Google attacks its competitors with PR meltdown
So what we’ve been experiencing for some months now has reached its apogee. Google PageRank values right across the blogosphere are tumbling like nine-pins in a storm. Some sites have fallen from highs of 6 or 7 to new lows of 2.
At first I thought this might be a general rebalancing of the system, getting everyone used to lower rankings and allowing more scope for megasites at the top end. But it seems it goes beyond that.
Darren Rowse at Problogger has seen a drop in his seminal site from 6 to 4. The belief of many commenters is that Google is attempting to crush the trade in text link ads.
However, since Google’s own Adsense is mostly a form of text links, albeit (presumably) with a no-follow hard-coded in, this does seem to be a restraint of trade for commercial websites competing with Google’s overarching system.
PageRank is awarded on the basis of backlinks, rather than raw traffic data. Nevertheless, traffic and backlinks often go hand in hand. A popular site will have both to some extent.
The Google Dance has changed in recent months. We now get a monthly update instead of the variable quarterly adjustment that reigned previously. What, though, persuaded Googleplex chiefs allegedly to attack a legitimate commercial operation that just happens to have an impact on the Adsense/Adwords system?
Text links usually have anchor text advertising a commercial service of some kind. Why should that be any different from Adsense text blocks? Except in obvious cases, how can the algorithm distinguish between links posted for PR enhancement and those genuinely seeking extra business by an online form of classified advertising?
It can’t.
Brock Boser, Chief Operating Officer of New York-based Text-Link-Ads.com — an agency selling ads across the internet — tells me they won’t be reducing their prices in response to the current PR meltdown.
Maybe this will do the trick. Or perhaps the current furore across the blogosphere will persuade Google they are not behaving well and should aim to be less imperialist in their business methods.
Has Google become the new Microsoft?
Update : Duncan Riley over at TechCrunch is comparing blog networks that interlink with link farms and seems to approve the “crackdown”. Come on, Duncan, you’ve owned a blog network and were a founder member of another. Pots and kettles, surely?
Update : Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has cleared up a lot of fog on this subect — “I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links. … In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached to prevent them from ranking well. … Google stressed, by the way, that the current set of PageRank decreases is not assigned completely automatically; the majority of these decreases happened after a human review.”
[...] Google attacks its competitors with PR meltdown, Syntagma Media [...]
By Google Ñ Ð½Ð¾Ð² алгоритъм за PR и/или наказват за платени връзки | DevStorming.com on October 24th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
[...] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25… [...]
By Google Took My Balls and Went Home » Oreo CEO: Internet Famous on October 24th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
[...] interesting tidbit comes from Syntagma who note that “the majority of these decreases happened after a human review.” So, it [...]
By Google Pagerank Falls on Paid Links, Blogs by Elliott C. Back on October 24th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
John
) I was simply noting that networks with heavy cross linking strategies seem to have been hit hard. If this is about paid links (as Danny suggests) then it seems to have been applied unevenly against big cross linking networks.
not sure where I wrote I agreed with it (point out where I did pls
By Duncan on October 24th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
[...] Google attacks its competitors with PR meltdown [...]
By PageRank 2007 Q3 Update. Many blogs demoted | Sha Money Maker on October 25th, 2007 at 3:18 am
[...] I think it’s intimidation to prevent other companies from taking business away from Adsense and Adwords, and I think that Google PageRank is in danger of becoming irrelevant. Clearly, bloggers and [...]
By What if Google Had to Rank in Google? at ez-money-online.com on October 25th, 2007 at 4:32 am
Ouch. Some sites went from a 7 to a 4?!?! Wow. I’m shocked at that big drop.
By mark on October 25th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Duncan : How about this : “The only clear change appears to be among large scale blog networks and similar link farms, where each site in the network provides hundreds of outgoing links on each page of the blog to other blogs in the network, in some cases creating tens, even hundred of thousands of cross links. Previously such behavior has been rewarded by Google with high page rank, although it would now appear that this loop hole may now be shut.”
“… large scale blog networks and similar link farms …”? I’ve never considered blog networks like Syntagma or b5 as link farms, but as a distributed magazine, with all the convenience of simple linking for content access.
Also : “… such behavior … this loop hole may now be shut.”
The tone of that suggests strong disapproval, whether you intended it or not.
You’re entitled to that view, of course, but there does seem to be a slight element of crowing about it. Maybe it’s just your Aussie way.
By John Evans on October 25th, 2007 at 9:16 am
You’re right, although it has been done unevenly. Danny’s comments that it was made manually would explain that. This is going to snuff out many smaller operators rather than the big fish who have special arrangments with Google. We’ll survive here because we don’t have funding or loans to negotiate. We’ll just regroup — once we know what Google intends. I’ve asked them to review our sites and tell us exactly what they want us to do. Then I can assess whether it’s worth foregoing the income from “classified ads” for the sake of Google ranking. It may just be adding no-follow to the internal cross-links. I’ve already started doing that.
You know, hitting the little guys while avoiding the big ones is a messy business, and scrubs out the Mr Nice Guy image Google has cultivated over the years. It signals a move out from the blogosphere into MSN-type advertising and status, in my view. This is the Rupert Murdoch school of business.
By John Evans on October 25th, 2007 at 9:27 am
[...] Read the piece here. [...]
By Google Future - Search, Tech, Advertising » Google crunches PageRank for text-linked blogs on October 25th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
[...] happened yesterday, October 24 when Google shattered the blogosphere. It was all around. Someone even made a comic strip about [...]
By Dropped? A Detailed Hypothesis Of Why Google Dropped Our Pagerank on October 25th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
First text links, then banners. Any sort of advertising on your site that is not Google is going to end up with penalties. Just wait and see. Anything that takes away from AdSense will be penalized.
And that’s garbage that it could lead to being taken out of Google. Taking away someones living because they don’t use AdSense is pretty evil.
By Tony K on October 26th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Tony, they’re doing what Microsoft did early on — they’re creating an all-embracing business that eliminates competitors. If you don’t go for the whole package, you lose your privileges. I’m not sure I want to go along with that.
By John Evans on October 26th, 2007 at 8:53 am
[...] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, [...]
By | Blogging Tips on October 26th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Did I miss it or isn’t Google the biggest paid link seller in the universe?
By Boris on October 28th, 2007 at 12:03 am
[...] Google attacks its competitors with PR meltdown, Syntagma Media [...]
By Beware Google PageRank and Paid Links… | Fenetre Marketing Blog on October 31st, 2007 at 2:10 pm
[...] Google Attacks Its Competitors With PR Meltdown [...]
By Shaun Carter dot Com » Blog Archive » Putting PageRank Into Perspective on November 5th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Gotta say, I play the white hat role… And I always though paying for links was like buying heroin… A hard habit to break and a poor business practice… A whole lot in the SEO crowd is surely trying to kick the habit… And still looking for a fix.
By boris on November 10th, 2007 at 3:56 am
[...] interesting tidbit comes from Syntagma who note that “the majority of these decreases happened after a human review.” So, it [...]
By Google Pagerank Falls on Paid Links, Blogs on November 10th, 2007 at 2:02 pm