The question burning in a lot of webmaster’s minds is, “What should I do now?” With us being in the position we’re in, I felt the need to give our view and suggestion to all of our customers and readers. Everyone is worried and scared about the recent hit of lowered Google PR across the board. Everyone is pointing the finger at blog networks who cross link and sites that buy and/or sell text link ads. Well here is our thoughts on the whole ordeal.
The big scare in everyone’s mind is that Google is punishing everyone for participating in the buying or selling of text ads. The problem is, people are reporting PR drops on sites that don’t even participate in the act. Maybe this is a move where they’re testing the waters to see if their “reported” information is aligning with their new algorithms, or maybe this has nothing to do with what everyone thinks it is. TechCrunch, for example, openly sells ads and even to one of our own, yet, nothing happened to them. I think if Google was really trying to make a statement, they would hit all obvious blogs that everyone reads, not just a few. Then take notice of YouTube’s home page being a PR 3, it’s a Google owned company. My suggestion would be not to buy into all the PRopaganda, but most certainly, do NOT stop what you’re doing!
There is no doubt that Google owns the largest share of search queries; however, they are NOT the only search engine. They also do NOT own your website nor can they dictate how you choose to monetize your site. Of course, they’ll tell you they’re not trying to dictate what webmasters participate in, but just look at the ripple they’re causing. I was just reading a post on Johntp.com where he’s pulling his ads from TLA and I just couldn’t help but think how ridiculous it is for anyone to throw easy money away for a complete guess. Does this guy really think anything is going to change by removing ads? All he’s doing is allowing Google to bully him around.
Google’s big issue is the selling of Pagerank, which was something that happened a few years ago. Now people buy text ads on sites related to their own. Sure, some people still go the route of buying higher PR sites, but just like technologies change, so do methodologies in link building campaigns. When we build campaigns for customers, it’s apples to apples and oranges to oranges, the days of insurance ads on programmer sites are pretty much over. But everyone can argue that people on a programming site might be interested in insurance whether they’re on an insurance site or a programmer site.
Let me give you an example, these days, most of the sites participating in buying/selling text ads are personal blogs. These personal blogs cover a little bit of everything, just like a search engine would. At any point you can go to yahoo.com and see a range of advertisers from flowers to insurance to credit reports. The same situation can apply to all sites, any one visitor can be interested in ANY type of ad on the site. I’ve found some pretty interesting sites on sites that had nothing to do with the site I was on, but I was glad to find them. But of course, to really get the eye of the visitor, a text ad about insurance when you’re on a site about insurance will more than likely have a higher CTR, so it’s the optimum choice in our methodologies.
The search reps will completely agree with this theory but tell us that we should somehow tell them it is an ad by adding a “nofollow” or link it with some other form rather than html. 
But then you read their guidelines and it strictly tells us not to build our sites for search engines, build it for our readers. Nofollow tags means we’re building for the search engines, not for our readers! They’re hypocrites and greedy because those ad dollars are not being put into their own pockets.
Their guidelines also tell you to acquire links from sites and directories like Yahoo, where you actually pay for the link in order to get your site appearing in their search results. Think about it, “Do it!” “Don’t do it!” “Do this!” “Don’t do this!” 
If they have an issue with how people are monetizing their sites, then they need to do a better job at their own product rather than trying to rip webmasters of their livelihoods. We, as in LinkWorth, would never tell a customer they cannot participate in another program because we want our customers to make as much money as they can, whether it be with us or with some other company. If Google could adopt at least a modified version of this thought, I think the internet world would be a much more peaceful place. If it came down to a fault of our own, we would fix the problem on our end instead of pissing off the same people that helped build them into what they are today.
Let me go ahead and end these words of wisdom, if you can call it that, with a few thoughts to marinate on.
- Unless you’re listed on the first page for your keywords, why would it matter if you were spotted by Google and PR dropped? Money in your pocket is money in your pocket! Don’t give it back because you have less green in your toolbar! Just remove the toolbar and go with the flow, keep the ads, add more ads and continue writing great content on your site.
- If you remove ads or stop buying linkads, do you REALLY think you will be rewarded? Keeping what you have will only help validate that you’re not going to be bullied by Google and also make you appear as you know it is your website and not Google’s site!
- Do you realize that if you pull out and cancel linkads, that money will HAPPILY be diverted to others who would love to have the money? Our advertisers are going nowhere! LinkWorth’s job is to produce results and we will continue to do so with existing products, combinations of existing products and most importantly, our new products. Yes, that means we are always staying ahead of the Goo-ame by developing new products that help our advertisers and disguise them from all this other mess. Our product LinkInTxt is something only LinkWorth employees would be able to detect. So unless they change the way they rank the SERPs, our products will always produce results!
- WHO DO YOU THINK IS ON YOUR SIDE WHEN IT COMES TO LINKWORTH AND GOOGLE? HONESTLY? There is no way Google knows anything about you. LinkWorth knows our customers and will do whatever is necessary to produce results. If the entire ranking system changed tomorrow, LinkWorth would figure out how the new system operates and implement a new process for our customers within a week. What can you honestly do to get a response from Google? A reinclusion request that goes unanswered for months? (Well, unless you’re BMW).
- Your site is your site and you should never change anything for any reason unless it’s illegal. Google tells webmasters to not build pages for search bots, then says to change all ad links for search bots. Google also tells people to get listed in their results they should acquire links and even references Yahoo’s directory, which is buying a link, then says they’ll not count links that are paid. Ask yourself, “who has their heads on straight here?”
38 comments ↓
I am certainly in the middle of the discussions on this and unlike John, I have no intention of changing what I do because I feel I am walking the line between what both Google and advertisers are looking for, though maybe both of them don’t realise it.
Google shouldn’t be able to question the editorial value of a link within a 3000 word editorial review.
I think paid press release exposure will also gain a lot of ground.
This is very reassuring to know! Thank you very much!
Thanks for your post Ron, I am with you all the way on this and I am sure all your other partners will also. Like many others, I have had a devastating PR update, with more than 200 sites downgraded. It will definitely take some time for me to recoop, but I am very confident long term. Sure, some large sites will be scared into removing text ads. But committed link sellers such as myself will be much more careful in the future and will find ways to get round this. Best of luck to everybody!
@ Andy - yeah there’s no doubt you put well written posts into your blog and links inside those shouldn’t matter at all. It’s just a shame they would alter the way you write your blog posts. Hopefully you’ll continue to write the same way and take periodic breaks throwing both middle fingers at Google.
@ Emily & DerekW - think of this like a strong Union. People can complain and bitch, but unless they all stand together and protest in some sort of way, the big dog will continue to screw the worker bees as much as they can.
What sucks is Google is a great source of traffic, which is why people are freaking out. LUCKILY traffic hasn’t dropped for most, but it would sure would be nice if everyone could group together and just move to ask or yahoo until Google gave into us.
I wish I could stop using Google. I’ve just started to use ASK search engine.
Nicely said. I’m one of those who’s websites got hit by a -2 toolbar PR but I sure as hell ain’t going to remove paid links. Links from LinkWorth are paying for my expenses so I am able to offer free useful scripts to webmaster all over the world and I hope it stays so.
Go LinkWorth!
[...] another interesting note, the LinkWorth blog shows their stand on the matter. It’s a very good read. What are they saying? Basically, don’t let Google bully you. PR [...]
You make a fair point. Google are trying to protect their assests, i.e. selling traffic through Google AdWords. I’m sure advertisers moving towards text based ads have hit them in the pocket and this is the way they are striking back.
B
PR has been dead a long time. We’ve had a PR 5 for over two years and cranked tons of new links into our site from article submissions, press releases, directories, link exchanges and other LEGIT marketing techniques and we saw NO PR MOVE whatsoever. Yet, our site remains top position for a host of keywords that generate over 100K unique visits a month.
We make a good amount of revenue from text ads as well as Google ads, as well as private publisher banners. We are not removing Text Ads from our site. We utilize these ad mechanisms to promote quality content and hire top-notch writers to keep the good stuff coming for our visitors.
In a worst-case scenario, we may consider (but i doubt it) removing some ads that may not be ‘relevant’ to our health information — but why? I regularly see AOL, Virus Scan, Microsoft ads on totally unrelated sites.
O’Doyle Rules.
MegaD
As usual, I love your guts! You got balls!
I was hard hit but that makes me more determine to improve and find ways around to making money. I don’t see a traffic drop, only PR drop (by 2 -3 rankings) across my dozen of blogs. I am still on #1 page for ‘make money’. I fell to the 2nd page last few days but bounce back again.
It comes down to what does everyone want? More green in their toolbar or more green in their pockets? I’d choose the green in my pocket. Google is good at search and that’s it, IMHO. Oh they throw cool parties too, but I would throw a lot cooler parties if I had 200+ billion to spend.
Don’t fold to those pansies. They’re the same bully that stole your lunch money all the time. Except now, you can throw a couple high kicks, flying knee, superman punch, then ground and pound them out teaching them to not mess with you anymore. (can you tell I watch UFC?)
it’s great to hear this kind of feedback!
G00gle keeps on updating… two more sites are down from PR 4 to 0, one down from PR 6 to 5… Wohoo!
GettyCash said, “I wish I could stop using Google. I’ve just started to use ASK search engine.”
That got me thinking. Who is protesting the Bully Google on this whole PR issue? Webmasters. How many of Google users are webmasters? Probably VERY few in relation to a typical searcher. So no matter what we (the webmaster) community say, I really think Google is sitting back, biting their time until the new Buzz hits the SEO forums.
Sad…I say, monetize your websites, just be smart about it - BUT…don’t be pushed around by the Big Google Bully.
Martin
The thing that I would like to know more about is just how Google is able to detect whether a particular user is selling links. Does it search for the keywords “Sponsored Post”? What’s the methodology?
-Raymond
it’s great to hear the other side of the argument on this latest buzz …
cheers …
Thank you Ron! After my PR crash, I also got emails asking if I needed help with adwords advertising! (which i don’t use) LOLOLOL.
My traffic hasn’t slowed down, and thankfully advertisers are now savvy enough to realize PR has nothing to do with how good or relevant your website is.
I’m not worried,and in fact I’m going to delve into my account and get that linkintext going since I’ve added so much content on all my sites in the past couple of months…text links may not even be the best way to monetize anyway….
I think most of us would rather be `seen` on the top page of the Search Engines, rather than having a high PR. Both would be nice of course, but not always attainable.
yeah, completely agree with you Geoff! What does a high PR get you? Maybe some text ads that are buying PR? We don’t buy PR and haven’t for a couple years. We only buy relevant links and unless Google/Yahoo/MSN … ALL search engines change their way to rank pages, a relevant link will ALWAYS work.
No problem Terri. It’s funny that people use PR to get money into their pocket and as soon as their PR lowers, they just throw the money away? I mean, let the advertiser throw it away. Oh well, one day everyone will get the picture on the PR or goo will just take it off the toolbar.
BTW many sites (including youtube) are back with their previous PageRanks. I am guessing Google did something wrong and quickly corrected it. However blogs that sell text links remained with the downgraded PRs, including mine.
I think if TLA and LW includes no-follow tags in the links, bloggers wouldn’t get caught in middle of this Google war. Because Google is not after bloggers who sell links, they are after “PR chasers”. So actually, selling links with no-follow tags is ok with Google.
LW considering no-follow tags in the future?
Actually, there are sites that sell links that had PR increase and sites that have never participated drop in PR. I think Google “thought” they had it all figured out and they didn’t. So now they’re trying to get things back to normal.
No follow tags are making your pages for search engines, which they tell you not to do. They also tell you to be indexed, acquiring links is how they’ll find you.
If we enforced nofollow tags, not only does Google win, but you take away part of the reason for a text ad. A text ad acquires traffic from that site but it also helps search rankings which is where the most traffic comes from. If you are taking away the best part of a product, what’s the point of paying for it?
But the line about “bloggers wouldn’t get caught in the middle of this” doesn’t make much sense. What are bloggers in the middle of? If there is a war, it’s between Google and webmasters in general. Webmasters/bloggers are the one’s who either buy or sell links. I’ve read one comment where this girl labeled companies like us as the “bad guys”. All we do is create a meeting ground and make the process easier. If there was not a single broker service on the net, this whole ordeal would still exist. It was happening before we ever came along. We just spotted an area that needed a service and provided it.
Like I’ve already said, lower pagerank is about the same as changing a quarter into 5 nickels. A link is still a link and it still helps.
I can understand where you are coming from. Bloggers are not limited to services like LW only, in fact many of them are selling direct links to customers without nofollow tads. So the real “war” is between bloggers and Google here.
I believe Google made a mistake by disclosing how their PageRank work, and how this PR can affect one’s SERP. If all this was secret, it would be a different situation now.
Personally I won’t stop selling links, at least at this point in time.
Right! It’s basically Google trying to move ad dollars from other companies into their own pockets. I understand the whole thought of “DON’T SELL PAGERANK!”, but I don’t understand why people can’t buy a text ad about “cars” that is published on a “cars” website.
And actually, the whole link thing was around before Google. I think Google just glorified it with their pagerank. Everyone likes to be classified and the little green bar is a complete status indicator that shouldn’t be there.
Its quite surprising when my own PR went UP instead of heading south, with the relevancy in use. Most of my other sites dropped during the update as we had to yank our servers off *(not an issue) but the site that is supposed to go UP went DOWN and the one I thought will go south..went up one Point. What is worse, being WORST BLOGGER OF ALL TIME finalist by a Paid Post network took a chunk of traffic to the site and overloaded the php, but google sees this as a GOOD thing.
Funny huh?? From my testing…if site has load increase of variety of traffic and spikes, it will go UP in Pagerank. But Alexa will stay the same. How I know? Based on Adsense reports derivatives.
Best Regards
Azrin @ http://www.azrin.net
[...] Between yesterday and today, my offers from ReviewMe Prime Reviews and SR have been flowing in. So does my TLA links. I just sold two more. So, my conclusion is “Don’t be pansies.” [...]
Of course SERPs matter far more than PR… except in this business. I still have the same traffic (knock wood) but having my site drop from a PR6 to a PR2 still stings like a sunofabitch.
Vic
[...] love this post from Linkworth. Go read all about “So What Is Next For Webmasters?“. It really clears out a lot of my doubts and frustration over the recent page rank update. [...]
I do agree that google should not punish for links within well written posts.It is absurd when they say all links within paid posts will not be followed…It is as good as saying never think of monetizing your site without google…I also do agree that google is getting pissed off because they find competition from other ad selling business houses…the root cause of this issue are the top bloggers as they moved away from google ads as their sites got more and more popular….If even they had one google ad displayed, I believe google wouldn’t have bothered to make all these changes…but then moving to other search engines is not the only solution….we should try to find ways of overcoming the google search bot when it comes to paid links…
but are you all willing to exclude the google search bot from crawling your sites through your robots.txt…google doesn’t like links and if you want to have links then exclude them from crawling…this will make google poorer as they wouldn’t be able to crawl your quality pages and most searchers would then move to better search engines, that would throw them quality links…
i am a member here but i get my money only through google ads and i don’t have any links through lonkworth…so i will rather be compliant with google…it all finally boils down to what is beneficial for you or I…
Oh there are plenty of people that have bowed to Google and thrown away good easy money they were making. What is horrible is rather than fixing something they may not prefer on their end, they choose to hit the very same people that made them who they are. Don’t penalize people for making extra money. Now if they’re truly spamming, fine. But putting a legitimate text ad on a site that would benefit you by reaching out to that audience “and” helping be found in the search engines is NOT a bad thing for their results.
I think a different approach could have shown a little more love from Google. Maybe working with the whole text ad industry to find a solution rather than just telling us “you can’t do that!” would have been a better way to go.
Hey, makes it more fun for us. muhahahahahaha
I am purging Google from my life.
If anyone would like a Boycott Google banner, its free: http://cooladz.com/ban_google.jpg
They do not own the Internet and it is time they knew it.
I got hit -2 last update and I was worried about losing the small amount of money I make a month using LW and a couple of others.
But I have not seen that yet with LW or the others. It hasn’t changed anything really. My sites still get their number of unique visitors per day, the sites are still listed with Google and list well, etc.
I’m gonna keep on keeping on. But I will admit I used to be proud I had two good PR4 sites. Ah well…live goes on, lol.
I don’t really care much about what Google decides to do. I just don’t want them telling me what I can and can’t do. Forget that!
It sure sucks to see a drop in PR, no matter what is said or discussed. I believe good content still reign at the end of the day. Only thing is many advertisers still think that high PR is about everything to be listed on the first page of the search engine. Yes, Life still goes on and it’s nice to still know that there is green going into the pockets… and oh yes, the penalizing is not over yet… when is this bullying going to end, I wonder.
Doris, sounds like you are a victim of Penisizing !
Our job, as an advertising and consulting company, is to do our best at guiding our advertisers into buying ads regardless of what your pagerank is. And we are! Trust us Doris
!
Seriously, if you want to make money from LinkWorth or any other ad network, then don’t worry about what your PageRank is. If your’s dropped, more than likely everyone elses doing what you’re doing dropped too. Google isn’t sloppy. They’re pretty consistent and it’s not a target on any one site, it’s a web-wide change. That means the guys to your right and guys to your left is probably going through the same thing you are and we’re going to continue to build campaigns for people and buy ads. Our sales are far from down and we’ve actually gotten busier with more advertisers since the PR change.
Now if PageRank is important to you and you want to do whatever you can to bring your PR level back up, I would recommend you remove all ad earning networks from your site, or at least everything except AdSense,
and focus on linkbaiting your site for no money. Then hope that that you get what you’re looking for.
Hey Ron, Thanks for addressing my concern… that’s what I like about this blog, man… you take time to give your opinion and I value that - err… green in the pocket is more important for me than green on the toolbar
Cheers!
That’s right Doris. We’re trying to teach everyone that. This change only helps enforce it.
[...] | LinkWorth bloggers earn money torrent [...]
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