Forget about the passive/aggressive phrasing of “Don’t Be Evil”…Google’s new mantra is “We Will Screw You.”
I’m sure you’ve read the news or worse, felt the sting yourselves. Google has gone scorched earth and dinged god-only-knows how many websites with a drop in Page Rank over the past day or two.
Rumor has it that the sites getting screwed are those that have been selling text link advertisements but the funny thing is, they’re penalizing some sites that aren’t even selling links!! How stupid is that??
It seems all those laid-back folks at the Googleplex are taking themselves quite seriously these days. What’s next? No more bringing your dog to work? No more volley-ball games during lunch? The Google chef gonna be serving up bread & water for breakfast/lunch/dinner from here on out?
Poor bastards.
Talk about biting the hands that feed you, Google. You should be ashamed of yourself. Be careful not to get too big for your britches…that stock price of yours just might drop one day soon and then who will save your ass? All the people that you screwed over?
Don’t bank on it.
16 comments ↓
Wow. Everyone has been waiting in anticipation for Google to update their PR toolbar values, but I guess we all wish they hadn’t now…
I sold my stock in Google today. Yes, it’s probably a futile gesture, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to line their pockets when they’re determined to sew mine shut.
I notice that GOOG is down -6 so far.
This makes me happy.
PR? I’m thinking it now stands for Petty Revenge.
Bah.
they’re down almost 8 now and if I had shares to sell, I probably would, too.
So, i saw Goog drop our PR from a 6 to a 4 about 2 weeks ago and i was a bit upset.. however, our unique visits from SERPs has remained the same and some of our positions on power words actually moved UP instead of down.
what pisses me off is that we have literally spent 2 years promoting our site with relevant and quality link exchanges, article submissions, etc. and now they pull this crap. Yahoo shows us with 5200 backlinks from tons of sites in our related industries, and google has lowered our inlinks to 105.. wtf.
I suppose they are trying to deter the link selling/buying by lowering PR, but our rankings haven’t changed. Maybe someone over there still has a heart (and mind) and realizes that just because we sell links (to feed ourselves, mind you) doesn’t mean our content is worthless. It takes revenue to hire power writers to develop quality content. And I surely don’t make enough from Adsense to get this done, therefore I must resort to selling other types of adverts.
CONTENT IS KING!
PR doesn’t mean jack squat anymore.. it’s just an indicator as far as i am concerned. I look at it to make sure sites have been around long enough to get PR, but that is about it. If you have a PR4 or higher, i then look deeper into backlinks on Goog and Yahoo! to see how many there are, as well as site: operators to see how many pages are on the website in question. Alexa gives me an idea of traffic and then i put it all together with Linkrank. This is what i use to determine site strength now. the days of PR determining site strength are over.
So long as this does not affect SERP results, does it really matter? i dunno. i’m just asking.
Die PR. Die. We hate you; or at least I do.
MegaD
My website also went from PR 6 to 4. Selling links and text ads is by far the biggest income for my website and who are you Google to tell me what can I do and what not? I’ve spent countless hours developing, keeping up to date and promoting my website.
And on the same time THEY sell text ads…
Very sad and disappointed.
it’s totally lame but as MegaD says, who cares about PR, really? yeah, it can make it easier to sell ads, but as long as SERP position and overall strength doesn’t change it’s all relative. if everyone gets hit…it’s all the same.
Yeah, I just noticed that my page ranks dropped from 6’s down to 4’s. Nice.
I used to have eight sites with PR 7. Now, I’m all 2-4’s. Btw, I run educational websites and ONLY have about 4 text links one a few of the sites. Not like I’m a link farm or anything. 800 pages of content and 4 little links on the index page. Hang me from a tree!
I’m still in the same spots in their search listings though.
I may sell my Google stock tomorrow and buy BIDU.
Some of my sites PR is down and some that have paid links are down, but others are not. In reading the comments I’m wondering if it’s not a funky update that TRIES to lower PR based on some criteria. As we have been saying, mass efforts are going to also hurt sites that don’t have paid links, because in many cases you cannot be sure what is and what isn’t!
The best thing would be if PR advantage was near to impossible to gain for most sites if not all. It would hurt the link industry, but then we could get back to things that are more closely connected with providing value to the users, like content.
Until this settles out, I was hoping LinkWorth would provide their publisers with updated code that did not contain “lw”, since it would be easy to filter for it.
And like most things that are deemed illegal, the main thing it will do is just drive it underground. Embedded or image links anyone?
I think it is an update…a failed update that is supposed to target link sellers; but not a penalty. No sites’ organic listings have been damaged that I know of and believe…I’ve been doing my homework on this.
From a seller’s perspective, it’s all relative. If everyone’s PR drops…you’re still where you were on the “advertiser’s food chain.” And if your organic listings remain the same (which educated link buyers most certainly check for their own keywords) then PR doesn’t really matter. Hell, I hardly look at PR myself these days anyway.
As for the “lw” thing…we’ve actually been addressing that and will probably have something to tell everyone soon. It’s just a little preventative maintenance like you might have noticed where we list our inventory.
This whole thing is actually not nearly as bad as I thought it was at first site…
Muahahahar…of all the whiney posts I read, this is the funniest. I love your wicked humor, Wicko!
I got -2 all over my blogs. And I actually like being the baddie in Google’s book. At least I am big enough to be noticed.
Most of mine have dropped 1 PR point: 6 -> 5, 5 -> 4, etc… oddly enough, traffic is probably up.
My rankings dropped on sites that sold text links, but also on other sites that didn’t. Stupid Google.
All you big boys around here, after waiting 3 full months for a PR update - i just let it go.
I figured that PR would not do me any good - what I need is more value in my content and increasing readership through targeted advertisement
Sucks for Google though, as you said, their stocks might just go down.
*unless they have something under their sleeves.
Boycott google!
Use Yahoo search, Live.com or Ask.com instead of google search.
Well said…and sooooo true
I`ve had one site go down by one from a PR3 to a PR2, another site go from PR0 to PR2, and another from PR0 to PR3. Interestingly though a lot more internal pages have now ben given a PR, even though it was just @1.
I am all new to this - thank god they did not take PR 0 to PR -1!
I am going to just focus on quality and quantity of content, and hop I can get advertisers eventually through other metrics like page hits and subscribers.
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