Pinoy Blogosphere

• Looking for another way to earn money? McBilly shares some tips on how to make money from event festivals.
• Having a hard time choosing between Windows or Linux? PinoyTechGuy’s article points out the advantages and disadvantages of choosing one over the other.
• Yahoo! Answers is becoming popular especially among students and a reliable source of knowledge or information to others. Abe Olandres of Yugatech asks this question: Is Yahoo! Answers the new Wikipedia?
• Allen of Silkenhut made a compilation of essential plugins that most WordPress users should have. A good resource list for WordPress newbies.
• As most of you guys know, Fil-American Internet sensation Christine Gambito or more commonlly known as HappySlip, is now in the Philippines. Here’s a video of her being featured in GMA 7′s 24 Oras.
• PayPal users in the Philippines can now withdraw funds to local bank accounts. For a list of the official PayPal bank codes and other information regarding this matter, visit PinoyMoneyTalk.

Around the Web

• Ever thought of creating an ebook based on your blog? With the WPTex WordPress plugin, you can easily turn your blog into a PDF ebook using Latex.
• So you think blogging has no risks? Mani Karthik of BloggingTips published this post that talks about the risks involved in blogging.
• Does your MyBlogLog community already have the seal of approval? If not, you better verify your MyBlogLog community and claim ownership. I already verified mine.
• Frustrated that your post doesn’t make it to Digg’s frontpage? BloggingMix’s article entitled Are You Getting DIGGsperate? might just help you get over your DIGGsperation.
• Connect with your blog visitors with the Socialize Me WordPress plugin. How? It greets your visitors referred by social networking websites like StumbleUpon, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Pownce, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace with a link to your profile.

I’m glad to announce that just this weekend, JaypeeOnline has reached a milestone which is surpassing the 200 subscriber mark. Yay! I know it may not be a big deal for other bloggers but it is for me and my blog. Anyways, I had a pleasant surprise yesterday when my FeedBurner chicklet displayed 229 readers. To all my regular readers and subscribers, thank you so much for your continued support! It means a lot to me.

If you haven’t subscribed to my feeds yet, better subscribe now so you won’t miss out on the latest posts and updates!

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page. Stay safe and have a nice day!

The question now is, what is/are the reasons why these sites and blogs were penalized? No one can answer it except Google and for now we can only speculate and come up with different theories. One of the most popular theories is “paid links” that don’t use the nofollow attributes. Another theory is that Google is changing the PageRank algorithm.

If its about “paid links”, it doesn’t make sense because some of the blogs that got penalized don’t sell paid links. Two good examples are ProBlogger and Copyblogger. ProBlogger hasn’t sold paid links in months and Copyblogger never sold links. If its not about paid links, what is it then? Were they penalized for removing Adsense ads or is it just Google readjusting the PR scale?

Andy Beard who was penalized two weeks ago thinks that another reason for some of the penalties is a violation of 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.

He explains that while some blogs don’t sell paid links, some of them got penalized because they were part of an extensive blog network and that they have massive interlinking between their network sites.

Dot com mogul John Chow, whose blog rank dropped from a PR 6 to a PR 4 has this to say:

I would say the most likely reason for this change is Google is messing around with link resellers like Text Link Ads. By downgrading a large chunk of the blogs on the Internet, Google has made that that much harder for the link resellers to sell links.

If you ask John, he’ll tell you not to worry too much about the recent PR update results. His advise is to check your blog’s search traffic over the next two weeks and if there’s no significant drop and/or remains the same, then PageRank is nothing more but a number. And with that, PageRank also becomes completely irrelevant.

DailyBlogTips has a list of some popular sites/blogs that got penalized:

Popular blogs that recently lost PR:

• Engadget (from 7 to 5)
• AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
• Problogger (from 6 to 4)
• Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
• Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
• Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
• Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
• Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
• Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
• JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
• Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)

Mainstream websites that were selling links and were also penalized:

• Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
• Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
• Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
• Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
• SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
• Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
• New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
• Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

You can also check out Andy Beard’s list here.

Amidst all the penalties being thrown, there’s one blog that actually got an increase in PR after the last update. AdesBlog jumped from a PR 5 to a PR 7.

In my case, I didn’t even know that Google already did the PR update. I only knew about it while I was chatting with my friend Retz and he told me that Google PageRank was just updated and that his blog’s rank dropped. I immediately visited CheckPageRank and checked my blog’s PageRank and was relieved to find out that it remained at PR 5. I’m sure this will remain as a hot topic in the Internet, especially in the blogosphere and I’m sure everyone would like to know the answer or the reasons for the recent Google PR update results.

Have you checked your blog’s PageRank lately? Did your blog lose or gain ranking? What do you think about this recent development? Does this mean that PageRank is becoming irrelevant? Share your thoughts!