· http://andybeard.eu/ PR5 to PR3
· http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 to PR4
· http://www.blogherald.com/ PR6 to PR4
· JohnTP from 6 to 4
· Coolest Gadgets from 5 to 3
· New Scientist from 7 to 5
· Seattle Times from 6 to 4

Several weeks ago it was paid directories that were being targeted, apparently to send a message. That message was received loud and clear, but it doesn't seem these sites were hit for the same reasons.

[Dan01]

1 http://www.blogger.com 9
2 http://www.myspace.com 8
3 http://www.facebook.com 8

[igorb]

Dan, you are right on the money with all of this.
Yes it is paid links, but I think it is more like they are interlinking with each other, also links from blogs and forums are not authoritative. They are quick to index, and just as quick to deindex, when you have one coming in to your page.

My forum got hit one nutch, but my busines Website no touch.
My business Website been around for 7 years and has many athuratative links to it, from other business Websites and directories.

All this downgrading was done by an algorithm.

But I know what you mean by manual downgrade, I had that happened to my business Website once, and untill I bitched to Adam Lasnik and some other Googlers my site was not reindexed.

So interlinking within industry is a big no!
Also it could be that all the SEO bloggers content is a bit duplicate and stale. They all talk about mostly same, same, and very few of them come out on the edge and do somethinng original.

I do not see DaveN or SeoMoz or Vanessa Fox Nude get the downgrade. Why is that, can it be these people have something original to say, contraversial, also they do let their users contribute, even when its ranting that others may not understand or accept as politically corret.

Content is King...not linkage, that will follow!
You have something Interesing to say or some product that nobody else has, people will link to you and will talk about it.

So, you link to me and I link to you, the buddy, buddy club just does not work! But try telling that to them, you will get a Vertigo...

Just read my last post on Matt Cutts blog, you'll know what I mean..

[Dan01]

I get the link requests every day. I have never followed through because I feared it would hurt my rank. I have started saving the requests in a folder, just in case.

There are two major factors in PR - traffic and links. You may know more about this than me, but I bet Google works more off of links, but they try to watch for people trying to manipulate the system.

I wonder how much traffic matters. I would suspect it plays some role in their algorithm, don't you think?

We signed up with Google and went through the procedure to get our site verified, made a Google sitemap. I have not resubmitted all of the missed pages yet, but am thinking about doing that. I wonder if that would help.