What On Earth Is Going On With The Latest Google PageRank Update?
It’s been a very long time since I’ve written a post while I’m at work, but Andy Beard just pinged me about a story he’d just posted, and I just had to write something I’m so stunned by the post.
Over the last couple of weeks, Google has apparently been penalising sites that have been selling text links by reducing their PageRank, although there’s been no official word from Google to confirm this. In the latest move, a number of sites including poor old Andy’s have been hit by another wave of Page Rank reductions.
I know you’ll be as stunned as me when you see how many A-list sites have had significant reductions in their Page Ranks:
- http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4
- http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5
- http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 PR4
- http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 PR4
- http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 PR4
- http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 PR4
A few search and money related sites as examples
- http://www.searchengineguide.com PR7 PR4
- http://www.johnchow.com PR6 PR4
- http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 PR3
- http://andybeard.eu PR5 PR3
- Vlad PR4 PR2
There are some massive sites in this list. I’m convinced that it can’t be just because they are selling text links, as I’m sure that the number of text links that a site like autoblog might have sold, wouldn’t warrant a Page Rank reduction from 6 to 4.
Andy has hypothesised that the reductions might be because the reductions are because the sites are part of blog networks i.e. are interlinking and passing on Page Rank to non-related sites.
Here are the Google guidelines
Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
If this is true, then does this mean bloggers now have to be careful about what sites they include in their blogrolls? I’m starting to think yes, as how can Google tell if a link has been paid for or not? I think the rule of thumb now should be, if the link is unrelated in any shape or form to your site’s core topic, then don’t link to it unless you use nofollow. Clearly other ‘blogs’ won’t be treated as being relevant any more.
I wonder what the policy will be about other sidebar content like BlogRush widgets, various other buttons & badges, site meters etc? Do bloggers now have to frantically spend this evening adding nofollow to everything?
It seems PageRank is no longer a measure of how relevant your site is (was it ever?), it’s now a measure of how well you abide by Google’s rules.
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Comment by Richard on 26 October 2007:
@ Hair Loss
Yes, its nice to be a PR 7-8, however if you are a PR2 and your #1 for your keywords who really cares.
Comment by Sasha T. on 26 October 2007:
I think it is stupid if they punish you for linking to some unrelated sites, I mean I want to link to everybody, why do I have to be punished?
S.
p.s. I’m not affected with this update yet
Comment by Micah on 26 October 2007:
I’m not understanding what you mean Matthew…Problogger has a PR0? I checked earlier and it was 4. Besides that, you can check his stats right at the bottom of his webpage, and they are the same as before. So apprently it didn’t do anything to harm his serps.
Comment by Serg V on 26 October 2007:
I think if sites stay in SERP is not penalize. PR is nothing, if site receive big traffic, and people like content of this site, page rank may be 0 but popularity and weight of this site will big.
Comment by Karthik on 26 October 2007:
@Kline
That’s still important news - there are a couple of webmasters putting links inside JS to avoid Google penalizing them, but yet being able to send traffic. But if that is the case, I guess I’m being paranoid here - what about the links on widgets like Adsense and Chitika and the like?
Also, have you tried it to see if it works even if its on a separate file like you hint?
They did start on a similar foot when they tried indexing URLs with parameters beyond the “?”. Now they can do it quite well - so I’m guessing if they’ve figured as much, its just a matter of time.
Comment by Kline on 26 October 2007:
@karthik
Yea, it certainly isn’t intelligent by any means… but I can guarentee the urls they are hitting are linked from nowhere on the site except for in the JS (the js is on page, not in a .js file). It is *quite* stupid in how it hits it..
the code is like
var url = ‘/ratings/rate.php?rating=’ + rating;
… send AJAX request code…
and its just hitting /ratings/rate.php with out any parameters… and i am sure it is google doing it.. dunno if they are just looking for anything looking like a url and just being silly, or its starting attempts at looking at JS parsing.
Comment by Martin on 25 October 2007:
What I really can’t understand is that Google is not releasing a statement about the current situation. There is no transparency whatsoever.
It surely looks to be like random picks but I could be wrong. I think that someone probably reported lots of those sites in the Webmaster Tools area to hurt the competition.
Pingback by HoTTest News Today: Google Did It Again!!! | www.KPeBiz.com on 25 October 2007:
[...] Here’s a summary of PR shakeup result extracted from Everton at Connected Internet. [...]
Comment by Hair Loss Treatment on 25 October 2007:
Richard I think that long green line makes a big difference to every site. Finally the whole game is all about BACKLINKS and PAGE RANK.
Comment by Marcus The Lover on 25 October 2007:
Interlinking won’t be detected if you host on different providers. Use varied services like rackspace, doteasy, godaddy, internic.
And you fly under the radar