Well, I know you guys normally notice this before I do, but I was filtering through the spam here on OMB with FireFox when I noticed the SearchStatus bar was reporting we’re back up to a PR7. It’s not quite the PR8 we used to know and love, but it’s better than the downright insulting PR4 we suffered with for a couple of weeks.
Anyhoo, now my previous rant seems a little silly. But I do wonder if someone saw it and corrected things (mostly) as a result? It’s impossible to know what to do to appease the Google Gods. I’ll just keep sending random offerings of frankincense and myrrh.
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Congrats :D this blog really deserves it!
I’ve heard some rumors over the last view days that most others that got hit with this was because they were using text link ads (TLA). Though I’ve never seen this on your site, but maybe you somehow got onto “the list”
Either way, good to know all is well..PR 10 all the way !
Good thing they corrected their mistake.
Well deserved.
Kim:)
LOL!!! I love it!
That’s totally awesome, that you regained some ground – as it should be!
I love SearchStatus.. not sure how I feel about the recent “Compete” addon, but it’s nice seeing the Alexa rank and pagerank together.
Glad you’re back bud! My sites are still the same, but I guess that’ll all pan out eventually.
I wonder if anything’s been officially confirmed? I’d like to know what is “legit” and what isn’t. I hate gray areas =(
Frankincense and myrrh, huh? I’ll try that. My former PR5 blog has 7 years worth of posts; I’ve had the domain for 6 years. I dropped to a PR2. That just isn’t right.
There’s a lot of frankincense and myth around that’s for sure. I almost think I understand PageRank (get links from high PR sites) but search engine rank is more perplexing to me. I have one site that has been dead for several years and still keeps its PR6 and still ranks number one ahead of Adobe for a pair of Adobe products, go figure. Another site got a PR5 from almost day one and over 18 months it’s had great search engine ranks (1000 visitors per day from Google) and now it bounces around well out of the top 10 or 20 listings for some long search terms, in some case out of the top 400!!
I then get advise to stick my site into what looks like modern day link farms (networks of duplicated blogs, directories, etc), they say “it works” but I say “for how long?”.
Continue getting quality links, John!
Hmmmm. How much does Frankincense and myrrh cost a pound? I wonder if we can deduct such gifts as advertising expense? I’m pretty new at all of this and don’t want the IRS to penalize me like the search engines are prone to do!
I have a (newbie) question.
The OP, BradDet mentioned that sites that use text link ads were targeted. I’m not sure what’s meant by that. Can you please give me an example of a text link ad that would be penalized?
Congrats John
This site could be a pr 0 and I’d still check it out :)
Welcome back to the wonderful world of PR7 … I have to admit I took some guilty pleasure in temporarily having higher PR ;)
They’re not done, yet! My blogger blog went down to a 2 today! :(
Jan,
If you had a site with a high PR and you were selling links to other sites for the specific purpose of helping them raise their PR, that is what you’d get penalized for. However, if you use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on the link then Google doesn’t care what you do because they don’t count those links.
John
Pass the kleenex, people. Bookworm Broadcast just went to a 1 – it was a 4. I’m definitely going to have to approach things differently. I’m so completely disappointed tonight.
I’m sorry to hear that Lisa. :-( I don’t know what is up with Google lately!
Oh, Lisa! I just saw you twittered that. I’m so sorry honey. I’ll probably be right behind you. I’m close to giving up.
Thanks, John! Links, it’s got to be the links – I’m just not sure which ones. And I’ve been working hard over there to really put out some good, quality, education/literature-oriented posts lately – and that’s why this really stings.
Thanks, Marisa, hon! We’ve just got to rethink this, not give up! No way! I might focus on ChaCha for a while until some of this dust settles.
I’ve never sold a link for ANY reason, but I’m still wondering how can the big G tell if a link is for purpose of PR or just a link between two on topic sites? Are we talking about paid directories, two sites who have nothing in common niche wise or any paid link whatsoever?
your back where you belong, John.
All the best for the future
Rhoody
Ranking ahead of Adobe on some of their products, that is crazy, Adobe is a PR10… Or was at least, haven’t checked in there in a while. Adobe PDF Reader is linked from almost every website in the world :) so I could imagine it is.
Kim :)
New twist to the story here, John. My new blog, Lisa Marie Mary, on which I’ve never done a paid review, paid link – paid anything – heck, I don’t even have Adsense on there yet – has lost it’s inky winky bit of PR. They had given me a 1, and have since seen fit to take it away. Hmm… *scratches head*
(My new Hippie blog, that they gave a 2, though – has kept that.)
Hmmm. The only thing that I can think of is that one of the links you have in your sidebar might be to a site that is being penalized by Google. If so, it could be considered a “bad link neighborhood” and could be dragging you down. :-(
You have to be fairly careful about handing out links like that for this very reason. Just linking to a single site can have negative repercussions from this effect.
Then again, it could just be Google being crazy!
John
Ok, that’s exactly where I was going to go with that, too – but, then I realized that I have the very same blogroll on Hippie Spelunker. Maybe they just haven’t gotten to that one yet. eeeks!
Ok, well – scratch all that – the PR1 on LMM is back. Nutters!
I was wondering, also, though – about the Blogrush Widget links…hmm…
They shouldn’t matter because they are javascript. The only links that count are real ones that have a <a href=”"> and that don’t contain the attribute rel=”nofollow”.
John
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