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Google Thinks OMB SUCKS!

John P.

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No PR8 For You!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.

Comments

  2. Well, that is on just this page. The main site is back up to PR7, but that’s a long way from the PR9 or 8 that it used to have. The Google Gods no longer love me. ;-)

    John

  4. Google’s rating system suits google, and not the google front men, the coders, but the marketdroids hiding in the background. So, no google adwords is obviously going to put you behind the eight ball. Google’s temporary dominance of search will only last as long, as people recognise it and it all starts with you, just like every one else, spread your search choices, and add in information about other search engines, and be open about your criticism’s, your the customer complain as loudly and as often as you want too. As for the google trolls, every new google worker gets share options in order to turn them into one eyed supporters of google motivated by greed. Remember that it is really cool to work at google, earn twenty less for working 20 percent more but get free meals, and instead of a percentage for patentable ideas you get a free holiday (free peanuts for the monkeys and they don’t realise how much extra profit google is sucking out of them). So when you contact google to complain about their perfect company sic. how do you expect you will be treated, by the typical marketing tactic, isolate you, you are the only one complaining, everybody else is right and you are wrong (of course with the net you find out everybody else actually agrees with you).

  5. >>add at least something to the conversation

    It added the needed perspective that you are crying far too loudly and righteously with the bad assumption that just because your rating was lowered then google was doing something terribly wrong, and especially that one guy at google should know better than to allow your score to change just because you’ve talked to him before.

    >>anonymously

    I somehow doubt you’ve contacted every other commenter personally to verify that they are who they “say” they are.

    >>it was one of fewer than 20 non-spam comments ever deleted from this blog

    Then maybe that indicates being a bit too sensitive here, if you saw reason to delete a description of a post as “babyish.” It’s not as though it was offensive or vulgar. But it’s your show, just thought it strange to see on a popular blog.

    Anyway, I do enjoy many of your posts, just not this one :-)

  6. I am seeing a PR4 too in SEOQuake for Firefox. I think it is crazy that you have done everything you possibly can and spoke to Matt Cutts and they still dropped your PR. I feel your frustration though. My site went from a PR4 -> P1 and we have never bought or sold links or put our link on unrelated sites. I have no clue why. I thought it may have had something to do with being on blogrolls (sitewide links, maybe google thought I paid for them). Who knows?

    Maybe they will manually rerank your site since it is such a popular blog. I noticed alot of blogs that got hit are now coming back in rank, but not my site. :D

    PS – I did just notice your top commentator plugin does not have no-follow to the links, maybe that might have something to do with it. It is similar to blogroll links without a nofollow.

  7. I enjoyed reading the banter between you and “ziggy.”

    It’s rather strange that you have a PageRank of 4 and I have one of 3 because I’m pretty sure that your site is far more popular than mine!

  8. Clearly you are one of those people who need everything spelled out for you. So, for the amusement of everyone else here I’ll oblige you this once, then I’m done with you. I only debate with real people, not anonymous pseudonyms.

    • Whatever the exact language was that was used on the first post, it was one of fewer than 20 non-spam comments ever deleted from this blog. Do you think I remember what it said? It was insignificant.
    • If the word was “babyish” then yes, that is a personal attack. If you truly believe the rant has no merit then feel free to debate the facts. Name calling is for Jr. High.
    • Dropping an insult in a comment anonymously with no supporting argument doesn’t make you impressive. It makes you look pathetic and weak. If you want to impress people use your real name and put forth a cogent argument.
    • I don’t keep comments on my blog which I don’t feel add at least something to the conversation. So far your comments have done nothing but detract. You’ve simply made the web dumber.
    • Finally, Google’s “system” is built around the implementation of a non-valid, non-standard Google-created attribute called “rel=nofollow”. The entire rest of the known universe is able to operate within Web standards – except Google. (And if Microsoft had done this they would have been crucified.) Google’s implementation of this attribute has done nothing to stem the tide of spam from the Internet. Indeed they have created this problem themselves by spawning a secondary market for paid links. So, when I rant against my site being penalized for something that ONLY Google is doing (that is, 1 out of 1,000,000,000 Web sites) and that I am not even guilty of to start with, I think it’s a valid argument.

    So, in the future if you want to be welcome here or on other blogs try adding real value. Otherwise expect to be deleted. Your choice.

    John

  9. Still Some of the datacenters showing PR4 for your blog,
    Also if the websites links to you get a demotion in page rank then automatically the page rank of your site also decreases, as i try to find i mostly see PR0 pages that links to you

  10. >>don’t expect to come here and call me names and expect your comment to stand. If you came into my home and did that I would kick your ass and throw you out the door.

    A tough guy with a keyboard, neat-o. Calling a rant “babyish” for complaining google should change their whole system to please you is too strong for a tough guy?

  11. No, actually you’ll find many critical comments all over my blog. But don’t forget, it is MY blog. I delete the ones that take a posture of personal attack.

    So, you can feel free to criticize any concept I put forth, but don’t expect to come here and call me names and expect your comment to stand. If you came into my home and did that I would kick your ass and throw you out the door.

    Even in disagreement there is such a thing as common courtesy.

    John

  15. One my friends run a blog, where he make 4-5 posts in a month. None of which are exceptionally good, since he just started blogging 3-4 months ago. He has a PR of 5. If I go by Google’s standard, his blog is as important as yours, Forbes or Engadget.

    Pagerank is officially dead. Traffic matters, and thats the bottom line. Google has done a great service to the Internet by actually giving them freedom from their bull-shit metric, by doing this ridiculous update. Even if they return deserving sites their Pagerank back, I am afraid any takers will be left.

  16. There’s something wacko going on, that’s for sure!

    But I just noticed this morning, that two of my new sites (which use John’s awesome Rapid Access theme) gained some Page Rank – itty bitty, but, Page Rank nonetheless

  18. John, just noticed this morning that my new blog had pagerank. After being frontpaged on reddit and digg a few times I expected higher, but it looks like the snapshot was taken a few weeks back as my new articles don’t have any rank yet.

    However while 2 of my blogs gained rank of some sort, my old one that had tons of content, good backlinks, but did work with tee ell ey, went from a 4 to 2 and on a page where I had a 5, from 5 to 2.

    3-4 sites combined with adsense make as much as 1 site did with tee ell ay.. I hope my buyers don’t cancel because that money helps pay some bills.

    I’m really dissapointed now.. I wish we had some official word on how to gain pagerank.. from what I understand, nobody’s come out and said “this is why you lost it, this is how you can get it back”, right? For now we’re just missing a child and waiting for the ransom note…

    Link sales seem to be the culprit, but I’m waiting for an official word.. even YouTube is down to a 3 now??

  20. If you ask me, it doesn’t matter how big or small your PR is. It is not a factor in SERPs, not a big one anyway so you shouldn’t worry about it. F*** Google.

    S.

    p.s. I wish you had PR 8….

  21. Brandon, I can’t see your e-mail address anywhere on the page… Can you let me know exactly where to find it if you still see it?

    John

  23. I guess the PR algo has changed. a lot of my sites took a hit. I am not too worried about it, traffic nor SERPS has not changed a bit, so who cares…

    John – How about your search engine traffic, has it changed at all with the PR changes?

  24. John, you are not getting it! Since you have PR4, 5, and 6, your PR is now deemed to be 4 5 6 = PR15. Congrats :) Whoops! Sorry for the ill-timed humor. But in the day of the PR3 YouTube, what else can one do but laugh?

    On a more serious note, I think what has happened to OMB is that it has do-follow linked to sites that blatantly pay for links. Probably this happened in the Top Commenters list or otherwise.

    Note, I am just sharing a theory and have no evidence that this has actually happened.

  25. Your blog has PR4, PR5 and PR6 values!!!
    Hopefully going to land on PR6, not PR4. You went from PR8 to PR7, then to PR5. And now, I am seeing PR6 and PR4 values. I smell hand editing on your case. Youtube case is really weired, they may decided to devalue PR for sites that has little content…

    HTML help is really powerful site, I would estimate it in millions of dollars. Fast estimate would be 1-3 million dollars, not more than that. I estimated it since it has huge amount of content and traffic. However, Google would not buy such site since they can write huge content by hiring few guys.

    HTML help was my main source for HTML tutorials, even before I came to know you. I recall that I discovered it 2001, or 2002 with w3schools and started learning from them.

    If I were to give you advice regarding HTMLHelp, I would recommend you to consider optimizing adsense. Put ADs to the left, not to the right. Add Ads on the top of the page. Do not worry, readers would not be mad. They find a lot of ads on all sites. And consider widgetbucks, they are new AD provider. They pay far more than adsense. Widgetbucks started before two weeks, and i am getting about 30 cents improvement per click… They did not pay me yet, they might be a scam, who knows!

    By the way, Why you need PageRank for? You do not even sell links? I am sure that this is will be Matt Cutts first question to you, if you ask him why your PR was going down?

  26. John, can you remove my email from this post ?
    It happen when I made the post that I wasn’t logged in for.

    wow,, youtube is a pr3 ? crazy

  27. Yes, there is some weird crap going on. If you check the Google datacenters using iWebTool you’ll see that half of Google’s datacenters are calling OMB a PR4 and half a PR6. Strangely, HTMLHelp.com is still sitting at 8. And yes, the YouTube PR3 is quite amusing.

    So, If Google paid over $1 Billion for YouTube and it’s relative measure of importance is a PR3, how much will they pay me for HTMLHelp.com?

  28. John,

    When I said that Google showing wrong PR, I was wrong. Yes, wrong.

    It seems Google changed the way the compute PageRank. Check http://youtube.com/, they are PageRank 3

    I found many weird PRs around the web!!

  29. Good one Lisa, thanks for sharing.

    I remember when the search engines were so heavy it took minutes to load a page on my 28K8 modem. Google came around and changed all that – they did revolutionize the Internet search. But yes, it does seem like they got too much power on the web now.

    Another thing I do not understand is why they put so much in to the DMoz Directory, one of the most corrupt institutions on the web. I had one of my many sites in there until a new editor came in and put his links up and removed everybody else.

    No good either…

    Kim:)

  31. I had a very similar thing happen to my site a while back. PR dropped significantly but my traffic multiplied 6 fold. Displayed pagerank does not seem to be an effective judge of serp popularity anymore.

  32. John, you know I wouldn’t worry much about PR. It’s really a see-saw battle with Google. It’s only relevant to some webmasters but not to common users. Let’s put it this way. Ask any user who uses the internet and 99% of the time, no one know what PR is.

    For all you know, you might get a bump to PR8 on the next update.

  33. Firstly, Google defines PageRank as its “measure of the importance of this page”.

    It is not a measure of the SERP or popularity of a page, but how authoritative Google thinks the content is, based on a system of link analysis algorithms. There’s even a diagram of how this link analysis is supposed to work, in the given link.

    PageRank does not refer to the page of the blog or site. It is named after Larry Page, co-founder of Google, who developed the system at Stanford University. The name ‘PageRank’ is patented, BTW, by Stanford U.

    Secondly, if I’m not mistaken, Google updates PageRanks once every 3 months.

    Thirdly, it has been conclusively proven that SERPs do not follow, or rank according to, PageRanks. Google search results can position a low PageRank site way above a high PageRank site. Even on page 1. You can test this for yourself.

    SERPS appear to be based on the relevancy of the content of a page, rather than on the linking patterns it contains.

    Fourthly, and this is just my stab in the dark, it could be that generic links found in blogs are discounted and therefore affects PageRanks. I could be absolutely wrong, of course. A PageRank 3 site (not blog) I have is still a PR 3.

    Lastly, personally, I never ever look at PageRanks – of any web page or blog. They don’t mean anything at all to me as I go for and lap up only quality content. Like yours.

  35. That, suck’s, but I guess for most of us you’re out of the PR anyway, and you probably will get back to tour PR 7 or 8 in a short term. Your OMB creted a fantastic community and a still growing community.
    cheers

    Rhoody

  36. Similar thing happened to me a while back.
    Google took all the Page Rank I had, from 3 to 0.
    It was kind of harsh and mean.

    But, I don’t care any longer. Those who read my website are the ones I want to. I don’t care too much about random searches any longer.

  37. That suck John,

    I can understand some of the blogs, but I’ve never seen anywhere that you’re selling links.
    Google doesn’t want anyone to do any advertising outside of adwords huh :(

    btw, I tried logging in, and was on the home page, but everytime I came to a post it shows me as logged out. :(

    wow I lost my name..lol

    Brandon
    nvm, got it back.. strange things happening here

  38. Sorry Derek, but you were writing that article right at a Digg attack began. :-)

    In the last 42 minutes 4,000 people have read the 10 Craziest Sports article…

    The server is limping along now.

    John

  39. Oh I don’t know what happened but you’re killing me with the “could not establish connection to database” wordress error. I just lost my comment. Eh.

    Anyways I just said that maybe they should just have kept PageRank hidden so that people won’t cry foul (because they won’t know about it).

    Oh and I said that I also saw errors that MG saw with the logins. And now I saw an even worse one that might have to do with the wp-config?

    And I mentioned Google’s Taking Over The World…And I Don’t Like It that I recently wrote.

    This time I’m copying my comment before I submit it!

  40. AWESOME – nay, TOTALLY AWESOME post, John! I especially loved that last line!

    And how peculiar that my toolbar says ‘7’ for you again…

    These last few weeks have been super strange in regards to PR, but, the last 36 hours have been purely bizarre!

    We all know your real natural rank – off the charts! – and we all love the community here!

    So rain on their parade! Hrmph!

    Hey – did I send you that page about how Google would have to look to please Google? I think I might’ve, but, let me go dig it up and resend it, just in case!

    I think we’ll all definitely get a kick out of it today!!!

  41. 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..

  42. 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..

  44. 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 !

  45. 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

  46. 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

  47. 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.

  48. 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:)

  49. 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.

  50. 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