Digg Favorites Slapped By Google

For a company such as Google with a stock price based extensively on anticipated growth and public sentiment, it doesn’t take a huge swing in goodwill to have a dramatic effect on valuation. Google has just slapped their biggest fans.

After the very controversial hit many sites took just 2 weeks ago for various degrees of selling PageRank or linking to clients, you might have thought Google would take a breather, but Google it seems hadn’t even started its crackdown.

A number of sites have been hit yet again, including this one, but there is also a new element that has been introduced.

Here are some unusual penalties for trusted sources of good content

http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4
http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5
http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 PR4
http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 PR4
http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 PR4
http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 PR4

A few search and money related sites as examples

http://www.searchengineguide.com PR7 PR4
http://www.searchenginejournal.com PR7 PR4
http://www.johnchow.com PR6 PR4
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 PR3
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 PR4
http://andybeard.eu PR5 PR3
Vlad PR4 PR2

So Why A Penalty?

Most people today will be speculating that it is all about paid links, or that it is a massive reshuffle in the PageRank algorithm. Some of the hits were certainly paid link or advertising without nofollow related.

However many of these sites do not fit that pattern, but they do fit another…

Here are the Google guidelines

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Many of the reputable sources that have received a penalty are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common. They have massive interlinking between their network sites.

They may also sell links or advertising that passes PageRank on some of their less visible properties, but those properties benefit from the high pagerank sites that link to them, with sitewide links.

Some of these sites have been known to add or knock millions off of the price of Apple shares in the past, what do you think it is going to do to Google?

Update

Daniel is also compiling a list of notable sites hit and includes

http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 PR4
http://www.blogherald.com/ PR6 PR4

Updates From Comments
www.Forbes.com PR7 PR5 (thanks Wiep)
http://www.sfgate.com PR7 PR5 (via IM from Daniel Daily Blog Tips)
www.washingtonpost.com PR7 PR5 (thanks Wiep)

Update 2

The most relevant update I can give you is that Aaron the Technical Director at B5 tends to agree with the idea that this might be related to blog network interlinking, but obviously doesn’t agree with Google’s conclusions that they are doing something wrong.

At b5media, we are weighing how we want to respond to this. Either we give in to Google and let them dictate what we do and have the unenviable position of losing pagerank and possibly advertising dollars, or we take the stand that quality content is quality content regardless of Google and that our content will speak for itself. We still produce millions of pages of content per month. We still have respect in the community. We still have advertisers recognizing that these sites are valuable assets to leverage to get their campaigns out on.

I certainly don’t intend to be whipped by Google for 9 reviews or “public consultation” pieces I have written over the last 12 months, and as I gave the links in an editorial matter of my choosing, I didn’t use Nofollow.

  • Not all networks have been given a penalty for interlinking.
  • There are splogs and scraper sites out there that are PR5 or higher, monetized with Google Adsense, with traffic coming from Google Adwords
  • Gloating “innocent” tech blogs who thank their sponsors each month with free followed links
  • Major corporations such as Yahoo who are allowed to sell links
  • Other corporations who practice massive internal linking among their network to unrelated sites.

Update 3

It seems 9rules got bitch-slapped too, or as Paul Scrivens describes it, Google Took My Balls and Went Home and dropped from a PR8 to a PR5

This will be interesting because members typically have a single sitewide link to 9rules, and 9rules links back to members via various categorized tag feeds.

It will be interesting to see if any 9 Rules members spot a drop in search traffic as a result.

This isn’t site-wide interlinking, though blog networks by their very nature tent to encourage a little inbreeding, just like any social group.

Scrivs wrote that the one voice of reason was Scoble, but Robyn has already caught him out for not having read the other sites he linked to.

Robert is learning to speak like an SEO, explaining that PageRank is meaningless on a site wide level, and it is all down to individual pages.

Now as Robert is a big fan of Techmeme, and I have benefited from a fair amount of traffic from Techmeme today, I put this into a Robert Scoble and Techmeme context.

Robert, is PageRank part of Techmeme’s calculation? It could be.

Whilst I have had a lot of airtime today on Techmeme (good job too because most stories about this were buried on Digg), it is very rare for me to show up, even with significant links as part of the story.
Even then I am quickly displaced by people saying almost nothing with far fewer overall links on sites like Techmeme.

On Podtech today you have a “Commissioned” video by Oracle. You have a link without nofollow. That is a paid link.

There are 20x, maybe 100x more paid links on Podtech.net than on my site.
I have written a total of 9 paid reviews, all well received by my audience, most received editorial links sometimes even from the person who purchased the review EVEN THOUGH I OFFERED CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.

Google themselves tell their users that TBPR (toolbar page rank) is an indication of quality.

Thus Google are now telling visitors to my site, and 100s, maybe 100s of others, that when they visit a site, it is a load of crock.

Those are lies… FUD

Maybe they have changed the meaning of PageRank. If they have done they need to inform every single one of their toolbar users that Google PageRank as displayed in the toolbar is meaningless.

It has to come from Google, not you.

I don’t look on this as outing Podtech for selling links. Robert entered the conversation and seems to think that any PageRank is meaningless anyway. It is very clear to me that taking a camera crew to someone’s office to video someone costs a great deal of money, and there is a lot of expertise needed to both perform the interview, and from the crew. There needs to be money coming from somewhere.

Unfortunately the Google bot can’t read that “intent”, and just like the 9 pages on my site that contain content that I have received compensation for which I seem to have received a penalty, the same could be true of Podtech.

Remember also Podtech is (or should I saw was) a content network with many of the video publishers with their own blogs that link to Podtech all the time… that is a little like the 9Rules Network.

Update 4

J. Angelo Racoma of Splashpress Media has written about their situation, with a number of sites gaining a penalty, not just Blog Herald.

Fact is that around the behemoth search and advertising company Google is built a secondary economy. Blogs and websites use PageRank as one primary metric for reputation and trustworthiness. Many site owners bank on their sites’ or domains’ PageRank, and use these to command or negotiate advertising rates.

It’s like the gold standard applied online. And with this mass PR drop, Google has just devalued the webmasters’ gold. In effect, Google has just caused the value of this thriving industry to fall in a single day. What was a thriving economy is being rendered worth less (while not worthless, of course).

But then again, we can argue that this economy is artificial in the first place–with people putting too much premium on PageRank, and especially with people putting a price tag on PR. But in that case, wouldn’t Google still be morally (and legally?) liable for killing off its competition? Do keep in mind that Google runs its own advertising program and is at the top of its game.

The suggestion seems to be a change in strategy on their part.

Aaron From B5 has had time to contemplate what this means to B5 going forward, and specifically his own blog. I should point out before you read this that this is his personal choice as many blogs within B5 are privately owned. No final decision has come from collective management discussions.
This is well worth a read:-


Google Can Kiss My Derrière

Here are some “Tweets” from Jeremy Wright for more on B5′s Stance

#Weird thing about today’s google smack of blog networks? We don’t actually cross-link all our sites, just per vertical. To avoid this! #
# Wow, 23 emails related to this google pr thing. Will have an official response later tonight. #
# Short version: we were playing nice. We weren’t engaged in massive cross-linking. We believe in content over pr. #
# Oh,n and this isn’t a shot at blog networks. It’s at all kinds of coontent sites, including forbes, washington post, etc. #
# Ps: b5′ll be taking a “watch and see” approach, monitoring our omniture data very closely, to see if this is a real thing or just temp. #
# More quick facts on this google update: more’n half the sites were major content and news sources. Less’n half were sellling links. #

Update 5

I just joined the tail end of a Postcast with Jim Turner and Tris Hussey from One By One Media

The first half includes Aaron from B5 Media and Steve Fisher (not sure which one)

I discuss public perception of PageRank and how it affects authority, plus some general perception of Google, Facebook etc.

Update 6

From some of the individual site mention there have also been a number of responses.

Brian Clough of Search Engine Guide has given his response to what strategy he will be taking in the future.

In case it also here is Loren Baker’s initial response, and also 8 things we have learned.

John Chow doesn’t think this will have any effect on his business, though he has removed mention of pagerank from his advertising sales page.

Brian at Copyblogger after thanking Google (very funny) has now launched Teaching Sells.

Darren emphasises not getting depressed about this, leverage the opportunity, and network with other bloggers.

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171 Comments

  1. wiep (3 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 12:22 pm | Permalink

    Another website that got hit: Forbes.com

  2. webprofessor (7 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:01 pm | Permalink

    Andy a few years ago I might have agreed with you that they received penalties but I don’t now. Toolbar PR doesn’t matter anymore and isn’t an accurate indicator of Googles opinion on a site. You know that toolbar PR and incoming traffic are not related and any link buyer that isn’t a novice knows that as well. The only measurable indicator that we currently have of Googles opinion of a site is traffic and thats what we should focus on when we discuss penalties.

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:26 pm | Permalink

      Traffic decreases not from search, but in other forms of ranking. As an example Iwould be much higher on the Adage150 and other ranking tables.

      I don’t sell pagerank, yet my site was hit.

      These blog networks are interlinking, but then so is Yahoo, and so does Google.

      • maurizio (12 comments.)
        Posted October 25, 2007 at 9:51 am | Permalink

        from 3 to 2 for me.
        But I don’t really mind. The thing is that you shouldn’t mind too. If you get less reader because of that it’s not because Google is penalizing you; the reason is that someone else is using Google PR to create artificial classification.

        PR shouldn’t be used to build ranking tables.Even google doesn’t use that (especially the one we see on the bar).

    • Skitzzo (1 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:32 pm | Permalink

      It’s not that Toolbar PR isn’t valid, it’s just that it’s a snapshot from so long ago that it doesn’t really matter for what happens now. However, it does show us that something happened at least when that snapshot was taken. It’s like looking at a photo of someone hitting a home run. Sure it might have been 3 months ago but they still hit the home run.

      As long as Toolbar PR is the only public measure we have from Google, it’s going to continue to matter. By drastically dropping the PR of these high profile sites, Google is just asking to be hated.

  3. Court (10 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:03 pm | Permalink

    Andy this is getting freaking ridiculous. After I got hit with a -1 the first time I refunded all of my text link sales money and took them down. I had to launch a new advertising campaign that used nofollows on everything. Of course I can’t charge as much now. Now I’m complying 100% with their rules. What do they do? They hit me today again and now I’m -2.

    There just isn’t anything different that I can do now, other than shutting down all revenue all together. Looking at your list, all the players got hit so PageRank just isn’t valid anymore in this niche.

    • Hyder (3 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:31 pm | Permalink

      Just curious, Where did you get the -1 and -2 figures from?

      • Court (10 comments.)
        Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:06 pm | Permalink

        Good question Hyder. I got PR3 in the last update, which happened in April. A few weeks ago I was dropped to a 2 about the same time that Andy dropped to a 4. That was the -1.

        Now I dropped again and sit at PR1. That’s the -2. Google hasn’t updated global toolbar rank yet. If they did, mine would have to be higher.

  4. Vlad (117 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:09 pm | Permalink

    lol I was writing a post at the same time as you were writing yours

  5. Steve D (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:17 pm | Permalink

    It is looking more and more like Google wants to be the new “Evil Empire”. They need to either scrap PR or make it an internal metric that only Google can see.

    I am tired of dancing to Google’s music and being penalized even when I do!

  6. Vlad (117 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:19 pm | Permalink

    Andy, do you think the evil G sees no-nofollow blogs as one huge “link farm”???

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:23 pm | Permalink

      They have stated in the past that if links are verified, that nofollow isn’t needed.

  7. wiep (3 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:32 pm | Permalink

    Here are a few more that got hit:

    SunTimes.com (7 -> 5)
    TheGadgetBlog.com (5 -> 3)
    Space.com (7 -> 5)
    NewScientist.com (7 -> 5, although I don’t know for how long that 302 has been there…)

    Now I’m going to yell at my hosting, followed by (hopefully) actually getting some work done ;)

    • CVOS SEO (24 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 8:07 pm | Permalink

      yell at my hosting, followed by getting some work done

      After Google’s October Surprise, don’t you mean NOfollowed by getting some work done?

  8. Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:51 pm | Permalink

    I find the blog network interlinking thing an odd one. Some networks are obviously not impacted (Gawker and TechCrunch’s networks for example).

    Also my Digital Photography School blog is from 6 to 4 and it doesnt sell links or link to any other blogs in a network – although it is on a blogroll at b5 – so if it’s a network think it’s not just that you link to others – but it’d be a penalty for being linked TO too much which is a bit of a worry (it’d mean you could feasibly take a competitor down by linking to them too much)

    If it is a network interlinking thing then I think Google have just set themselves up for a massive amount of work. What blogger with more than one blog doesn’t interlink their blogs?

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:59 pm | Permalink

      The first round of paid links updates they didn’t catch everyone, just the most obvious offenders or those they wanted to make an example of.

      Q: What is the difference between a blackhat and their linkfarms of thousands of sites and a blog network?

      A: A blog network is less subtle about the interlinking and leaves a bigger footprint

      I did check Gawker and Techcrunch, but they also have far fewer blogs involved.

      Not all Weblogs Inc properties have been affected either, just the most prominent.

      • Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:07 pm | Permalink

        yeah – I agree – although I think there is an argument to be made for blog networks using their blog rolls as much for usability. We use them at b5 to suggest other content that readers might like to read on similar topics and to show them what else they can find across the network. To be honest I long ago assumed that Google hadn’t been counting these links – or at least had devalued them.

        If they have the ability to penalize for them – why can’t they just take any value away from them?

        • Hyder (3 comments.)
          Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:35 pm | Permalink

          “If they have the ability to penalize for them – why can’t they just take any value away from them?”

          Because they can’t. It’s probably not how their algorithm was set up. Remember it is all about the backrub philosophy, you scratch mine and I scratch yours.

          Except now I think it’s, We {Google} scratch who we want!

  9. Mike (28 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 1:57 pm | Permalink

    There’s no doubt in my mind that all of these changes to PR have been applied manually. This is no algo change.

    • wiep (3 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:11 pm | Permalink

      In some cases it actually seems something algorithmically.

      I don’t see Matt Cutts visiting OwnedByPugs.com and UrbanPug.com (yes, these went back in PR too) to check their paid links. He’s not a dog person but a cat lover…

  10. Matt
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:24 pm | Permalink

    Has anyone said they have lost rankings / traffic after being hit by this? Or are we just seeing a toolbar PR that is not current (as G has said before?)

  11. Russ @ bombay potatoes (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:25 pm | Permalink

    I guess that really does suck for some of the great sites out there…I’m really thinking of copyblogger here.

  12. BloggingTom (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:27 pm | Permalink

    Puuh, good to read that i am not the only one with a pagerank drop. The PR 6 of my blog was changed to 5 about two weeks ago and today the PR was falling to a 3. Hmpfh, even the Pagerank is not so important anymore, this big drop really hurts…

  13. Barrera (7 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:27 pm | Permalink

    I am not seeing the PR of these sites changing. I have even checked a few different ways and see forbes, engadget, autoblog and the others that I tried showing the higher page rank. Any way I can test it across datacenters or something to see the same as you?

  14. Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:29 pm | Permalink

    Dropped by from Brian (copyblogger)’s site. Wow.. I wonder what incurred big brother’s wrath. Wasn’t the motto “Do no Evil”?

  15. James - DigitalKeyToInfo (15 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:32 pm | Permalink

    Is it a penalty or just PR adjustment?
    I guess my question is has any one increased PR? It seems like everyone is just being lowered in adjustment. I really did not keep track of PageRank too much so I can’t tell.

    • Court (10 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 8:09 pm | Permalink

      Nope, no one has increased that I’ve been able to find James.

    • SEOMike (1 comments.)
      Posted October 30, 2007 at 4:24 pm | Permalink

      i agree. i think its just an adjustment. but i don’t blame people who worked really hard then all of a sudden they get slapped in the face. i say keep on doing what your are doing and eventually the rankings will go back up.

  16. plague doctor (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:40 pm | Permalink

    Its not just the big ones!I too have gone down from 5 to 4 and now today I notice its 3.

  17. Sutocu (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:41 pm | Permalink

    Unless there’s an algo change behind this, they better come out and explain the reasons behind this, or there’s nothing webmasters can do to correct the situation. Saying “go check the webmaster guidelines” will do no good either, since there are so many points that can be twisted. Something makes me think that’s how they’ll answer though.

  18. Chris (20 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:43 pm | Permalink

    Well I’m glad that I didn’t immediately dump my advertisers first time around, as it’s obvious it wouldn’t make any difference. One of my blogs has been hit, and the others are sure to follow, so the only course of action I can think to take is simple.

    Screw ‘em.

    Google can come up with new rules to protect their advertising models as much as they like (‘cos that’s all this is) but if people ignore them en masse….. Courage people, they can only do as much damage as you let them.

    As for Problogger getting spanked,I wouldn’t be surprised if it was linked to all the recent outgoing links connected to the various writing projects & competitions – how on Earth could Darren check if they were to ‘bad neighbourhoods’ or not? Indeed, if the majority of those blogs he linked to are monetized in anyway to do with TLA or PPP they could be classed as such by Google.

    So, Darren is generous to his readers, and gets stiffed in reply.

    Yay. Go Google……

    • aw (1 comments.)
      Posted November 14, 2007 at 2:35 am | Permalink

      No Nofollow, good :)
      But why i cannot vote in your poll ?

  19. PreBlogging (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 2:46 pm | Permalink

    I was hit with a loss from PR5 to PR4 two weeks ago, I took actions to remove the links that I was getting paid for but today I find out I got hit again, this time to PR3 :( And intenal PR4 pages are now PR3 too. FFS GOOOGLE !

    btw. http://www.adesblog.com/ is now PR5 from PR7

  20. whydowork (10 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:16 pm | Permalink

    We’ve gone from a PR 7 down to a PR 5 within the last year.

    Thankfully all of our main site sections are still sitting at PR 5, but who knows where the slide will end!

  21. markus941 (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:24 pm | Permalink

    PR is and has been a BS measurement metric for a while now. Yeah, companies still use it in top x blogs rankings, but they also use Alexa and other (often) grossly innacurate metrics.

  22. Vlad (117 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:25 pm | Permalink
  23. lilian aka 5xmom (3 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:32 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for the list of those who lost their PRs. I don’t mean to sound mean but it is a little comforting to know that it is done across the whole blogsphere. I lost -2 in all my blogs. Oh well…

    • nithin (1 comments.)
      Posted November 23, 2007 at 1:44 pm | Permalink

      Hi, my blog is http://bucksfrominternet.blogspot.com and it jumped from 0 to 2 after the update. But after that I sold a single link which decreased my PR from 2 to 0. Could you tell me the reason for decrease in my PR. Even others can help me to find this issue. I am really confused right now because my PR decreased in steps, i mean from 2 to 1 and then after some days from 1 to 0.

      Any one please help me about this issue. If you know any thing please reply to nithin_chinni2002@yahoo.com

      Also suggestions are welcomed.

  24. KWD
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 3:51 pm | Permalink

    The network linking aspect is interesting. It would appear to be limited to blogs though. One business network that does extensive sitewide linking among their sites is IAC (HSN.com, Hotels.com, etc.), and I see no declines in the page ranks amongst their sites.

  25. Paula Neal Mooney (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 4:27 pm | Permalink

    PAULA NEAL MOONEY: PageRank Dropped Again – Google Dropped my PR to 3, ProBlogger and John Chow to 4 … Have you dropped again too?

  26. Todd G (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 4:38 pm | Permalink

    OK, so in the past whenever we have seen a PR update we either stay the same or get a slight bump. The scale is from 1 – 10, so we can’t always expect to go up. Every day there are more and more links, so isn’t it only natural that PR will need to be re-adjusted at some point? Perhaps Mr. Cutts is simply riding the wave of the PR update and using it to his advantage? I’ve had two sites go down, one -3 (minus one 6 months ago, and minus two now) and the other -2 (minus one a couple weeks ago, and minus one now). Then, I have a couple other sites with
    virtually ZERO inbound links, no content, no nothing, stay at PR 5 and PR 6… chances are they just haven’t gotten to these sites yet.

    Of course, I’m pissed that my PR has dropped on my two main sites, but there’s not much to do about it. I’m not going to nofollow my links because I just don’t believe in this approach and I’m not going to stop selling advertising because, well, I like to have a few extra bucks every month.

    I think we need to all wait and let this play out a bit more… their PR algorithm wasn’t all that great to begin with. It was very inaccurate and sometimes just strange, and what they’re doing now is just making it even more inaccurate and even stranger. Eventually more and more people will begin to notice that it’s inaccurate and strange and will stop trusting it.

    I wish the googlites could just let us know what is going on. It’s their PR and they can change it all they want, but it would be nice if they could work on their communication skills and stop being such snobs.

  27. Jeff
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 4:51 pm | Permalink

    I think this is a simple “don’t pass page rank” penalty for link sellers. These sites either sell links, look like they sell links (problooger & copyblogger advertise TLA), or have inbound links from link sellers (not necessarily purchased links).

    An ebbing tide lowers all boats.

    • Bob
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 9:32 pm | Permalink

      None of our sites sell links or buy links or advertising and the PR dropped. So it is not all about selling links.

  28. Geekissimo (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 4:55 pm | Permalink

    too in italy…

    my geeks blog http://www.geekissimo.com from 5 to 3…..

  29. Andy (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:00 pm | Permalink

    I see that Google still has a page rank of 10. Has anyone ever seen a site with a page rank of 10 other than Google? I can’t remember ever seeing one. I have seen plenty of 8′s and some 9′s like CNN and MSNBC, but no 10′s.

    • Vlad (117 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:35 pm | Permalink

      Yahoo, Adobe, ERCIM, NASA, NSF just few that came to my mind.

  30. uncle sha (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:14 pm | Permalink

    i’ve seen my blogs went down the PR slide too and none of my NEW blogs have taken a new PR status even with sufficient backlink

    google is becoming another ‘microsoft’ … ppl is starting to hate them

    i’ve since forget abt PR and focused on content these days

  31. RT Cunningham (24 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:19 pm | Permalink

    Google finally caught me. My blog slid from a 4 to a 3 today.

  32. Egon (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:21 pm | Permalink

    AutomoBlog.net went from PR5 to PR3.

    I can’t believe this. It would be so much simpler if Google just came out and said they changed the algorithm or something. I mean come on, this is ridiculous.

  33. Robin Good (3 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:35 pm | Permalink

    Everyone is focusing on PR loss. But unless you are selling text links somewhere or watching some stupid blog ranking chart, PR decrease does not mean death by Google by any means.

    As some of you have well understood Google has just limited the amount of PageRank these sites can pass on to other sites, whether these others are paying or not.

    I have lost 3 points of PR but I see not even a slight change in traffic nor in revenue from AdSense. Maybe I should wait before arriving at such conclusions but what I see is:

    Google is not penalizing sites by lowering their search position inside SERPS. It is only lowering their PR so that they can pass on less juice if they ever wanted to.

    Cutting down interlinking inside small and large blog networks is something we need to add to the new list of items that make Google sneeze, while stopping being so paranoid about our position inside the charts.

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 6:21 pm | Permalink

      Robin those ranking charts are actually a health steeam of traffic from many niche sites, and each one I have been included on sends me more traffic than Dmoz, and it is highly targeted.

      It makes a difference to me as a blogger and as a businessman looking to capitalize on my growing authority to be hit with a penalty.

      You struggled to make a living when you had a Google penalty, and I actually had a lot of sympathy and submitted your problems to Sphinn.

      My monetization and living doesn’t rely on Google traffic or income, but that green bar sometimes has more relevance than all the Google traffic I get sent.

      It is a form of social proof, and it is seen that way by the general public who will have no idea why my site is a PR3, and a splog with scraped content is rated higher.

      • Tomaz Mencinger (11 comments.)
        Posted October 25, 2007 at 4:51 am | Permalink

        The visitors you get from ranking charts that include your pagerank are mostly interested in pagerank and how they can benefit from it.

        Especially when they see that you have nofollow removed.

        You won’t get many visitors really interested in your knowledge coming to your site through ranking charts.

        • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
          Posted October 25, 2007 at 3:31 pm | Permalink

          It is quite possible that some are more mercenary, especially as I am one of the catalysts of the dofollow movement.

          However many people following the lists have been “converted” and many have given me far more juice than I have ever given them.

          That is a community thing that many online marketers and SEOs just don’t understand.

          Dofollow links is really just a token gesture on a well optimized blog.

      • Robin Good (3 comments.)
        Posted October 25, 2007 at 8:02 am | Permalink

        Andy, I can see your point and I appreciate you being frank about it.

        I am also on many charts and you can imagine that the same drop you have gotten as a consequence of yesterday PR drop has also hit my own visibility and traffic from those sources too.

        I understand you saying that your sustainability does not depend on Google’s traffic but openly complaining about the negative impact resulting from the loss of PR.

        Is this because you do consulting work and people look at your PageRank before considering to hire you, or simply because the lesser exposure on those charts takes away more customers from your potential pool of clients?

        • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
          Posted October 25, 2007 at 3:40 pm | Permalink

          In this particular article I would look on it that I am reporting, previous articles were more personal because I was hit in the first round 2 weeks ago, possibly unfairly, at least that is the collective opinion of my readers.

          This blog has always been intended to challenge SEO concepts on certain issues, including Google’s stance on paid links and PageRank / Juice control in various ways.

          On the monetization front it just damages options. I have never, and have no intention of selling links intended to game search results, but I do walk close to the line with the few “consulting reviews” I write.

          Many experts state that visible PageRank drop has no effect on traffic. The charts are just an example of a real effect on traffic, and also justify the way PageRank is used by many as an indication of a site’s relevance for advertisers, not just to sell PageRank influencing links. Google use it as a ranking method themselves in their directory, provide APIs to get the data, then expect no one to use it?

  34. Robin Good (3 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:36 pm | Permalink

    by the way…

    Statcounter had a PR of 10. But it has just been cut off as well.

  35. felix (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:53 pm | Permalink

    It’s an interesting piece, but I’m curious if you genuinely believe that engadget losing 2 from it’s toolbar pr is going to have an effect on Google’s stock valuation?

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 5:59 pm | Permalink

      I believe it can have a dampening effect on share evaluation, because so much is weighted in public sentiment.

      AOL is a fairly big Google partner, and they have just been told by Google that their blogs are a load of webspam, yet another competitor such as Yahoo didn’t get a penalty for mass interlinking, and openly sells links in their directory.

      If I was AOL right now, I would be seriously considering doing something similar to what Ebay did a few months back.

  36. revenuerobot (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 6:00 pm | Permalink

    great post!
    it’s great how things are changing for people who only look at PR’s… there is alot more to a blog / website then just it’s PR…

  37. Shane (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 6:06 pm | Permalink

    Has anyone thought that maybe they are devaluing DMOZ and all the directories that use the DMOZ data. Just a thought!

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 6:14 pm | Permalink

      Dmoz might give some trust, but relatively little visible PR.
      hat is especially the case once the data is transferred over to Google’s own version (which uses PageRank to rate the sites)

      This site constantly gains links, high quality links from authority sites, so a drop in relative pagerank would be unlikely.
      My link profile is too wide, as are all of the other sites listed.

      Even in Vlad’s case, whilst I have probably given him a fair amount of juice over the last 12 months, a PR2 is a joke, and so is that of Court.

  38. felix (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 6:10 pm | Permalink

    It is possible, the biggest partners have the option. But, I’d argue that in general people are with AdSense not because they like Google but simply because AdSense pays the most. Switching off Google would have a financial impact on the switchers. And companies short of Ebay and AOL don’t have the clout to push Google around. I’d be surprised if companies took a financial hit simply in protest of this. Surpised, but interested to see what would happen if it did.

  39. Sports Cartel (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 6:14 pm | Permalink

    The Sports Cartel blog network was hit hard, with a lot of sites going from PR 4 to PR 0. The sad thing is that for a lot of the sites, they still rank extremely high on a lot of keywords. We’ve sold text links in the past and tried to play ball, but a lot of the network sites have been punished. I’ve seen a MAJOR drop in AdSense revenue, too. It’s the worst its been since the first month of implementation 3 years ago.

    It’s just kind of disheartening that a primary source of revenue will be stripped away by Google. What happens when these mom-and-pop sites can’t pay for hosting because they aren’t getting paid advertisers?

  40. lucia (54 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:03 pm | Permalink

    My knitting blog took a hit. I’ll be blogging about this after I look at some traffic numbers etc.

  41. Curious
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:29 pm | Permalink

    It’s interesting to watch this-I checked out a few of the URL’s you name and the update in page rank is NOT universal across all datacenters. It may be that this is being rolled out and that’s why or it may be that Google is backpedalling because of the press, but I wonder why the differences across datacenters (I don’t often see that as frequently as in the past).

  42. robwatts (29 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:30 pm | Permalink

    Boo to that, I’ve just noted that my blog with 100 + posts with god knows how many uniques from various sites has also been rewarded with a nice -1 or perhaps it’s a -2 even.

    They obviouusly couldn’t give a flying about what we think, else why be so contemptuous about it all? *shrugs*

  43. Vic (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:31 pm | Permalink

    Here’s another one to get hit – http://www.wunderground.com but their primary domain http://www.weatherunderground.com was not hit. wunderground.com was a PR 7/8 and is now a 5…

  44. Wendy Piersall (8 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:33 pm | Permalink

    Honestly, Andy, I wonder how much we have unknowingly contributed to the problem with Google Analytics?

    Perhaps in hindsight, Analytics seems to act much more like a Trojan Horse than a “free service for the community”.

    We let them in, we gave them all the info they needed, and now, they are using it against us.

    I start looking for a new analytics solution today. I’ll pay for it if I have to. I’m done giving the devil access to my personal diary. ;)

    • Dharmesh Shah (1 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 8:36 pm | Permalink

      It is actually quite scary to think how much data Google gets as a result of Google Analytics.

      Between that and the Google Toolbar, they have access to a ton of information regarding the flow of traffic across the web.

    • Sockmoney
      Posted October 25, 2007 at 12:45 pm | Permalink

      I’ve always felt this way, and shared with others… but no one ever seemed to care.

      I use Awstats… which sucks… but at least I get to keep my underwear on… ;-)

  45. Chris Marshall (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:40 pm | Permalink

    My PR jumped down 2 notches as well at Martial Development, and I’ve never sold a link or participated in a link exchange program. So there must be, or ought to be some other explanation.

  46. Vlad (117 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:49 pm | Permalink

    http://www.statcounter.com/ have taken the biggest hit it appears from 10 to 6

  47. Mathew Browne (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 7:55 pm | Permalink

    I wrote a post about this at http://www.mathewbrowne.com/check-your-current-pagerank/ – if you have a site in Google Directory (as you do Andy) you’ll see the PR is unchanged. Only a few exceptions to this rule – Problogger appears to have a PR0 and Autoblog has gone up to PR7. I think it’s quite clear this is a case of Google downgrading toolbar PR as a means to prevent link sales for link juice.

  48. Simon (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 8:22 pm | Permalink

    If everyone puts up adsense ads on their site they will be fine, I don’t know what you are all worried about…. sorry to hear though.

  49. John Pozadzides (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 8:32 pm | Permalink

    Hmmm. OneMan’sBlog.com dropped from a PR8 to PR7 about a month ago. Then overnight it dropped from PR7 to PR5.

    There are no links being sold on the site without the mandatory

    rel="nofollow

    ” that Google loves, so I have no explanation for it.

    John

  50. Brian Free (2 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 8:49 pm | Permalink

    Here is a website that allows you to check Page Rank across multiple datacenters

    http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

  51. lucia (54 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 9:57 pm | Permalink

    Well… brian, I get different results at
    http://www.smartpagerank.com/
    http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker
    and
    http://ppp.customtools.urltrends.com/index.php

    All claim to sample instantly!

  52. Greenie
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 9:57 pm | Permalink

    PR5 is the new PR7
    PR4 is the new PR6
    PR3 is the new PR5

    Google finally goes after the digerati and they are shocked, just shocked! I think it might be time to get some money out of the piggy bank for your new Adwords campaigns. Could this just be a terrible Google revenue enhancement accident??? Join the club.

    From what I have been able to determine, all nofollow links have been followed by a bot from Google for at least the last 9 months or so. They just don’t count them, but they do see where they go.

    Nothing happened to my site’s PR, but then I don’t use blog network linking tactics to excess. You need links from all types of sources, not just other blogs. If only the digerati are reading and linking to the other digerati, how truly relevant is that? Besides, given their demographics, digerati may have high Adwords revenue potential. Squeeze that turnip.

    Greenie

  53. Sueblimely (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 10:01 pm | Permalink

    I was going to ask if anyone knew of sites that had actually increased in rank during the recent changes then discovered that one of my sites, for a non-profit volunteer run Coastwatch organization in UK has gone up 2.

  54. Reinhardt (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 10:07 pm | Permalink

    All my pages had the same PR as before… but even autoblog.com was “decreased in PR from 6 to 4″ will it also kill their visits?

    Stats:
    Sat 10/20: 243,546
    Sun 10/21: 264,249
    Mon 10/22: 407,464
    Tue 10/23: 699,705
    Wed 10/24: 756,951

    we will see

  55. Laza
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 10:25 pm | Permalink

    The biggest drop I’ve seen so far hit the freeware album creator site jalbum.net – from PR9 to PR5 in two weeks. Useful content, tons of visitors per day, millions of backlinks, and no bad neighborhood AFAIK.

  56. Rich Gilchrest (1 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 10:38 pm | Permalink

    Is it possible that a large number of incoming links to the sites which are now dropping had come from newly identified bad neighborhoods that themselves had high PR? If there were, say, a few thousand PR 5-7 sites that were previously passing page rank to a large number of A-list bloggers, and that suddenly ended, it seems reasonable that those A-list bloggers would drop in page rank as well.

    I have no idea, I’m a PR0 all the way :)

  57. Duncan (5 comments.)
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 11:09 pm | Permalink

    Andy
    re your comment at the end of the post, it would appear to have only kicked in at a certain number, so only larger linking networks have been punished as opposed to some of the real small ones, least from what I can see.

    • Andy Beard (1785 comments.)
      Posted October 24, 2007 at 11:41 pm | Permalink

      Duncan there is nothing in this as conclusive as your Techcrunch post, as certainly Yahoo abuse interlinking far more than your former partners, yet seem to be unscathed.
      I am fairly sure my editorial has far more value on the web than Yahoo paid directory links.

      Thus they have missed a few, and Techcrunch pushes the envelope a little too with the post thanking advertisers, and mentioning advertisers without nofollow links.

      TLA was probably mentioned on Techcrunch as many, maybe more times than PPP.

      Know More Media have more cross linking than B5 media
      Splashcast were partially hit

      Copyblogger has never had paid links, but has potentially followable advertising links even though they are through an ad server, but then Clickbank passes PR as well, as do a number of affiliate programs.

      Whilst they may well have received some kind of visual warning about the linking practice, that doesn’t mean Techcrunch is innocent.

      Thus only a subset have been punished so far for possible interlinking, just like only a subset of link sellers or advertising sellers.

      Did you see how Valleyway were so happy pointing the finger?
      Did you also notice their Intel sponsorship without nofollow?

      • Brian Mark (1 comments.)
        Posted October 25, 2007 at 4:17 pm | Permalink

        You’re pointing out that they’ve only hit a subset, but are you sure they’re done? Who says the other sites you’ve pointed out aren’t next. If this is a manual reduction, as many people are speculating at this point, it would take some time to roll everything out. Keep watching and I’m pretty certain we’ll see more.

  58. Giseppe
    Posted October 24, 2007 at 11:40 pm | Permalink

    It does not matter what penalties slap on blog/site owners in regards to PR. Natural traffic is the all important currency. It will all come out in the wash. People can speculate all they like. Google will do what it does best. Control the internet. :D

  59. Pedro
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 2:47 am | Permalink

    For what it seems, google are hiting the sites that sell links, the sites that are about SEO, money and related to that, the sites that do paid reviews or have some links at posts that seems some kind of sponsor.

    If we take this big big group, it explains all the sites that are loosing (we hope not forever) pagerank.

  60. Posted October 25, 2007 at 5:17 am | Permalink

    Well let us await a formal communication from google or the report of a research done to find out the reasons…To me blogs, however popular they are, do not deserve the PR as they are mostly duplicate stuff…probably google is taking into account the uniqueness of the content as well(may be pagerank now works exactly against Techmeme’s algorithm??)……hopefully the originator of the content gets the credit as per the new system…i also hope that news that are made popular by social networking sites like digg and others lose credibility as they are 90% unfairly promoted……

  61. Rob
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 6:00 am | Permalink

    TEXT LINK ADS still has a PR7: http://www.text-link-ads.com/ – can someone explain this? Surely if people are being penalized for paid links and advertising TLA on their sites actually penalizing the site that is making it all possible would be a good way to go?

  62. Patrick Ryall (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 6:47 am | Permalink

    Greetings all –

    Go Google at last we are seeing the right way from Google, we have been warning people for a long time of the dangers of online marketers that really dont know what real marketing is all about. Paid links bad advice and money blogging. all they have all been doing is leading people up a garden path.

    We for one celebrate the dismiss of the so called Guru – I.e made money from a virgin market.

    Good on you Google – The big ship is turning at last.

    Have a B L O G G I N G good day.

  63. MacBros (4 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 9:16 am | Permalink

    The big G got me too. Took my PR5 and replaced it with this moldy PR3. WTF?

    I was making some great pocket money based on that PR5 too, so Google just screwed me out of my beer money.

    AS soon as I get my Absence money from them I think I’ll cut all ties wit them, hopefully others will follow.

  64. Antonio (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 9:40 am | Permalink

    In spanish too:

    http://www.error500.net

    Pagerank 6 -> Pagerank 3

  65. Mark Putnam (2 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 9:59 am | Permalink

    My blog Lame News maintained a 2 but I just restarted it this month after 3 years!!! [so yay for me]

    ps
    no one comment after me!

  66. Flanture (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 11:25 am | Permalink

    My blog was also downgraded from PR5 to PR3. I wrote reviews for Reviewme and I made about 20$ per review, but now I don’t think I will make more than 10$ per review.

    I don’t think this is good for Google also. Companies like TLA and others have just started and I don’t think Google can stop this expansion. They will just exclude page rank as relevant attribute of blog/website value.

  67. John W. Furst (27 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 2:58 pm | Permalink

    That definitely degrades the meaning of PageRank to an even more arbitrary number. Google is not exactly a non-profit organization, is it. They are probably prelaunching a new commercial product:

    Google AdWords -> AdSense -> Ad(d)PageRank

    That won’t be cheap, I guess.
    Just my humble 2 cents. –John

  68. Michael BRooks (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 3:01 pm | Permalink

    I took a huge hit on my main site over the last two Toolbar rankings, from 6 to 5 to 3. I dabble a bit in paid posts, but my non-paid content is probably 90-95 percent of my posts.

    My photography blog dropped from a 4 to an N/A. Can’t sell any ads with that, but I was only making nickels and dimes from that site, anyways.

    Yet my traffic has never been higher, and I have had a simultaneous upsurge in hits over the past two weeks. My site was averaging about 400 uniques a day, but has averaged nearly 1000 uniques since early October.

    Of course, Alexa fails to recognize that two-and-a-half fold traffic rise, but that’s another story altogether.

    Agreed that the corporate mentalité of Google is one of arrogance, hypocrisy, and greed. These will be the corporate downfall, and I agree with earlier posters that there will be blowback that Google’s wonks did not forsee.

  69. rumblepup (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 3:37 pm | Permalink

    Of course, here is the part that drives me bonkers. Little ol soon to be Google Partner (just a rumor) WordPress.com, didn’t get smacked, with all of those subdomains, weirdo linkage, unnatural linking. Hmmmm.

  70. Pete W (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 3:46 pm | Permalink

    Welcome to the PR3 club. Sucks, huh :p

  71. Jeff
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 4:35 pm | Permalink

    Check the wayback machine on many of the “unfairly penalized” sites that sell “nofollow” today and you will find they weren’t so squeaky clean a couple months ago.

    I maintain this is a simple result of marking link seller’s pages as “don’t pass page rank.”

    Its not necessary for Google to “Identify interlinking,” the page rank algorithm already does that. The thing that is new is Google’s database of link sellers. Marking pages “don’t pass” interrupts the flow of page rank across any such network.

    Some good folks at the periphery of the link selling network will lose PR because many of their incoming links are devalued. An ebbing tide lowers all boats.

  72. Amish Furniture (20 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 5:48 pm | Permalink

    Another blog that I noticed took a hit today:
    http://www.plagiarismtoday.com – PR5 to PR3
    Now PR3 on most datacenters and PR5 on few.

  73. Jonathan Bailey (6 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 8:21 pm | Permalink

    AF: I noticed that too but oddly enough search engine traffic is actually up today and yesterday. Go figure…

    I think it mistook my long blogroll as spam, I removed and I’m going to reintroduce a new one soon.

  74. Michael Hampton (1 comments.)
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 11:55 pm | Permalink

    My site also dropped from PR6 to PR4, though I’ve seen only about a 5% drop in traffic over the last month.

    Interestingly, I sort of knew something like this was coming since my AdSense revenues have been down almost 50% over the last month. Fortunately it is not my sole source of income.

  75. Posted October 26, 2007 at 3:09 am | Permalink

    It doesn’t seem that PageRank should really matter to anyone who isn’t selling links. A drop in SERPS hurts my bottom line (and I had a nasty one of those today) but not a PR drop.

  76. Jonathan Bailey (6 comments.)
    Posted October 26, 2007 at 1:15 pm | Permalink

    Ok, I’m noticing a slight trend upward in my pagerank following my corrections. I checked my PR this morning and I now have eight datacenters putting me back at an eight. A few still had me there after the drop but not eight. I don’t think the PR correction can be that fast but who knows?

    I’ve seen no measurable drop in SERPS nor have I see an drop off in search engine traffic. Perhaps, for my site at least, PR is just an age.

  77. Leonard Bartholomew (1 comments.)
    Posted October 26, 2007 at 1:47 pm | Permalink

    I think this smack down really had a lot to do with the web directories that you may be linking from and to, not just paid links. Hell, I’m even thinking about cleaning out my reciprocal links programs!

    What to do, what to do? Probably nothing.

    Len

  78. Atomic Popcorn (1 comments.)
    Posted October 26, 2007 at 4:17 pm | Permalink

    Pagerank is something that only certain webmasters care about. I think this is just bringing people back to earth about selling links and link building.
    As my father has said many times, if you don’t ask you don’t get. I have a few PR7 sites that are just link exchanging with me due to actually asking.

    No need to pay for links

  79. CrankyDave (10 comments.)
    Posted October 26, 2007 at 7:48 pm | Permalink

    If indeed this is an algorithmic change, and the probability that a random surfer follows a link has dropped drastically across many sites, then it seems to me that the probability that they follow other links would have to go up.

    The process is not completely done, not being exported to the toolbar equally for all sites, or not an actual algorithmic change.

  80. David Hopkins (1 comments.)
    Posted October 26, 2007 at 10:45 pm | Permalink

    If you check your PR on multiple data centers you will have a PR 5 on some, but how long will that last?

    Might be worht checking this out: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/i-requested-reconsideration-and-got-my-pagerank-back/

  81. Grace Alexa (2 comments.)
    Posted October 27, 2007 at 7:36 am | Permalink

    I really got double hike in my page rank due to best optimization and innovative techniques.

    Cheers :)

  82. Grace Alexa (2 comments.)
    Posted October 27, 2007 at 7:40 am | Permalink

    I really got double hike in my page rank due to best optimization and innovative techniques.

    http://www.sigmainfotech.com.au/

    Cheers :)

  83. Jon Gursha (1 comments.)
    Posted October 27, 2007 at 5:23 pm | Permalink

    Two of my PR 0 sites have been rewarded with PR, from 0 to PR 2. I woke up today and checked they are now both PR 0. Both sites are brand new and have only been up for two months. After I noticed the PR reward I went to Bruce Clays site and did a link check both sites have links from Directories non paid links sources with good PR. Each site also had a link from pagerank10.co.uk/ with a reciprocal link that I put up than took down. Did the link check hurt my PR? Did the link from page rank 10 affect this?

  84. Jw Bobbink (1 comments.)
    Posted October 27, 2007 at 6:06 pm | Permalink

    As long as Google doesn’t take notice of linkselling, nothing will happen to your pageranks, and besides that, there are many other factors that decide on your ranking.

  85. Brian Clark (3 comments.)
    Posted October 27, 2007 at 8:31 pm | Permalink

    It looks like Copyblogger is being raised to a 7, not dropped to a 4. Looks like there is some justice in the world. :)

  86. Sports Cartel (2 comments.)
    Posted October 27, 2007 at 10:03 pm | Permalink

    The drops keep coming — we’re not out of the woods yet. I had a PR 5 site survive (and it has some kick-ass authority incoming links, like Sports Illustrated, et. Al) the first round of cuts, only to have it drop to a PR 4. I’ve had PR 4 drop to PR 0, and I’ve had a site with a handful of WALL STREET JOURNAL incoming links drop from a PR 4 to a PR 2.

    Thanks a lot, Goog.

  87. drmike (2 comments.)
    Posted October 28, 2007 at 2:32 am | Permalink

    The annoying part about all this is that it seems like Google never deals with blog scrapers and splogs. Seems like they’re going after the wrong folks to me.

  88. Olivier A. (1 comments.)
    Posted October 28, 2007 at 6:05 am | Permalink

    The most annoying part of this is how mum Google is being about this again. Matt Cutts is being way too quiet.

    We’re starting to take a look at the different Data Centers and see which way Google is leaning. We’ll track the different numbers there to see if Google is going to roll this back a little or not. AS it stands either not all the data centers are updated or some of them are already rolling back as the numbers aren’t consistent.

    We’ll have to see.

  89. Vertical Measures (4 comments.)
    Posted October 28, 2007 at 5:59 pm | Permalink

    You gotta just love the http://www.YouTube.com pagerank. Still sits at 3. This isn’t over by a long shot. I think it is going to get pretty messy for Google.

    We took a look at the article directories — all of them lost 1 to 3 notches. No big surprise there tho.

    Also pretty funny how all of us claim not to really care about PR, but this one post has 116 comments.

  90. The Prize Blog (1 comments.)
    Posted October 28, 2007 at 10:20 pm | Permalink

    My site The Prize Blog went from PR4 to a PR0

    This Google update is disgraceful.

  91. Nilhan (1 comments.)
    Posted October 28, 2007 at 11:18 pm | Permalink

    I can only imagine the PR drops are just a visible warning. Can confirm links being dropped from some blogs. A popular retail site has lost close to a thousand links from blogs and forums – all natural links – people like the site and pass on their coupons etc..

    I too found it hard to believe this was all automated but seeing some pretty small blogs effected coupled with a distant memory of Matt Cutts asking people to report link selling sites to test an algorithm leaves me wondering about at least a semi-automated method.

  92. Blog Bloke (3 comments.)
    Posted October 28, 2007 at 11:52 pm | Permalink

    Although I didn’t rate to be mentioned in this post, I take solace in the fact that I may have been the first to report this story, and ironically mine was also the most dugg story on the topic as well. But most of all, I can now boast a higher pagerank than most of you. So here’s sand in your face ;-)

  93. Dan (1 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 1:29 am | Permalink

    Guess I’ll chime in too… my site pixel2life.com went from a 6 to a 4 and my 2 main competitors didn’t even budge from their PR 6 levels. Charming….

  94. Pocket SEO (1 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 1:35 am | Permalink

    The interesting thing about the YouTube incident is that it shows that Google’s algorithm is seriously flawed and that a lot of sites are going to be unjustly hit with penalties.

    Google… still beta…

  95. cristian (2 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 11:05 am | Permalink

    This would make sense:

    Paid links are in my opinion direct competitors with Google Adsense… Now, if the blogs remove the paid links, some of them will place Adsense, and all money comes to Google…

  96. Symbian (1 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 12:48 pm | Permalink

    My Blogspot blog got PR5! Now I as cool as Forbes.com! And cooler TUAW!

  97. cristian (2 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 1:03 pm | Permalink

    Continued (sorry, an edit button would be very useful):
    Still, the quoted Kerner-”theory” above has one week point from my point of view,
    because AdSense has nothing to do with PR inheritance while
    selling/buying links on sites is exactly about that.
    Correct me if I’m wrong.

  98. Web design India (2 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 2:30 pm | Permalink

    Exactly.. I’ve been on a few forums and they’re all talking about using nofollow tags to avoid PR loss.. CRAP! Digg uses nofollow, yet pagerank loss is evident..

    ModulusSystems.com has lost PR.. only because I added about 20 nofollow links.. there you go!

  99. Web design India (2 comments.)
    Posted October 29, 2007 at 2:32 pm | Permalink

    Exactly.. I’ve been on a few forums and they’re all talking about using nofollow tags to avoid PR loss..

    CRAP! Digg uses nofollow, yet pagerank loss is evident..

    ModulusSystems.com has lost PR.. only because I added about 20 nofollow links.. there you go!

  100. Matt Ellsworth (11 comments.)
    Posted October 30, 2007 at 1:44 pm | Permalink

    I can’t seem to make heads or tails of this most recent update. I had some blogs go up and some go down. Most of the PR 5 went to PR 3 and some PR 4 to PR 2. But if you check more datacenters it still seems that there is a lot of inconsistency – implying that the update is no where near complete – and who knows what the final number will be.

    http://www.articledashboard.com went from 5 to 6, and they mainly have sitewide links on a lot of other article directories with thousands of pages.

    I would say that it is definately too close to tell to know what is going on yet.

  101. Red (1 comments.)
    Posted October 30, 2007 at 4:18 pm | Permalink

    I was down graded from PR 3 to PR 2, I am not a big site but I only use google adwords. My banner exchanges and links were put in after the ‘change’

    Madness, but as the scale is only 0-10 its a bit small to accommodate the vastness of the internet.

  102. Shawn
    Posted November 2, 2007 at 1:23 am | Permalink

    7 months ago I battled severe back pain to the point that as a 32 year old male in reasonably good health and shape, I could barely walk and began limping when I did. I worked in the automotive industry for 8 years, constantly on my feet, and it interfered with my work. In my constant search for internet knowledge, I had learned enough to promote my own niche website and used paid links to build traffic and increase my search engine rankings. I have created about $1200 to $1800 in residual income from my website in only 7 months, and have been building momentum. My dream is to earn $10,000 or more per month which is 2 to 3 times more than I ever have in my life. I have been working from home, relying on my internet income for the last 2 or 3 months. My back pain has gone away and things have really looked promising – I was seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I figured a year from now that I might be able to trade in ramen noodles and tv dinners for the good life. I have been really budgeting every available dollar into my advertising/seo/paid link campaigns. I see now that Google had reduced the page rank of many of the sites I was focused on advertising with. I don’t know that they are hurt by this as much as I am, as they are still authority sites no matter what Google says their PR is. I know my PR is zero, yet I have dominated some keywords based on my efforts. I guess what I’m saying is I started using Yahoo as my first search engine, and when my entrepreneurial spirit called, I discovered Google PPC, and Adsense, and Google seemed to offer everyday people like me, the opportunity to reach their dreams, and that is why I began using Google. Not because their SERPS are any better than Yahoo, but because they represented what I thought was good with the internet. Over the last 4 or 5 years, that dream they sold me and others has boosted them to unparalleled business success for Google, and now at the pinacle of that success, Google has turned it’s back on people like me, and basically said they’re going to push our dreams back a little… make our road a little harder to climb. Taking this stand at a moment when their stock is trading for what $700 per share or something like that? I’m not taking this personal, because I’m going to succeed on the playing field created by my creator, not on the one created by Google. I’m disappointed in their actions, but it’s within their right. My response is to return to using Yahoo. I will never use Google to search the web again. I’ll accept traffic from their SERPs, but I won’t spend a dime on PPC with Google. Their heads have gotten a little big, and it’s time for a reasonable response, and this is mine.

    Happy Optimizing, & Never Give Up On Your Dreams!

  103. cybererik (1 comments.)
    Posted November 2, 2007 at 6:07 pm | Permalink

    I just got a PR boost on one of my sites (bidboxes.com) from 0 to 3. That’s probably because they knew they were about to ban me from google adsense on one of my other sites. That happened 3 days ago.

  104. Goji Capital (1 comments.)
    Posted November 6, 2007 at 6:15 am | Permalink

    It makes sense that digg favorites would get hit the hardest by the PR drop. It seems like the way that site is set up, it will increase ranks unfairly. Google rankings are based on the relevance on the site, and just because it has had a few stories hit digg does not make it more relevant.

  105. Vishal (3 comments.)
    Posted November 6, 2007 at 2:15 pm | Permalink

    great post. good to see someone is on the pulse of things… Google is messing up big time… but they can afford to!

    i zligged this post since it talks about making money online… if you’ve got other “make money online” posts – come zligg them,
    and see them rise in rank. http://www.zligg.com

  106. Tessa (1 comments.)
    Posted November 6, 2007 at 9:09 pm | Permalink

    This is so annoying. I run a small blog out of Atlanta about the city and music, without any current advertising except my AdWords and got bumped from a 5 down to a 4. I have never paid or sold links. I just don’t understand this. Look forward to hearing Google’s reasoning for these PR hits. Love the discussion about “why care” about PR. Google is determined to change the way businesses and consumers interact with the internet on every level. What they’re doing is controlling and stifling web authors.

  107. Aurelius Tjin (8 comments.)
    Posted November 7, 2007 at 2:46 am | Permalink

    This is really alarming. Google can’t be doing this to small businesses. Google practically is a giant,and he is still stomping at little ‘Davids’ like us.

  108. La psicologia (2 comments.)
    Posted November 8, 2007 at 4:04 pm | Permalink

    Well, not a very fair update, but I’m happy with it, since my home page stepped from 3 to four.

    I’m planning to sell links on my site too.

  109. Jason Green (6 comments.)
    Posted November 14, 2007 at 12:53 pm | Permalink

    I did a recent survey on Digital Point and it appears most link buyers have been un-phased by the recent Google PR slap.

    Also there seems to be very few reports of sites actually losing traffic – PR doesn’t really appear to mean very much anymore.

  110. Chris Taylor (1 comments.)
    Posted November 21, 2007 at 3:04 am | Permalink

    Thanks Andy… was a mistake I made in the permalinks when setting up the new blog. All fixed now.

  111. katie (1 comments.)
    Posted November 21, 2007 at 7:13 pm | Permalink

    I still don’t see the big importance of Page Rank, other than for an uninformed PR person sitting in her office to quickly judge whether to send a press release to a website or blog. If you’re going to sell ads, you can easily produce proof that they should advertise based on your stats, or if they are leary, give them a free month to prove how effective it will be.

    But, your link for searchengineguide.com is wrong. it went to somewhere wierd and Apple related. SearchEngineGuide is a great newsletter. I hope you weren’t knocking them just because they sell ads. And their Page Rank for them is a 6, as of 11/21/07.

  112. Jeanne Dininni (1 comments.)
    Posted November 25, 2007 at 5:04 am | Permalink

    Andy,

    This Google PR fiasco may not be quite over yet. Though my blog went from PR 0 before the update to PR 3 afterward (and has so far remained there), I know someone who had a pre-update PR of 3, which went up to 4 right after the update, then down to 2 about a week later, and which has now, as of the beginning of this week, dropped to PR 0. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to Google’s heavy-handed penalties, and their fickleness really is quite perplexing.

    One of your earlier commenters stated that PR 3 is the new PR 5, which really has me wondering; because, prior to the recent Google update, the iWebtool page rank prediction tool predicted that my Writer’s Notes blog would be a PR 5 after the update, based on the number of backlinks to it, and it came in at PR 3 instead. Hmmmmm…interesting coincidence!

    So far, I haven’t lost any of the PR ground gained during this update; but I’m still wondering what might yet happen. I write sponsored content on my blog for several different paid-to-post services–even more than does my friend mentioned at the beginning of this comment, whose PR has plummeted to 0. Only time will tell, I guess.

    But, I, for one, intend to continue doing things just as I’ve been doing them up to now. I plan to continue disclosing all sponsored content posted to my blog in fairness to my readers (rather than hiding the fact, as many have advised). The way I look at it, I’ll tend to my business and let Google tend to theirs.

    Thanks for all this fascinating info!
    Jeanne Dininni

  113. boris (2 comments.)
    Posted November 27, 2007 at 12:18 am | Permalink

    I have always thought of paid links as corrupt… Those that have lots of money could buy there way to the top… It left an uneven playing field. I also have considered paid links to be the drug of choice of the SEO subculture… Easy to get and hard to shake… Recent reports have indicated that around 70% of web masters reporting are still buying links… This supports my position of paid links are a drug.

  114. Jason (1 comments.)
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 2:51 pm | Permalink

    We have been penalized pretty heavily across all of our sites. The oddest one is mcmcse.com which went from a 6 to 4. This is odd considering a couple of months prior, Microsoft.com added a link to our site on a PR8 page. I though we would be moving up to PR7. The other odd thing is that it doesn’t seem to have affected the SERPS. We still come up 3rd for the search term mcse as before. Here is what happened to our other sites:

    techtutorials.net – 6 -> 4
    certnotes.com – 5 -> 0
    certifypro.com – 5 -> 0
    beertutor.com – 4 -> 0
    7-seconds.com – 2 -> 1

    While we do sell some text links, our sites offer great original content. So, I guess I am not going to worry about it too much. If Google continues down this path, they will become irrelevant and they will give somebody else a chance to step in and take over. As a company, they can’t be dictators and expect everyone to stay on board with them. At least that is MHO.

  115. adrain (1 comments.)
    Posted December 20, 2007 at 2:56 pm | Permalink

    hey even i was slapped by google but im aint crying
    http://bobivibe.com
    pr5————>pr0:(

  116. Manuel Gallego (1 comments.)
    Posted December 23, 2007 at 11:33 pm | Permalink

    i never sold a link from my site ucables.com, but this summer i put a link to my new girlffriend website about real estate: ibizaloft.com to help her to get some traffic and from october i lost my pagerank from 5 to 0.
    i have send some messages to google to reconsider my site, but i have not received any response after 2 months. My traffic decreased 20% and continue decreasing. I have removed this link already from my site.
    I think google should try at least to contact with owner before to do this type of action.
    Why not decrease rank of payed links from adsense too?
    Some years ago, when google was created we love google because, all service that offers was free, and contributed to the original internet spirit to share all, with easy and simple way.
    As in the real life google is corrupted and bad directed for the money.
    Sorry my bad english i hope you can understand me.

    Happy Xmas!

  117. Khayte (1 comments.)
    Posted January 27, 2008 at 7:27 am | Permalink

    Gawd, mine had gone to N/A too, I hate the fact that they have to reduce our PR’s just because we monetize our blogs. What’s the catch anyway? They do the same thing, too I guess on their ‘other’ websites perhaps. Damnn, it makes me go all crazy. :(

  118. Electric Trolleys (1 comments.)
    Posted February 26, 2008 at 9:07 am | Permalink

    The latest moves on the PR are really to be scared about. I see many changes in the old algo. Maybe that is the reason, to change the way the algorithm calculates the PR now in order to prevent sites involved in link farming networks to gain PR. Yet, I have still seen many of those link farming sites getting high PR and good quality sites with 0 PR.

    That may be taken as a problem. Still I am sure Google is still working on this.

    Kind regards,
    J Mihai

  119. john (1 comments.)
    Posted March 18, 2008 at 10:45 am | Permalink

    how long does it take before a website gets PR I have 2 or 3 some older than others and NONE have PR yet? should i care?

  120. Tips for Moms (1 comments.)
    Posted May 7, 2008 at 9:49 am | Permalink

    Hi Andy, I saw two days ago, my google toolbar show PR 5 for one of my site, but today I saw the green bar dropped to PR 3, Why that could be happen?So what is the real PR for my site?PR 5 or PR 3 now?

    thanks

  121. güvenlik (1 comments.)
    Posted May 18, 2008 at 5:40 pm | Permalink

    One of your earlier commenters stated that PR 3 is the new PR 5, which really has me wondering; because, prior to the recent Google update, the iWebtool page rank prediction tool predicted that my Writer’s Notes blog would be a PR 5 after the update, based on the number of backlinks to it, and it came in at PR 3 instead. Hmmmmm…interesting coincidence!

  122. Ami | Niche Traffic (1 comments.)
    Posted May 20, 2008 at 9:30 pm | Permalink

    I have never bought links before but one of my sites went from PR4 to PR 2. But it is still ranking number 1 in Google SERPs for my keyword, and my traffic is increasing!!

    The honest truth is I noted my PR out of curiousity and not an over-riding need to increase it.

    I suppose for internet marketers selling links on their blogs, page rank is important as the cost of the links is tied in to this

    For the rest of us who monetize our sites via adsense and affiliate links, i wonder if page rank is so important?

  123. Paul (1 comments.)
    Posted June 13, 2008 at 7:39 pm | Permalink

    I think pagerank is highly unpredictable, and regardless of backlinks, it can still vary greatly.

    One of my sites is PR2, with thousands of relevant PR3/4/5 links and got a PR2 last update, another site with 100-ish links of lower PR got a PR4.

    So I dont worry too much, just keep working on SEO and getting good relevant links

  124. Jaseem Umer (3 comments.)
    Posted September 22, 2008 at 10:03 am | Permalink

    Google has already changed the blogosphere a lot, I don’t want them to do that again. Thank you for the compilation. Many of the bloggers have regained their pagerank by now, but there are quiet a few you haven’t.

  125. Creare Web Design (1 comments.)
    Posted June 22, 2009 at 3:50 pm | Permalink

    Ive seen Tristar web design go from 7 – 4 and the same for SEround table. its usually due to advertising or selling a large quantity. I don't think it effects your domain authority tho..

  126. AndyBeard (149 comments.)
    Posted June 25, 2009 at 3:49 am | Permalink

    It can affect the ability of a page to pass PageRank, both internally and externally which can have a drastic effect on internal site structure

  127. Posted July 2, 2009 at 5:06 am | Permalink

    This Google update is disgraceful.

  128. Mining Stock TTXP (1 comments.)
    Posted July 5, 2009 at 6:52 pm | Permalink

    So the sites who are non spam quality blogs are not safe then what is?

  129. AndyBeard (149 comments.)
    Posted July 6, 2009 at 2:47 am | Permalink

    18 month old post but no one is 100% safe selling links

  130. Posted July 8, 2009 at 4:29 am | Permalink

    I don't know how to get the high Pr, and it may be take a long time.

  131. Van Sale (2 comments.)
    Posted July 13, 2009 at 6:57 am | Permalink

    I really enjoyed reading this post… well thought out and written. Thank you.

  132. Van Sale (2 comments.)
    Posted July 13, 2009 at 6:57 am | Permalink

    I really enjoyed reading this post… well thought out and written. Thank you.van leasing

  133. mecoo
    Posted July 16, 2009 at 5:45 am | Permalink

    Pretty cool set of resources…thanks
    http://www.mpos.net/s/p4.asp

  134. william_12
    Posted July 25, 2009 at 11:15 am | Permalink

    Yes – over 18 months old post and interesting to see how many sites have been affected and many people annoyed. PR is still being dropped by Google for many sites.

  135. izlesene
    Posted August 17, 2009 at 8:11 pm | Permalink

    super yaa

  136. skintreatment
    Posted August 18, 2009 at 3:24 pm | Permalink

    Yes – over 18 months old post and interesting to see how many sites have been affected and many people annoyed. PR is still being dropped by Google for many sites.

  137. skintreatment
    Posted August 18, 2009 at 3:25 pm | Permalink

    http://www.gachisites.com Yes – over 18 months old post and interesting to see how many sites have been affected and many people annoyed.

  138. skintreatment
    Posted August 18, 2009 at 3:27 pm | Permalink

    Quite a week, indeed. – small business

229 Trackbacks

  1. By Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm? on October 24, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    [...] Andy Beard thinks that there is no change in the algorithm, and that Google is rather penalizing these sites [...]

  2. By Thanks Google! | Copyblogger on October 24, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    [...] 1: “Hey man, did you hear that Google lowered the Page Rank on a bunch of popular [...]

  3. By Google sends a message! on October 24, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    [...] theory that was presented by Andy Beard is that they are heavily punishing sites that are part of larger networks that practice a lot of [...]

  4. By Google on the Warpath : TechVat on October 24, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    [...] further reading I suggest you go to Andy Beard’s blog and Daily Blog Google [...]

  5. Google’s PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?…

    Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Can’t say that we were not warned about this? Danny Sullivan wrote Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google over …

  6. [...] and you are among one of the exclusive! Just take a look at the list of page ranks from Andy Beard. Here are some unusual penalties for trusted sources of good [...]

  7. [...] you selling yours? Today might be the day to watch the investors reaction to Google’s latest tango! Yahoo! FinanceQuote for [...]

  8. [...] sites manually? Is it just paid links, or is there something more to it? Andy Beard seems to think there’s more to it. According to him many of them are part of a larger network of interlinked sites: Here are the [...]

  9. By Online Advertising - AdvertiseSpace on October 24, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    [...] AndyBeard has put together a list as well. Stumble Upon is my single highest source of traffic and surpassed Google search listings, and I’m guessing a lot of other blogs are finding that too. Let go of your fear of the King and set your blog free…     [...]

  10. [...] is a list of some sites, including major publishers, who seem to have taken a hit [...]

  11. By Connected Internet on October 24, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    What On Earth Is Going On With The Latest Google PageRank Update?…

    It’s been a very long time since I’ve written a post while I’m at work, but Andy Beard just pinged me about a story he’d just posted, and I just had to write something I’m so stunned by the post.
    Over the last couple of we…

  12. [...] is a list of some sites, including major publishers, who seem to have taken a hit [...]

  13. [...] Daily Blog Tips and Andy Beard are covering a dramatic drop in PageRank for some very popular web sites. The drop happened [...]

  14. [...] Andy for the [...]

  15. [...] Beard says that Google has slapped some of its biggest fans, meaning those who use a variety of tactics to boost [...]

  16. By The Great Google Bitch Slap on October 24, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    [...] are having their PageRank stripped back and we’re not talking about small time Charlies here. Andy Beard reports sites including Engadget, Forbes, ProBlogger, Search Engine Roundtable, Copyblogger, The [...]

  17. [...] to Andy Beard the list is as [...]

  18. By Big PageRank Drops - SEO Ambassador on October 24, 2007 at 3:25 pm

    [...] practice not looked favourably upon by Google.  Many of the sites that have been hit practice network linking between their [...]

  19. By Digital Point Members put on Suicide Watch on October 24, 2007 at 3:29 pm

    [...] to Google’s apparent assault on Paid Links resulting in some sites’ PageRank being reduced, Digital Point forum members will have to be guarded 24 hours a day for the foreseeable future. If [...]

  20. [...] talk at Searchengineland. Original story from Andy B. Much more at [...]

  21. [...] Andy Beard and Daniel Scocco are providing ongoing coverage of the sites taking a hit. And it’s not just popular blogs – even the Washington Post and Forbes.com have gone from PR7 down to PR5. [...]

  22. [...] of 0-10) take dramatic falls, with some reportedly even falling from PR7 to PR4 (Andy Beard has a good list of those effected). This is a very big deal; many of these sites depend on search traffic to keep [...]

  23. By The Pagerank Drop Secret on October 24, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    [...] that is the formation of a hypothesis. Often though thats where the “search marketers” end their analysis and what they present as a [...]

  24. By The Ongoing PageRank Massacre Hits Big Players :: on October 24, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google Subscribe! Social Bookmark This! These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

  25. By Pagerank 4 is the new 7 : The Last Podcast on October 24, 2007 at 4:24 pm

    [...] Maybe it is just a happy coincidence, but according to this list on TechVat (Update: also check out Andy Beard’s list and explanations), the sites hit the hardest by this update are focused on the dark art of [...]

  26. By Time to pay the Page Rank Piper | TechWag on October 24, 2007 at 4:29 pm

    [...] list came from Daily Blog Tips and has been [...]

  27. By Google Penalty Sweep Continues » Brown Thoughts on October 24, 2007 at 4:36 pm

    [...] blogs penalized were selling text link ads. Another factor that was mentioned by Andy Beard about Google’s crackdown was that some of the big blogs that were penalized were part of blog networks. This meant that [...]

  28. By Google si algoritmul de PageRank | de ce? blog on October 24, 2007 at 5:11 pm

    [...] din cauza tagurilor, dar alea sunt linkuri interne, oricum nu ar avea a face; in schimb, Andy Beard zice ca din cauza schimbului de linkuri la nivel mare, de retea, se poate sa apara caderea asta brusca. Cum [...]

  29. [...] Right now there seems to be a general dissatisfaction, and lots of speculation. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger seems to be taking it in his stride, he’s an easy going chap! Mark from 45n5 is busy speculating about Darren’s drop. Brian Clark at CopyBlogger is contemplating conspiracy theories. Andy Beard thinks that this has to do with interlinking between network sites. [...]

  30. By Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm? | Crenk on October 24, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    [...] DailyBlogTips had some of the first info on the topic and most of the key information was from Andy Beard. Sites penalised are as [...]

  31. By El PageRank está dando golpes bajos on October 24, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    [...] Beard realizó una lista con  una serie de páginas muy famosas las cuales fueron [...]

  32. By I Got Slapped By Google Too! - Untwisted Vortex on October 24, 2007 at 6:15 pm

    [...] wouldn't have looked at all had Andy Beard not mentioned it. You know, it seems disingenuous of Google to arbitrarily reduce PageRanks when [...]

  33. [...] everyone is already talking about this. But I would have felt bad if I hadn’t officially welcomed the [...]

  34. [...] are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common," writes blogger Andy Beard. "They have massive interlinking between their network [...]

  35. [...] brings a flood of announcements that Google has knocked down many blog Page Ranks. This is thought to be due to a number of factors including excess numbers of paid posts. So, it is [...]

  36. [...] with me? Am I hurting you? Am I take your money from your pocket? Is it because of that “pagerank“? Hello…. that “pagerank” is mine [...]

  37. [...] displayed in the toolbar) for a myriad of sites. The best coverage I’ve seen comes from Andy Beard, as well as SEJournal and [...]

  38. By If the SEOs Go, Does Google Go Too?  »TechAddress on October 24, 2007 at 7:31 pm

    [...] from Andy Beard, Problogger and a variety of other sites indicate that Google is shuffling their Pagerank scores. [...]

  39. By Check Your Current Pagerank on October 24, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    [...] Google have been frustrating SEO watchers for a couple of months now by putting off updating toolbar PR for most sites, although they’ve annoyed a lot of pro bloggers by downgrading PR en masse for a whole heap of blogging sites. [...]

  40. By Google PageRank Update | Technology Bites on October 24, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    [...] Andybeard is compiling a list of sites got effected with this update. Tags:google, pagerank Enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my RSS feed Related Articles at Technology Bites Firefox Add-ons to check alexa rankGoogle Checkout Hijacked?Wordpress 2.3Google Analytics New Features: Site Search, Event Tracking..Time to update your affiliate links [...]

  41. [...] provides a list of some of the bigger blogs that were hit by the PR reduction this time around and goes into his thoughts on what may be going [...]

  42. [...] marketer Andy Beard says the reshuffling may related to Google’s very public stance against paid linking or advertising without the use of nofollow. Think anyone is going to be unhappy about this drop in ranking? Says [...]

  43. [...] Here is a short list of those affected that are considered authorities in their field.(per AndyBeard’s site) [...]

  44. [...] something to do with the excessive interlinking by many blog networks. (more sites re-ranked are here and [...]

  45. By PageRank Update is Google's October Surprise on October 24, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    [...] Andy Beard: I certainly don’t intend to be whipped by Google for 9 reviews or “public [...]

  46. [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google, andybeard.eu [...]

  47. [...] (Z resztą listę znanych witryn, którym również dostało się po łapach opublikował Andy Beard, a także Daily Blog Tips), co juz stawia sprawę w trochę innym świetle, bo jednak trudno [...]

  48. By Geek News Central on October 24, 2007 at 8:54 pm

    Specultation on why sites got slammed on their Pagerank?…

    I am sure this comment will be discounted by all the SEO pundits out their, but I really think that some of these sites got slammed on their Google page rank over the past couple of days was because a large percentage……

  49. [...] hier die liste prominenter page-rank-opfer  [...]

  50. [...] daily blog tips has more. Andy Beard who founded the NoNofollow group at Bumpzee has a nice write-up on the topic with a few more listed. Andy’s Page Rank was slashed awhile back and is a [...]

  51. By Recent Google PageRank Update Hit Major Sites on October 24, 2007 at 9:11 pm

    [...] update has made a buzz in the whole blogosphere. Andy Beard wrote a good article where he found the Digg’s favorite sites that were hit by this update, and explains it with the Google’s Guidelines to the SEOs. Which states that: Don’t [...]

  52. By ProBlogger - PageRank 4 on October 24, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    [...] – Andy Beard and Daniel Scocco are compiling lists of blogs and other sites impacted by this PageRank [...]

  53. [...] 但DailyBlogTips文中說到”Andy Beard suggested that the sites that got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside large blog networks. This is a feasible explanation given that most of the Weblogs, Inc blogs (Engadget above all) were penalized, and they do not sell paid links either.” 。它說Engadget沒有出售連結但也被調降PR值,但Simon發現不管是Engadget英文站還中文站(癮科技,現在PR4)在邊欄上都有贊助連結(Sponsored Links),雖然它們可能不是經由連結交易網站出售的,但一樣是有出售連結而且是沒有”nofollow“標籤的。 [...]

  54. [...] Andy Beard har en annan förklaring. Beard tror nämligen att fallet i pagerank handlar om att de drabbade [...]

  55. [...] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, [...]

  56. [...] are no big changes on the Wall Street today, after Google danced around and penalized websites by reducing so called “page rank”. Google stock closed at $675.82 just 5 cents more than it closed [...]

  57. [...] Andy Beard – Digg Favorites Slapped By Google (IMO, the best analysis) [...]

  58. [...] little ape, I recommend observing them when their Google PageRank takes a hit. According to blogger Andy Beard, a number of high-profile blogs and news sites have had just that happen to them in recent days. [...]

  59. By Page Rank Drops For Popular Digg Sites on October 24, 2007 at 10:13 pm

    [...] Andy Beard reports that following the recent paid link hunt, Google seems to be cleansing their database of sites popular in Digg….. [...]

  60. [...] seems to be impacting sites that’re engaged into selling links. Here is a list of some of the major sites ‘hit’ by the PageRank [...]

  61. By Neomeme » Google Smackdown! on October 24, 2007 at 10:30 pm

    [...] Google has rolled out yet another PageRank update – or half of an update anyway. Google’s PageRank is a rough indicator of the worth and [...]

  62. By Are You Ready for a New Page Ranking System? on October 24, 2007 at 10:33 pm

    [...] bad enough, but now that Google is taking value away from sites that are using what they give us, Andy Beard explains here so I am not going into details. Google is getting out of hand with the [...]

  63. [...] are some posts from Rand, Andy and Daniel on today’s toolbar hysteria. What I find most interesting about all the blog posts [...]

  64. [...] Andy Beard reports that following the recent paid link hunt, Google seems to be cleansing their database of sites popular in Digg….. [...]

  65. [...] read about it first at Andy Beard’s blog (through Sphinn) but there are a number of other blog posts and articles cropping up as [...]

  66. [...] Google PageRank update which has smacked many top ranking blogs and sites. Andy Beard’s “DIGG FAVORITES SLAPPED BY GOOGLE” has a list of some of the [...]

  67. [...] can view a list of big name sites such as Engadget to Washington Post on the DailyBlogTips and Andy Beard that have been hit with a lower [...]

  68. By WebMetricsGuru on October 25, 2007 at 12:30 am

    John Evans explains Google’s attack on it’s on link competitors using a PageRank Meltdown…

    I thought John Evans explanation of Google's action, penalizing several blogs including my own Webmetricsguru.com (even though I did not do any of the things that are being punished) is more eloquent than any other I've seen, so far.By the……

  69. By Randy Roedl On Wordpress Blogs on October 25, 2007 at 12:42 am

    [...] not generalized, it must be a slap from Google due to practices that conflict with its guidelines. Andy Beard suggested that the sites that got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside [...]

  70. By Randy Roedl On Wordpress Blogs on October 25, 2007 at 1:02 am

    [...] 1: “Hey man, did you hear that Google lowered the Page Rank on a bunch of popular [...]

  71. [...] Andy + [...]

  72. [...] there PR reduced drastically overnight without any warning.  I first read about it this morning on Andy Beard’s site where he has a small list of compiled sites and there effected PR numbers.  It has been all [...]

  73. [...] Blog Internet Babel Search Engine Guide Andy Beard SEOmoz Sebastians Pamphlets And probably the best PageRank [...]

  74. [...] Search Engine Land | Andy Beard Prohibida su copia total con o sin fines comerciales. Copias parciales deben citar la fuente. [...]

  75. [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google [...]

  76. [...] Google storms, Blogrush storms. There’s a lot going on in the blogosphere. I’m an interested reader of it all, but there’s been no impact on me personally. [...]

  77. By Will google finally eliminate Pagerank? on October 25, 2007 at 4:02 am

    [...] other sites and adding news sites to the list of Pagerank dropping scenario and other bloggers like andybeard and copyblogger. Question is with this move from Google, is this there way of removing completely [...]

  78. [...] that Google was after the link farms and large blog networks. Many of the sites that had their PageRank slashed were members of large networks. Many more were blogs that were involved in past linking schemes [...]

  79. [...] Beard: Digg Favorites Slapped By Google Related PostsSpeed Linking: 03-Jul-07 (Advertising Updates)Gadget Ads from GoogleGoogle Reader [...]

  80. By But what about the rankings? | Wiep.net on October 25, 2007 at 5:29 am

    [...] Beard has listed several other websites that got hit, more coverage about this subject can be found at [...]

  81. By PageRank it’s changing its algorithm | ThinKlear on October 25, 2007 at 6:06 am

    [...] They also wrote about this: DailyBlogTips, Kyle Eslick, Jason Neuman, Ades, Andy Beard [...]

  82. By Google PageRank Updated, Again? on October 25, 2007 at 6:12 am

    [...] downgraded for some major blogs like Problogger, Engadget and Copyblogger. And for some reason, Andy Beard explained that it mostly got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside large [...]

  83. [...] lot of blogs were affected by the current PageRank update. Fortunately, none of my blogs got a downgrade. They all remain the [...]

  84. [...] Spece piszÄ…, że głównym powodem jest sprzedawanie linków. Nie wiem czy wszyscy wiecie ale Google nie pozwala sprzedawać i kupować linków. Na sprzedajÄ…cych można donosić. Donosy Google skrzÄ™tnie analizuje i rozdziela kary – dostaje siÄ™ zarówno kupujÄ…cym jak i sprzedajÄ…cym linki . Dziwne co? [...]

  85. By Assomiglia a un’ecatombe… on October 25, 2007 at 7:11 am

    [...] - Andy Beard  - Search Engine Land  [...]

  86. By Google penaliza la venta de enlaces » Blog Daddy on October 25, 2007 at 7:21 am

    [...] como se nota que se acerca fin de año : – WebProNews: Major Sites Taking PageRank Hits – Andy Beard: Digg Favourites Slapped by Google – SeoBook: Aesthetic Google PageRank Update in Google Toolbars [...]

  87. [...] Dar printre ele, au nimerit şi nişte siteuri foarte rele, de genul celor care produc conţinut ca lumea. Prima valoare este pagerankul vechi, a doua PRul nou: http://www.autoblog.com PR6 PR4 http://www.engadget.com PR7 PR5 http://www.problogger.net PR6 PR4 http://www.searchenginejournal.com PR7 PR4 http://www.johnchow.com PR6 PR4 http://www.forbes.com PR7 PR5 http://www.sfgate.com PR7 PR5 http://www.washingtonpost.com PR7 PR5 (via andy) [...]

  88. [...] cu site-uri afectate: AndyBeard   This content requires the Flash Player and a browser with JavaScript enabled. [...]

  89. By Google reduce el PR de los blogs mas importantes on October 25, 2007 at 8:07 am

    [...] en ProBlogger nos dicen que les han bajado a un PR4 y lo mismo cuenta Andy Beard. Asi que ya veis, estamos en plena guerra de bloggers contra Google, todos quejandonos de que nos [...]

  90. [...] about Google’s latest update and specifically about drops in PageRank (see Greg Boser, Andy Beard, Daily Blog Tips, TechnoSailor and, for a list of other discussions SearchEngineLand). Many [...]

  91. By SEO 2.0 | The Day PageRank Died on October 25, 2007 at 8:47 am

    [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing [...]

  92. By Turulcsirip - Finbar Dineen on October 25, 2007 at 9:02 am

    [...] wants to join Google in their new dance http://andybeard.eu/2007/10/pagerank-update.html indulging in plenty of self-pitying omphalokepsis instead – boo-hoo « elÅ‘zÅ‘ | Finbar [...]

  93. By Reducerea PR la site-urile ce vand linkuri - Page 2 on October 25, 2007 at 9:19 am

    [...] au pierdut cateva puncte din PR. Intr-adevar au fost scrise o groaza de articole pe tema asta. Aici sau aici puteti gasi pe langa 2 articole interesante si 2 liste cu o parte din siturile care au [...]

  94. [...] to some discussion about it. But for those who haven’t read too much about it, please see this and this articles. Also big names like directory.v7n.com , seopedia.org or aviva have a drop in [...]

  95. [...] Here are some of the many articles about this: Google Scares The Search Crowd – Forbes.com Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing Is Google’s PageRank algorithm changing? | Geek Gestalt – A blog by Daniel Terdiman – CNET [...]

  96. By PageTanked! | Money Blogger on October 25, 2007 at 11:08 am

    [...] seems Google has delivered a virtual slap in the face to many top blogs this week, cutting up to 3 points of their [...]

  97. By Robin Good's Latest News on October 25, 2007 at 11:29 am

    Google PageRank Devalued: What Is Really Happening – PageRank Does Not Count Anymore?…

    The news is everywhere. Yesterday, October 24th 2007, Google has drastically started to lower PageRank for many popular sites, especially several prominent blogs and reputable marketing sites around the world. Many such sites have seen an overnight dec…

  98. [...] so I am sure you have heard that a bunch of websites have lost PR in this latest Toolbar PR export. My first feelings are still my current feelings. WHO [...]

  99. [...] Beard writes: “Many of the reputable sources that have received a penalty are part of extensive blog [...]

  100. By SEO Chicks |The SEO Blog with attitude on October 25, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    [...] many of the sites that are popular in Digg have had their PageRank lowered. What’s the motive HERE? As many people have pointed out, not all of the affected sites DO [...]

  101. [...] Google straft nu sites die veel betaalde links opnemen, zogeheten linkfarms. In de blogosfeer is grote ophef ontstaan over de verandering in de algoritmes voor PageRank. Critici zeggen dat nu ook [...]

  102. By Matt Cutts Start Menu Screenshot (Joke) on October 25, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    [...] can be found on numerous forum and blog posts, you can check out these blogs for a short list, Andy Beard,  Search Engine Land. Paid Link Detector 2007 – This program searches through a website and with [...]

  103. [...] I started chuckling when I noticed this set of links being [...]

  104. [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google [...]

  105. By Google mata PageRank e acaba com a concorrência. on October 25, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    [...] Andy Beard tem uma lista bastante completa dos principais sites afectados assim como uma discussão [...]

  106. [...] Google had a PageRank update and Andy Beard’s informs about a PageRank drop that he noticed in a post called, “Digg Favorites Slapped By [...]

  107. [...] happened yesterday, October 24 when Google shattered the blogosphere. It was all around. Someone even made a comic strip about [...]

  108. [...] 6. PageRank Update [...]

  109. [...] like it is not as positive as we have thought. Many websites have been lowered in their page ranks. Andy Beard gives us an insight of the different sites and their changes. So now, what happens to all of us [...]

  110. [...] blogosphere today is in collective shock after Google downgraded the pagerank of many leading blogs and news sources. The response tends to [...]

  111. By Google Can Kiss My Derrière on October 25, 2007 at 5:17 pm

    [...] given yesterday’s Google smackdown a bit of thought over the past 24 hours. I’ve been angry, sad, indifferent, resigned. [...]

  112. By Czyżby zmiana w algorytmie PR? on October 25, 2007 at 5:48 pm

    [...] andybeard.eu [...]

  113. [...] busy making sites that are making me money so I’ll just agree with what Scott said here and here. Traffic is indeed the opnly thing that matters. This blog has not been affected. Neither has been [...]

  114. [...] are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common,” writes blogger Andy Beard. “They have massive interlinking between their network [...]

  115. [...] Andy Beard says these “favorites” have likely been slapped by Google for either (or both) selling links or extensive interlinking within one’s network. Many of the reputable sources that have received a penalty are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common. They have massive interlinking between their network sites. [...]

  116. [...] in their supplied list going from 10 to 6. I do believe their list may have came from over at Andy Beard’s [...]

  117. [...] and Andy Beard weigh in with their thoughts and [...]

  118. [...] regurgitate the whole nasty mess, a good read about it all is over on Andy Beard’s blog post Digg Favorites Slapped By Google. It looks like my little place on the web has so far escaped the wrath of Google, and heck makes me [...]

  119. [...] course, if there even is such a thing as pagerank according to the recent [...]

  120. [...] Индекс PageRank для многих посещаемых ресурсов резко упал на два-три пункта. В частности, значение PageRank понизилось для таких известных сайтов, как Engadget (с 7 до 5), AutoBlog (с 6 до 4), Washington Post (с 7 до 5), New Scientist (с 7 до 5), Forbes (с 7 до 5), Seattle Times (с 6 до 4) и многих других. С более полным списком сайтов, подвергшихся переоценке Google, можно ознакомиться здесь. [...]

  121. [...] check out these PageRank (PR) drops I found on Andy Beard’s blog. http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4 http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5 http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 [...]

  122. By Bollocks To Google | The Gospel According To Rhys on October 26, 2007 at 5:02 am

    [...] to bloggers, especially those who took a hit (a partially full list is here), don’t worry, you’ve got your health, you’ve got your regulars, and you probably [...]

  123. By So What’s the Fuzz About PageRanks? | Pinkseo on October 26, 2007 at 5:16 am

    [...] Andy Beard made an inventory of sites/blogs that were affected by the update downgrade. And so does Barry Schwarts at Search Engine Land. I would be interesting to find out if the traffic of these sites were really affected by this whole PR update thing. I think not. [...]

  124. By Google Lockdown - Should You Care? on October 26, 2007 at 5:45 am

    [...] dropped one of the biggest PageRank nuke which affected even the big name bloggers like ProBlogger, Andy Beard and Coppyblogger. But it doesn’t stop there, even Forbes Magazine got a drop in its [...]

  125. By Google Lockdown - Should You Care? on October 26, 2007 at 5:45 am

    [...] dropped one of the biggest PageRank nuke which affected even the big name bloggers like ProBlogger, Andy Beard and Coppyblogger. But it doesn’t stop there, even Forbes Magazine got a drop in its [...]

  126. By Link Building this Week (Oct. 26) | Wiep.net on October 26, 2007 at 6:58 am

    [...] was some fuss about paid links. So what have we learned? Push my Buttons! submit_url = [...]

  127. By Online Business Resources on October 26, 2007 at 7:29 am

    The Google PR Re-Ranking Debate…

    But then again, who cares about ranking? Shouldn’t we be more focused on providing great content for our readers and inspiring them through our writing?…

  128. [...] et utrag av nettsidene som er rammet hos SEOmoz, Andy Beard og DailyBlogTips. Videre kan du lese etterpåklokskapen hos Performancing, Problogger og [...]

  129. [...] Favourites Slapped by Google Google Algorithm Tweak Spooks WWW [...]

  130. By roScripts - Webmaster resources and websites on October 26, 2007 at 9:15 am

    Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing…

    Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing…

  131. [...] almost everyone discussing PageRank updates was linking to me, and I was trying to keep up with the Blogstorm, moderating trackbacks and [...]

  132. [...] PageRank penalty. Problogger went from PR6 to PR4, SearchEngineJournal went from PR7 to PR4 and the list goes on an on. Most people are still trying to figure out if Google decided to beat text link selling to [...]

  133. [...] engine land Andy Beard Small business hub Seomoz Search engine optimization journal Master new media [...]

  134. By Google Pagerank 降低事件 on October 26, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    [...] 前幾天,不少有名的大網站都發現了它們的 Pagerank 值降低了。這次不是只有 John Chow 之類在賣付費連接的網站,其他有許多沒有賣付費連接的部落格,還有大的報社及雜誌網站,都受到了影響。詳情請看Andy Beard 這篇文章。 [...]

  135. [...] Очень много информации об этом событии тут: Digg Favorites Slapped By Google [...]

  136. By Lost PageRank : It's Being A Google PageRank Storm! on October 26, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    [...] Base on couple of reading from blogosphere, it’s seem like Andy Beard are the one who start talking about lose page rank thing. He start dig out the whole lose page rank things and list out who is losing the page [...]

  137. By Search Engine Roundtable on October 26, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    Weekly Search Buzz Roundup: 10/26/07 – PageRank Drops…

    This week can mostly be summed up to one thing: PageRank. Of course, a week of search always has some other events, so let’s take a look. The Big PageRank Update A bunch of blogs, including ours, dropped PageRank this……

  138. By Google rages havoc on blogosphere at Aral Balkan on October 26, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    [...] Digg favorites slapped by Google [...]

  139. [...] Andy and other respected bloggers was going nuts about the PR update (nice linkbait, Andy) I kept quiet. I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that this was a long time in [...]

  140. By | Blogging Tips on October 26, 2007 at 11:01 pm

    [...] 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, [...]

  141. [...] 此次 PageRank 调整,可以说是几家欢喜几家愁。特别是国外的英文很多知名博客和网站,在这次调整中 PageRank 都被降权。关于这些知名网站被降权的原因,据目前网友的分析,原因可能包括出售链接(paid link),或者加入了博客联盟(blog network)等。关于这些降权网站的全纪录以及具体分析,感兴趣的网友可以查看此文:Google PageRank Update October 2007。 [...]

  142. [...] what has happened is a lot of blogs and directories that promote the selling or buying of links; display sponsored or paid [...]

  143. [...] Beard在24号其网站PR被降权后,持续的跟踪了google pr的此次更新,Digg Favorites Slapped By Google报道了24号开始PR下降的著名网站信息以及相关网站对PR事件的回复;Penalty [...]

  144. By google’s pocket « wordpressâ„¢ wank on October 27, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    [...] I sort of love this comment over at Andy Beard’s post: Of course, here is the part that drives me bonkers. Little ol soon to be Google Partner (just a rumo… [...]

  145. By google’s pocket « wordpressâ„¢ wank on October 27, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    [...] I sort of love this comment over at Andy Beard’s post: Of course, here is the part that drives me bonkers. Little ol soon to be Google Partner (just a rumo… [...]

  146. By A Dança das Cadeiras do Pagerank on October 27, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    [...] blogosfera em inglês. A especulação foi grande essa semana, primeiro apontava-se como culpada a venda de links em programas como o Text Link Ads. Depois percebeu-se que não era o caso, já que sites como o [...]

  147. [...] a look at this list of penalized sites on Andy Beards site, and check them for yourself.  Copyblogger went from a PR6, penalized to a PR4, and is now back up [...]

  148. By » Selling PageRank is not a Good Business Model on October 27, 2007 at 3:37 pm

    [...] check out these PageRank (PR) drops I found on Andy Beard’s blog. http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4 http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5 http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 [...]

  149. [...] heard all about Google’s attack on the blogosphere. If not, read Andy Beard’s Slapped by Google to get up to speed because this effects everyone who owns a blog. As a result of Google’s [...]

  150. By PageRank spanking continues | textadsearch.com on October 27, 2007 at 9:40 pm

    [...] Andy Beard’s slap [...]

  151. By Latest Google PageRank Update | BlogSire on October 27, 2007 at 11:42 pm

    [...] to Andy Beard Google may have pissed off way too many people this time and may well suffer a backlash. Afterall [...]

  152. By The JT Evening News-5th Edition | Just Thinkin’ on October 28, 2007 at 1:47 am

    [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing [...]

  153. By SEO CheckList » The Google Roller Coaster on October 28, 2007 at 8:35 am

    [...] Imagine my surprise when Darren Rowse of Problogger reported that his web site went from PR6 to PR4. And it wasn’t only him, many other prominent blogs have also experienced PageRank drops. [...]

  154. [...] Más información en Andybeard [...]

  155. [...] penalty including some very prominent blogs such as ProBlogger and Engadget. Andy Beard compiled a comprehensive list of those punished and speculation suggested that some of these sites are being punished for massive interlinking [...]

  156. By CompuWorld Is 2 Months Old And Has A Page Rank 3 on October 28, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    [...] an extent than PR has lost its credibility. But Google has come back solid with the PR update. It slashed the pageranks of many blogs which used to sell text links on there blogs. In the process many blogs which did not indulge in [...]

  157. [...] saraksts ir gana liels. Andy Beard savā blogā ir sataisījis sarakstu ar populāriem projektiem, kuriem ir samazināts PageRank. Vēlāk viņš ir turpinājis un [...]

  158. [...]   Participants of Social Networking Sites/Services get their Google Page Rank hammered Specifically, power users of digg.com have had their Page Rank lowered by google: Here are some unusual penalties for trusted sources of good content Autoblog PR6 PR4 Engadget PR7 PR5 Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging – ProBlogger PR6 PR4 Copywriting tips for online marketing success from Copyblogger PR6 PR4 Joystiq PR6 PR4 The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) PR6 PR4 Check out this article for more info. [...]

  159. By Google Pagerank dropped to 4. Presumed guilty. on October 28, 2007 at 5:05 pm

    [...] 2007 PR dropped to 4. Presumed guilty. :) Yeah, I know, I’m late to the PR drop whine party but yesterday GT’s dropped from a strong 5 to 4 so I thought I’d share my side of the [...]

  160. [...] Cleared Thought #1. Andy Beard reported a list of notable websites which has lower PR Values. I took note of one website called CopyBlogger run by Brian Clark indeed [...]

  161. By Pagerank Update for Turk Hit Box « Turk Hit Box on October 28, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    [...] but I have to tell you. Those 3 months couldn’t have past slower for me. Reading the rants of people who are getting punished in this update, I have to tell you, they are wrong! Pagerank is there for a [...]

  162. [...] Andy Beard – Digg Favorites Slapped By Google TechCrunch – Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms Scoble – [...]

  163. [...] is a MASSIVE article with tons of updates and comments going at andybeard.eu (Give the page a bit to load, it hammered) Here’s a snippet but go here to read the rest. [...]

  164. [...] has slapped many giants with its latest Pagerank update. But, it has surely turned out good for me. If you had been to my [...]

  165. [...] Speaking of kissing ass… we’ll get our lips around that matter in a moment… and I’m not talking about the Google PageRank scandal that is blistering the tongues of blog wags everywhere. [...]

  166. By 11% drop in visits - WebProWorld on October 29, 2007 at 4:31 pm

    [...] to read on the recent update in toolbar PR: Google’s PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links? Source: Google PageRank Update October 2007 | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing Google Drops PageRank For Many Sites : Paid Links or New Algorithm? SEOmoz | Google Toolbar [...]

  167. [...] or buying links? Some threads on the topic here: Google’s PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links? Source: Google PageRank Update October 2007 | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing Google Drops PageRank For Many Sites : Paid Links or New Algorithm? SEOmoz | Google Toolbar [...]

  168. By Community Blogs on October 29, 2007 at 9:34 pm

    Google PageRank Deductions…

    There’s a great deal of discussion going on this month about recent deductions Google has made to Toolbar…

  169. [...] threat to demote sites engaged in buying and selling links for search rankings. The problem is that they caught some innocent ones in the crossfire. A couple of days later, they corrected their mistake, and those sites are now back to where they [...]

  170. By Google or Microsoft : Who Do We Hate The Most? on October 30, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google, andybeard.eu [...]

  171. [...] up to date with the latest page rank theories: ‘Digg Favourites Slapped By Google’ its seems this story is more complex than it first seemed. Google said it was penalising paid links [...]

  172. By The Oracle of Mountain View on October 30, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    [...] who are not selling links also saw a drop in [...]

  173. By Blog Vavai on October 31, 2007 at 2:35 am

    Massive PageRank Update…

    Willy sudah sempat menuliskan posting mengenai penurunan PageRank blog-nya dari PR 6 menjadi PR 5. Hari ini Pak Budi Rahardjo menuliskan kalau blog beliau mengalami degradasi rank, dari 5 menjadi 3. Penurunan ini tidak hanya mencakup blog Willy dan Pak…

  174. [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google, andybeard.eu [...]

  175. [...] – Be the first to find out about a PageRank update (no, really) – Write something about B-52’s flying over the US [...]

  176. By The Google Roller Coaster » Google Pagerank on October 31, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    [...] Imagine my surprise when Darren Rowse of Problogger reported that his web site went from PR6 to PR4. And it wasn’t only him, many other prominent blogs have also experienced PageRank drops. [...]

  177. [...] Andy Beard: Digg Favorites Slapped By Google [...]

  178. By Sell Links, Drop PageRank on November 1, 2007 at 10:20 pm

    [...] the past week, many webmasters and bloggers got hit by Google by decrease their websites’ PageRank. Many top blogs got slapped as well, such as [...]

  179. [...] Beard documented some Page Rank changes and here is Daniel Scocco’s [...]

  180. By Google’s Created Monster - PageRank Debacle on November 2, 2007 at 4:12 am

    [...] there are already many negaitive reponses regarding their actions by well known figures such as Andy Beard umong [...]

  181. By What’s with the Google PR Update? » SELaplana on November 2, 2007 at 5:06 am

    [...] Yuga, and tons of Pinoy Blogs based on ratified’s database experienced this. And what else? Andy Beard enumerated some like: http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4 http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5 [...]

  182. By Selling Out on WordPress Themes * Stellify on November 4, 2007 at 8:54 am

    [...] wonders why selling links is considered so unethical that Google’s recent PageRank update has majorly slapped everyone engaged in it, big or [...]

  183. By Domisfera » Articulo » Googledependencia on November 5, 2007 at 8:30 am

    [...] la última actualización del PageRank muchas webs han visto caer su PR de forma dramática (Forbes.com, Washington Post, Sun Times: De 7 a 5). Google aduce [...]

  184. [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google [...]

  185. [...] In short, google changed the way they give pagerank to websites, apparently it seems to be related to advertisements on the website. I thought my blog stayed at the comfortable pagerank of 6 but, after checking and [...]

  186. By Splashpress Media’s Value? A $1,000 Prize!! on November 6, 2007 at 4:33 am

    [...] need to guess at the reality or the potential- up to you. One point we would like to make is that, like many others, we were penalized hard in the recent PR update. Many of our sites lost 3 points. This may [...]

  187. [...] Beard was the first blogger to break the news on the recent Google PageRank drop. His discovery was soon followed by an avalanche of links, some of them just hours after his post [...]

  188. By Are Search Engines Relevant Any More? on November 7, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    [...] weeks. It started when David Airey found himself dumped from the SERPs and continued with the whole PageRank debacle. Obviously it wouldn’t be nice to be dropped from the Google index but would it necessarily [...]

  189. [...] Having been defamed by Google, along with many other bloggers, gave me an opportunity to reevaluate my relationship with big G. I have decided to see how will this survive on its own- without Google. So I have instructed Googlebot to stay way from this blog. But I also have requested to remove my entire website from Google’s index via Google Webmaster Tools (formerly know as Google Sitemaps). [...]

  190. By Google Pagerank Falls on Paid Links, Blogs on November 10, 2007 at 2:01 pm

    [...] blogosphere today is in collective shock after Google downgraded the pagerank of many leading blogs and news sources. The response tends to [...]

  191. By Google Smackdown! · New York Articles on November 11, 2007 at 5:22 am

    [...] Google has rolled out yet another PageRank update – or half of an update anyway. Google’s PageRank is a rough indicator of the worth and [...]

  192. By The First (un)Official Sphinn Awards - Day 1 on November 12, 2007 at 2:01 pm

    [...] however, to eat it as soon as possible after receiving it. We have numerous reports that the size and weight of the bars are subject to mass fluctations even once in the hands of individuals, vanishing completely in some instances. Speculation suggests [...]

  193. By Recent Page Rank Mayhem on November 13, 2007 at 1:01 am

    [...] The latest round of page rank scoring by Google has hit many good web sites very hard, in that the bigger list of A level blogs, and big blog companies like Weblogs.inc have seen a sharp decrease in their page ranks. This is leading to speculation that some of these sites will soon be joining the Web 2.0 dead pool, or have to reduce staff via layoffs. Many of the reputable sources that have received a penalty are part of extensive blog networks, and they have one factor in common. They have massive interlinking between their network sites. They may also sell links or advertising that passes PageRank on some of their less visible properties, but those properties benefit from the high pagerank sites that link to them, with sitewide links. Some of these sites have been known to add or knock millions off of the price of Apple shares in the past, what do you think it is going to do to Google? Source: Andy Beard [...]

  194. By Google's Page Rank | 1 Earth. 6.5 Billion Adventures on November 14, 2007 at 4:24 am

    [...] always, Andy Beard is on the bleeding edge, following Google’s antics.  If I blogged like him maybe I could gain more than 0 on my [...]

  195. [...] Beard shares his thoughts on the  recent Google updates with his usual insight, and like most, he’s not exactly happy about it.  Andy had apparently [...]

  196. By FUD: amazingly effective… | Wiep.net on November 14, 2007 at 9:26 pm

    [...] accomplished Google’s October FUD Campaign seems to be working out exactly as planned. More and more ad publishers are complying with [...]

  197. By Text Link Ads sin riesgo a ser penalizado por Google on November 17, 2007 at 4:14 pm

    [...] frontal de la gente de Mountain View hacia TLA se ha visto reflejado hace unas semanas con los repentinos cambios de Pagerank en muchos blogs de reconocido [...]

  198. By SEO News Tips & Technology on November 20, 2007 at 3:08 am

    [...] there are already many negaitive reponses regarding their actions by well known figures such as Andy Beard umong [...]

  199. [...] to follow his advice and spent most of this month monitoring my website traffic, researching and keeping an eye on what other bloggers were doing as a result of this so called “fiasco”. Also strange [...]

  200. By Oh Yes, the Page Rank rant. | rumblepup on November 21, 2007 at 6:50 pm

    [...] You see, Google bitched slapped a whole bunch of sites with a Page Rank Penalty for “selling links”, or “network linking.” On some of them, it’s hard to really understand the penalty. Old news, and better documented by Andy Beard. [...]

  201. [...] lain, Andy Beard adalah blogger pertama yang menulis tentang penurunan Google Page Rank yang terjadi baru-baru ini. Penemuan yang dia publikasikan dengan cepat diikuti banjir tautan yang [...]

  202. [...] Beard documented some Page Rank changes and here is Daniel Scocco’s [...]

  203. [...] as well as recognized as a dedicated social geek. Make a review of some website, blog about the something ugly going online be creative just be sure not to provoke somebody’s [...]

  204. [...] what has happened is a lot of blogs and directories that encourage the commerce or purchase of links; pass sponsored or paying [...]

  205. [...] being penalized by Google, and even experimenting with banning Google from my website, the page rank is reduced to 0 (zero). [...]

  206. [...] making their best effort to curtail their proliferation in the web economy. The first shots were to lower the tool bar Page Rank of sites known to be selling links for Page Rank passing purposes. Their have been a few round of [...]

  207. [...] Beard documented some Page Rank changes and here is Daniel Scocco’s [...]

  208. By Google Puts the Smackdown on Sugarrae - Sugarrae on December 19, 2007 at 5:22 pm

    [...] to confuse that and make the wrong decision) – and since my toolbar PR is fine and has not been destroyed as some other people’s have – I don’t think that is the culprit anyway. This penalty, [...]

  209. [...] Andy Beard: Digg Favorites Slapped by Google [...]

  210. By Link Building this Year | Wiep.net on December 30, 2007 at 9:58 pm

    [...] got angry: Selling Links Can Hurt Your Site! This resulted in a lot of coverage and community discussion and lead to multiple penalties and other weird reprimands. I’m sure [...]

  211. By The Great Link Bitch Slap on December 31, 2007 at 4:55 am

    [...] fact it was the most talked about story of the week. Everyone from Darren Rowse, Andy Beard to Duncan Riley at TechCrunch wrote about it (and I know they read [...]

  212. [...] in 2007? Well a few months ago, there was some beat downs being dealt  around the web. Andy beard got his ass beat, Paula Neal Mooney got her ass beat, Jonzee.com got his ass beat. Websites and [...]

  213. By Google Decline? on January 3, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    [...] Google dropped the PR for so many blogs, including authority ones, Google practically signed its own testament. Annoyed users keep on [...]

  214. [...] bloggers, as well as others who were just running TextLinkAds. Andy Beard blogged about it over here. I discussed some of Google’s reasoning in my blog post on No Follow links and if you [...]

  215. [...] What is abundantly clear is that splogs and the content that they use can be a complex moving target that is never that easy to pin down or eliminate. We can’t rely on others to deal with what is a problem for us all. We can’t dictate to the search engines that they shouldn’t allow such things to prosper as in most cases our individual voices will fall on deaf ears. It isn’t really in their interests to eliminate this stuff, and we shouldn’t be too trusting of them either. Sites labeled as thin affiliates know only too well the pain of arbitrary decisions, not to mention the individuals targeted for far lesser crimes. [...]

  216. [...] we see a leader search engine that will find: Maki Dosh, Caroline, Andy Beard, Laura Athavale Fitton(Pistachio) and many [...]

  217. [...] SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make Google Category Dancing With The Gevil – Defamed By Google? Digg Favorites Slapped By Google Blogs & Blogging Optimizing HTML Links In The Aftermath Of A Blog [...]

  218. By Google - All 2008 Nominees » SEMMYS.org on January 22, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    [...] Digg Favorites Slapped By Google Andy Beard | 10/24/07 [...]

  219. [...] a 4 for crying out loud DailyBlogTips has a list of some of the big blogs that have dropped.  AndyBeard has put together a list as well. Stumble Upon is my single highest source of traffic and surpassed [...]

  220. [...] order of over 43,000 and 33,00 respectively, where downgraded a couple of months ago. Andy Beard drew some inferences on Google’s motives in a post back [...]

  221. By PageRank Update 2008 Goes After Paid Links? on March 13, 2008 at 6:20 am

    [...] is a list of some sites, including major publishers, Seems to have taken a hit [...]

  222. [...] for complimenting pagerank. The potential for spam is just too great. We’ve already seen a few slaps on the wrist for people attempting to manipulate pagerank by buying links. Trustrank is where its at. Good neighbourhoods, frequent updates, naturally gained [...]

  223. By ` » Blog Archive » Punishing your website on April 4, 2008 at 11:52 am

    [...] more on this, see articles by Jennifer Laycock, Andy Beard, Barry Schwartz, and Danny [...]

  224. [...] other sites and adding news sites to the list of Pagerank dropping scenario and other bloggers like andybeard and copyblogger. Question is with this move from Google, is this there their way of removing [...]

  225. By Link Building this Week (29.2008) | Wiep.net on July 18, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    [...] For example, I noticed a drop in outbound links from specific news websites after the last Pagerank massacre. This would require a LOT more manual work, [...]

  226. [...] certainly great sources of information. Nevertheless, one of the bloggers out there, Andy Beard, reminds us of Google’s Guidelines which frown upon various “schemes designed to increase your [...]

  227. By Everybody’s Free (To Add Good Content) | Hobo on August 4, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    [...] Don’t worry too much about Toolbar Page Rank, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as chewing gum. [...]

  228. [...] from Andy Beard, Problogger and a variety of other sites indicate that Google is shuffling their Pagerank scores. [...]