RAGE Pank… WTF is up with Google PageRank, Paid Links, and Rankings?
It is no secret that Google has been going through a major, long overdue, PageRank (PR) update that is targeting sites that Google perceives as selling links with the purpose gaming the PR system. Of course the SEO community is in an uproar along with many site owners and people who buy links. And if you are a search engine optimization company that has clients with paid links or are a text link broker, then you have been fielding many mad calls from clients and have been going through the same spiel with all of them over and over again, ad nauseum.
Here is what the real deal is. The end goal of SEO is to get rankings, assuming that if you get rankings then you will get more traffic and if you get more traffic then you will get more sales, leads, branding, etc. Well what has happened to the rankings of all of these sites like SFgate.com that have been losing PR? Nothing, except that they have lower Google toolbar PR. There have been no reports of a loss in rankings for any of the sites that have lost PR.
Why would Google “penalize” sites by lowering their PR but not lower their rankings as well!? I mean after all, everyone makes such a big deal out of PageRank, claiming that it is so significant to your rankings. Well, news flash… it is not. PR is merely one of the hundreds of ranking factors. It is still a piece of the puzzle but it is not as integral as everyone thought it was and many smart Internet marketing companies have been saying this for years. This latest PR update and ensuing PR penalties proves it. The real reason that Google has lowered the PR is because much of the value of a paid link is attributed to the site’s PR. The higher the PR of a site the more they typically can charge for a link. So PR is/was an integral measuring stick in determining value in the paid link industry, which is an industry Google wants eliminated.
If you are still not convinced take a look at the center of the paid links business, http://www.text-link-ads.com/ versus http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/. TLA was cemented at the top of the rankings for the term “text links” for a very long time but is now buried deep in the rankings for that term. But TLA still sits pretty with a PR 7. While TLB slipped to a measly PR 3 with this update, but they enjoy position #1 for the same term!
So if you are using paid links to bolster your link portfolio you need not worry about this latest PR update until you see a drop in your rankings and the rankings of the sites you are purchasing links from. And stop obsessing over your PageRank and obsess over your site’s usability and conversion instead. The former gets you nowhere and the later gets you where you want to be, profitable.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Not only Page Rank has been affected. My site has dissappeared from SERP for searches that used to put me on the first page and sites are way down… total BS if you ask me! F.U. G !
November 6th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Rich, did your drop in rankings coincide with your drop in PR?
I have not heard any reports of people losing rankings yet, besides yours. I want to invite people to share their stories here if they have dropped in rankings and PR at the same time.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
my PR is the same - I used to be able to search for my specific concert reviews at http://www.kweevak.com and they would always come up - now they don’t - ps, I alerted over 50 editors of major business sections to what’s going on and I strongly encourage everyone else to so the same - also will be writing to every congressman and senator next week to look into these practices!
November 6th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
ps - My site hits and unique visitors went south around OCT 24/25 - coinciding with the PR massacre
November 6th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Rich, in comment #3 you say my PR is the same. But in the next comment you state that there was a PR massacre. Did your PR drop AND your rankings, or just the rankings? If it was just the rankings that dropped then it probably was not because of the PR update. Unless you had a ton of paid links that all dropped their PR AND their rankings at that time.
I am looking for anyone that can prove without a reasonable doubt that the Google PR drops have affected their rankings. In order to prove that you need to be able to correlate the PR drop with the rankings drop and also have to have done minimal to zero changes to the site during that time period. Because a drop in rankings can happen for many other reasons. And the goal is to try to attribute a drop in rankings to a drop in PR. And to date I have not seen nor heard of this being the case.
So once again, I am not yet seeing an effect on rankings from this recent Google PR update. If anyone out there can prove that they have I would love to hear your story.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
i mean the general PR massacre that hit other sites… my rankings tanked but my PR stayed the same - I have advertises who bought what I call “classified ads” - and they are featured on every page of the site