Entries Tagged as 'Google'

Search Engine Guide Surrenders

Wow… Funny yet poignant at the same time.
Robert Clough, publisher of Search Engine Guide post a recent IM discussion with his editor Jennifer Laycock.
It is funny because they are both very smart, witty people… its not so funny because I hate seeing the little guy lose.

The post is in response to Google punshing sites that do not use NOFOLLOW tags on their advertising links. Google does this in an effort to thwart the GROWING trend of “buying” page rank by purchasing text link ads on highly ranked sites. Previous to last Octobers Google page rank update Search Engine Guide had a toolbar rating of PR7. They are now at PR4.
Robert is not bothered by the drop in page rank- he is annoyed at having to dance to Google’s rather large fiddle’s tune.

Read Roberts hilirious but partially true account : Composing the Perfect Letter of Surrender

Is Google Update Finished?

In a word.. no. Can often take days for page rank that will show on page rank toolbar to settle.
Sites are still reporting changes in there page rank AGAIN this morning. So if you got whacked- still might be hope :-)
One way to check your site is to go to a page rank checker that reports multiple databases.
I am fan of dig page rank checker

Latest Google Update: Google Page Rank vs. Google Toolbar and Page Rank as Commodity

What’s The Difference Between Google Page Rank and Google Toolbar Page Rank?

Page rank and Google Toollbar Page Rank are actually two different things.
The page rank showing in your toolbar is taken from a snapshot of your site weeks ago. It is also different from what your actual/daily/hourly page rank is- that is the “real” page rank Google uses internal to decide if your site should be on page 1,2,7,1184 of search engine results pages. Only Google really knows what that number is.
Google PR is a made up number that has little or no value in terms of traffic. What has happened is companies have used to toolbar as indicator of a sites worth and the PR itself has become a commodity. Companies, like www.payperpost.com and text-link-ads have used to the toolbar to sell page rank. The selling of a sites page rank being passed on is the product.

Google warned- several weeks ago- that it would target sites that sold links i.e. PR . It asked advertisers to add nofollow tags to outbound links that had been paid for.
And they did target and that is why the drastic drops for many sites.

If you are part of a network ( and PPP is not a network) that is a flag.
If you use Text Links Ads or have Text link ads script on your site, you may be hit.
Basically- if you are selling links ( i.e. PR ) Google wants you to ad nofollow tags and will penalize you if you don’t.
That’s what happened.
My problem with this is that MOST website owners would have no idea about this policy (well… maybe now they do) … and not really an idea of what to do with it.

I suspect that a lot of this has to do with reinforcing its grip internet advertising with PPC (AdWords) and little to do with integrity of its search results.
Many ( like I do) think that Google may have shot itself in the foot with this one. The people that care MOST about page rank are SEO’s and internet marketers and they were the one probably most affected.

Google Page Rank Checkers Overwhelmed by Latest Google Page Rank Update

Everywhere you go to check your current page rank by various page rank checkers services you are met by sever busy messages or endless waits or not results. Site owners are checking and re-checking their rank- not believing what they are seeing in their Google Tool bar.

Google Toolbar Page Rank Reports from Multiple Data Centers

I prefer page rank checkers that report information from multiple data centers as opposed to checkers that just spew back the “average”

The most reliable page rank checkers I have come across so far-
http://digpagerank.com/
offers info from 700 Google data centers and gives you an idea of where things may be heading.
I also like this one:
http://livepr.raketforskning.com/

Please keep in mind that in the post it can take DAYS for page rank to settle on its final number and page rank can fluctuate during the update (hence the old nickname google dance)