Google Flexes On Page Rank Debate Once Again

07 October 2007 Written By: Jim KukralComments: Comments

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Are you buying or selling Google juice? The debate rages on. Or, actually, did Google just end it?

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Last week, I noticed the Stanford Daily had dropped from when I wrote the above in April to PR7 today. That’s a huge drop that has no apparent reason to happen. Some others were also reporting PageRank drops. So 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.

Game on. As Sam says, if you’re going to dance, you gotta pay the band.

Or is this just Google flexing? As Andy states…

Google are attacking my personal brand, my business, and my integrity.

You know what I think? I think that Google is gonna get what they want, regardless of what some bloggers or seo’rs say or do or think.

My advice? Same as it always has been when it come to seo. If it feels wrong, Google probably thinks it is.

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  • It is not just the SEOs or bloggers, there are other stake holders in this debate.

    I know Sam isn't too keen on PPP, but in many ways selling pure site-wide links is much worse for the search engines.

    The interesting situation is the way they are flipping what the toolbar pagerank means - they have turned it into a link buying guide, it is useless now for end users to use as any indicator of quality.
  • The question is, are Google the police force of paid links on the internet? Or are they supposed to represent the true state of the internet?

    It seems to me they are heading towards being the police force. Who gave them the job? Who gives them the right to judge which paid links are bad, and which are good? We the searchers do. We use their service to search the web.

    The trouble is, there's other search engines out there which can give just as good if not better results. If Google annoy people, people will move to different search engines.

    Google may well get what they want, but it might be at the cost of everything they have worked so hard for. People will become anti-google, and they will steer well clear of them. And some smart internet marketer will come along and create something even better, and there will be enough people annoyed with Google that they will start using it, and they will tell their friends, they will blog about it. Who will that person be? That's the only question.

    The blogosphere is a powerful force, we've all seen that. Buzz can do a lot for a company. Bad buzz can do a lot to hurt a company.

    I guess we'll have to wait and see. But I don't think it is a good business decision to p*ss bloggers off. That's my opinion.

    Snoskred
  • Table Pad
    Just because google will get what they want does not make it right. Bad buzz can indeed cause a lot of damage, in this case, it could well turn out to be the big G. I hope that they too realize that it is not good business to p**s bloggers off!
  • I really hope that this is just a bump in the road to a new PR pushout. If not, and these "penalties" remain, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy web admins. And how many of those push traffic to the Google search? I know I do. I could just as easily push it to Yahoo or MSN or Live or ASK. And if we all would do so, that could mean a pretty big drop in their marketshare (1-2% anyways) and that could affect their ad revenue as well.
  • Why do people worry so much about google. They could bury on of the online businesses in the blink of an eye. Write good content on a consistent basis, and let the cards fall where they may.
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