You know, I don’t think I could be any more disappointed in Google than I am today.
And that is a shame because I’m normally a big fan. I mean, just look… I’ve got an entire category dedicated to Google Tools with 50 posts in it! But the problem is, today Google decided to penalize a whole boatload of sites for some reason or another, and in the process they dropped OMB from a PR7 to PR5. And just in the last few weeks it had already moved from a PR8 to PR7.
I just don’t understand this at all. I know Matt Cutts, and have spoken with him and we’ve e-mailed one another several times on the topic of Google PageRank, and even I just have no idea why in the hell this happened.
Now, a whole slew of other notable blogs and sites were just de-ranked severely, but most of those were done this way because they were selling links without the “rel=’nofollow’” attribute on them. HOWEVER, Matt and I spoke about the ads that I’ve sold on my homepage and he knows that they have that attribute assigned to them! So I should not be penalized for that.
So, what other reason could there possibly be for such a magnitude of PageRank demotion in one fell swoop? From a PR8 to PR5 in just a few weeks!?! And for doing absolutely nothing! I’ve used the Bad Link Neighborhood checker tool to see if somehow I linked to something that hurt me. Nope. I’ve NEVER done anything blackhat SEO to warrant this. Heck, I even took great care with my monthly contests to never ask for any specific linking or anything like that. Hell you don’t even have to link to win! And on top of everything else, I donate all the money I earn from this blog to charity! So there is just no economic incentive for me to cheat – and everyone knows this.
Now, if there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that you can NEVER, NEVER, NEVER trust Google. I’ve been silent for far too long on this matter, but they are demanding that we all bastardize our Web sites with this non-standard attribute “rel=nofollow” which has failed to gain traction with the other search engines and failed to make it’s way into the Web standards for years. OK, fine. Google asks that we label text links with “rel=nofollow” and then we do but they still penalize us!
Mark my words. If this can happen here on One Man’s Blog, it can happen to your site as well! And absolutely no one at Google gives a shit whatsoever. I really mean that 100%. Although I think Matt is a nice guy, I do not believe that he’ll even blink an eye about dropping this site’s PR even though he knows first hand that I’ve instituted nofollow at his personal request.
And I know with absolute certainty that the guys working over in the abuse group at Google don’t give a shit either because my conversations with them have been unbelievable. They just don’t care. They talk to me as if I’m a freaking child. No respect whatsoever.
And why should they? Google rules the Internet. It doesn’t matter that they create massive negativity with popular sites like mine. They are to the Internet what Microsoft is to software. Ubiquitous. So, as far as the Google search quality team is concerned, I take their message as a giant “F- You!”
Oh, and let’s assume for a moment that this drop is independent of my legal text link advertisers (thanks guys!). Well, what is it for? I’ve logged into the Webmaster Tools area, and there isn’t any indicator as to why the penalty has been instituted. So how would I be expected to fix whatever the heck they think I’m doing wrong? And if they really did give a crap, wouldn’t they want me to fix it so that I could go back to the “natural” rank my site should have? I mean all they have to do is put a notification into the Webmaster Tools area and I (and I’m sure everyone else) would take care of it!
So Thanks Google! Are you done with me yet? ‘Cause yeah, it’s sore.
John,
You have authority site regardless of what is the PageRank that show on the toolbar. Your site IS NOT a PR5. Seeing a PR5 using Google toolbar does not imply that your page rank is 5.
In the last few month, Google started a game with Page Rank data since they did not export full data to the tool bar servers and they did not give real/true PageRank to many sites i know about. I am certainly sure that Google started to show wrong PageRank and/or very old PageRank on the toolbar to spread uncertainty about PageRank to make purchasing links harder.
If your site is PR5, it will not have high ranks in Google. You rank for keyword like “password hacking” #1, which is incredibly high among around 10 million sites. Believe me, PR5 would not make it.
You did not sell links with search engine benefits, but you had a top commentators feature that attracted many spammers. With all respect, I am sure some of them were just spammers. Your top commentators feature was site wide, that is, giving a PageRank to sites from every page from authority site like yours. If I were Matt Cutts, I may be concerned. And, he came to know you after SF bloggers meetup, and eventually inspect your site :).
If the reason is not top commentators, it can be a new policy from Google that aims to hide the real PR values.
Your site is the coolest blog on the web regardless of its PageRank, at least from my opinion. As such, you do not need to care :). We will visit it daily even if it is PR is 0 :).
I might be wrong about the PR. I am just a grad student and it happens to be that I am a part time coder.
Mr Cutts will read your post, and my comment. He may reply but he will not tell us their plan :).
Regards,
Adi Azar
Did you lose any high PR inbound links? I have a few friends who don’t know what PR is but they have PR8 sites thanks to some PR9 and PR10 inbound links. They’re still PR8.
That does suck, but it does not change the high quality of your blog.
I visit on a daily basis to read what is going on here and to join the discussions / comments… Not to see green on the top of my screen.
I hope that Matt Cutts will log in and comment on this though, that would be very interesting.
Kim:)
No Tom. Not to my knowledge. There are about 25k inbound links according to Google, so it would be hard to tell. But I know there are still high inbound links pointing here nonetheless.
Thanks for the kind words Adi.
Yes, my “authority” does not seem to have changed. Only my PR. And there is no reason to believe it won’t go back up to 7 or 8 in the future. But this is my whole point. The good folks at Google are always messing with this crap instead of letting the natural order of things occur.
I understand and encourage them to de-rank sites that are aggressively cheating the system. But that is clearly not the case with OMB. Additionally, it is just wrong for them to do this to anyone without offering an opportunity for people to understand the issue and fix it so they can return to their natural ranking position. And they have the perfect mechanism for that built into the Webmaster tools.
John
Thanks Kim. First of all, even if Matt does stop by I wouldn’t expect him to comment. He just refuses to talk about these things. I believe Google’s position is simply that they don’t care what kind of disruption their activity causes within the Webmaster community. Seriously, it’s a big ‘F- You’ to them.
Google hides behind the notion that the only experience on the Internet of any value is that of the searchers. Never mind the fact that it was all of the Webmasters who made them popular by talking them up. They have completely turned their back on them. Nowhere is it more evident than when they do this crap and purposely fail to disclose the reasons.
John
I echo the comments of everyone here. I must admit the intial green did influence my first gravitation to the site, but it is the great quality of posts that keep me reading and commenting.
It has to be a logic error in the Google PR system or some attempt by spammers to “fool” the system somehow. As already stated above, I understand that the particular green bar PR does not really affect SERPS, and have read several articles that the green bar doesn’t really mean anything.
Your blog will always be PR10 in my books !
Google cares about one thing, and one thing only: Their stock price.
Wow John, what a morning! John Chow is down, ProBlogger is down.. Even some of the real estate sites I visit (big fan of housingdoom.com which went from 6 to 4) got hit.
It’s pretty easy to get to 4 without a lot of hard work.. but beyond that is what requires the work, and you’ve put it in for sure. My other sites are still at their rank and it doesn’t look like newer sites have been updated yet, or at least mine hasn’t despite enough backlinks to justify a PR increase.
Keep us posted if you will bud, there were a lot of big people affected by this so I imagine the stink won’t die down tomorrow..
By the way, every morning when I’m about to post my email is “catbert@….” and at the top it shows that I’m logged in as Derek Wong? It fixes once I correctly change my email/name/sitelink in the comment box but just started happening recently..