And sometimes I really like Google. It seems anyone that sold out and polluted the web by fakeblogging for Pay Per Post have now received almost the ulimate punishment and have gotten a Pagerank of zero. Just checked a few sites who use Lie Per Post and yup, zero. Trouble is my ranking has gone down from 5 to 3 too but I wonder is that because of the increased diluting of link weight? Though it doesn’t bother me as I’ve never been obsessed about it.
Update: Loving how Pay Per Post claim censorship by Google yet mysteriously there are ZERO negative comments about their service on their blog post. Everyone is positive.
“anyone” might be a little strong there. “Some” might be more accurate, going to zero that is. “Anyone” using any of the various such companies has taken a hit to their PR though, that’s true, just not to zero.
What is more fun though is that it is PR that has changed. Doesn’t seem to affect the actualy weighting given to a post by Google the search engine.
Maybe that’s the next step?
(Disclosure, yes, I do use PPP. Too much income not to.)
Damien people have had their PageRank dropped for less than this
I use PPP for consulting, full editorial control over links, or even if I give them a link. PPP provide an escrow service and bring me potential clients daily though I turn most down, and often review stuff for free even though money was offered.
None of my content is polluting the blogosphere, it gains editorial links, and the discussions related to the products I review often result in changes to the services.
Maybe you should be questioning why Techcrunch are defending their post with 8 links to their advertisers and no content.
Yes Andy, my sarcastic page outlining a nonsensical policy on advertising is exactly like you taking money to write good things about companies who pay for that honour in order to boost their rankings in Google. Do you also support the bribing of teachers to give students good grades? or bribing of Government officials to bump you up a hospital waiting list?
And give over with that Techcrunch crap that your slavemaster in PPP told you to bitch about. It’s a bit Whorish.
Tim: If I were you, I would see the pagerank drop as a warning shot; I’d guess that people who clean up their act won’t actually drop too far in search results, while those who don’t will vanish in a few months.
Nice to see that Google is finally dealing with this nonsense!
Andy: Sorry, but your paid posts are utter crap. Really, compared to your other content, they are awful.
“I would see the pagerank drop as a warning shot;”
That is pretty much how I see it already. I run PPP on a blog which exists now purely to make money. As and when PPP costs me more than it makes, then it will obviously get dropped.
If you have decent search ranking and traffic, there are more ethical ways of making money, which Google won’t penalise you for.
I’d love to know what those are. How else can 5k page views a day be parlayed into $1,500 a month?
It probably can’t, in general. However, surely say 500 a month over the next few years is better than 1500 a month for a month or two, followed by vanishing from search results?
It’s been over a year so far….yes, I know, falling from the 10 th storey and claiming while passing the first that it’s OK.
It’s worth pointing out that the penalties, at present, don’t change positions in the Google engine.
This is what I’m saying. I would strongly suspect that the penalties are a WARNING. The punishment will come in a couple of months, probably.
AdSense really isn’t that bad, though I take your point about the page views; I make only a little more than that on a site with four times the page views.