Google PageRank drops because of paid links?

25Oct2007 Filed under: Search Engine Author: Kitkat

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Wow, looks like Google is doing a lot of work this month. After the very controversial PageRank update just two weeks ago that affected many websites, Google had another round of PageRank update which affected even more websites and blogs. Many popular websites and blogs which are trusted sources of good content were hit too.

Funny pagerank
(Can’t remember where I got this PageRank picture)

Many guess it was due to a PageRank algorithm change, but many more believe Google is penalizing sites involved in paid links to battle search engine spam!

All these are popular sites with PR7 or higher.

http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6
http://www.searchengineguide.com PR7 PR4
http://www.searchenginejournal.com PR7 PR4
http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4
http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 to PR4

Bloggers and blogs that are affected.

http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5
http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4
http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4

So, is your website or blog hit by Google this time? Google has officially warned that they will penalize websites selling text link ads. A lot of ad advertisers are valuing the amount to pay a website owner by looking at the PageRank, if your website is down-ranked, you should get less traffic from Google and in turn get less revenue from selling text link ads.

Update 27 Oct 2007
Looks like Problogger.net’s PR has been restored to PR6.

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11 Responses to “Google PageRank drops because of paid links?”

WTJ
October 26th, 2007 at 11:23 am

There are sites/blogs that have increase their PR too.
Kitkat
October 26th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

WTJ,
Certainly. But most sites/blogs I come across either maintained their PR or have dropped. Which popular blogs have their PR increased to PR5 or PR6, or even PR7?
Ah Yuen
October 26th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

Hehe. Don’t care about PR lar. Concentrate on getting good traffic and writing good content is the only path to success.
Wayne Liew
October 26th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Don’t worship Google. Come with me, let’s worship contents and traffic or maybe, Yahoo.
Kitkat
October 26th, 2007 at 3:32 pm

Ah Yuen,
But I guess Google will send more traffic to sites with higher PR. Undeniably, Google is still the big brother among all the search engines, and plays a major role in bringing traffic to a website. At least in bringing new visitors.

Wayne Liew,
I go with the big brother! Haha
MerCuRy
October 27th, 2007 at 3:27 am

I think most of the blogger who have rank ranking blog doesn’t like Google anymore… who knows Yahoo will be the next big brother among search engine?
Wayne Liew
October 27th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Heads up dude, Google has already revised their PR, Wayne Liew Dot Com has its PR now.
lukxiufung
October 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

Paid links is text links or banner links?
LegendChew
October 28th, 2007 at 12:14 am

If Google.com penalize or dropping our PR, this will be so unfair to us. This will become like Bill Gates case monopolize the world software market. As Google.com monopolize we as a blogger.
Kitkat
October 28th, 2007 at 5:26 am

MerCuRy,
Maybe Baidu.com? Hahaha… but I think Google is revising the PR now. Hopefully the popular blogs who are affected will get their PR revised to what they really deserve.

Wayne Liew,
Congrats to you!

lukxiufung,
Text links and banner links. As long as they are links that are paid, which might compromise Google’s PR technology integrity.

LegendChew,
PR belongs to Google. They can do what they want with the PR they allocate to a blog/site. But the monopoly issue just might have a case here. Microsoft is still monopolizing the Windows market, although people sue them in court, right or not?
iCalvyn
October 31st, 2007 at 9:47 am

i guess soon google will be like USD, drop until no value… I really hope this coming soon 1 day, so we no need depend on the PR..

by the way, i saw a lot of blog from PR0 to PR3