Found out late last week that StudioPress along with several other companies merged together to form Copyblogger Media LLC, which is a new consolidated company led by Copyblogger founder, Brian Clark. Asides from themes and plugins, this new company will offer online education and a suite of software tools for WordPress.

Here’s a few excerpts from the official announcement posted on the StudioPress blog:

We’re excited to announce that StudioPress and several other companies are coming together to form Copyblogger Media LLC. This is a new consolidated company led by Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger.

I am one of the owners of this new company, while Nathan will remain as the lead developer of Genesis. We’re very excited about the development community which has surrounded Genesis, and there is so much to look forward to. Craig will continue to handle the business-side of StudioPress, while I will still remain an integral part of the entire project.

About Copyblogger Media, LLC

Joining Brian Clark and myself in this new venture as partners are Sean Jackson (creator of Scribe SEO), Tony Clark (co-creator of Teaching Sells, Third Tribe, and a new WordPress product called Premise), and Sonia Simone, Senior Editor of Copyblogger and co-founder of Third Tribe with Brian, Chris Brogan, and Darren Rowse.

As a full-fledged new media company, Copyblogger Media, LLC will have multiple lines of business, including online education and live events. But the thing that caught my attention was Brian’s vision for a suite of software tools, specifically for the WordPress space.

Read more about the Copyblogger Media LLC merger here.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this when I first found out about it but as I continued reading the post, I realized that this move would not only be beneficial for the groups involved but also for the WordPress community. Why? Because the people involved in this merger are not only good at what they do, but they also offer good quality products and services that comply to WordPress standards. So I really believe that this development is a win-win situation for both the company and the WordPress community. I’m looking forward to the products and services that this company will be coming up with and offering us in the near future.

If you’re currently a client of StudioPress, you have nothing to worry about this recent development. Brian Gardner said that it’s business as usual, he and his original team aren’t going away and that this merger would only bring better products, services, updates and support to current StudioPress clients.

Btw, for StudioPress affiliates like me, please take note that the StudioPress Affiliate Program is no longer with E-junkie and has switched over to ShareASale. You have until Sept 30th to switch to the new program. Old affiliate links not updated after that date will not receive credit for affiliate sales. Please refer to this post for further information.

What do you guys think of this merger? What products or services would you like to see Copyblogger Media LLC come up with and offer to the WordPress community? Please share your thoughts.

• Wanna know how to deal with A-listers and Internet Celebrities? Check out John Cow’s guest post over at John Chow’s blog.
• CopyBlogger asks this question: If content is the new advertising, then what does your advertising say about you?
• Are you a WordPress developer or theme designer? Need a quick and easy cheatsheet for the different WordPress functions? Check out WPCandy’s advanced WordPress Help Sheet.
• Check out this hilarious video about the “Dangers of Blogging” by Yossi Vardi. Via AJ‘s blog.
• Ever wonder what happens when a domain name expires? Hongkiat has a short explanation on this matter.
• Want to improve your blog readership? Learn how to develop relationships with your readers from BloggingTips.
• 7 types of blog posts which always seem to get links and traffic. A must read if you’re looking for more ways to improve your blog’s traffic and popularity.
• Ever had your computer crash on you? Atma Xplorer shares some tips on what to do when your PC dies. Good luck buddy! Hope you get your rig fixed soon.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

For Filipino owned blogs, among those that were penalized in the initial update were Yugatech, Retzwerx, Jozzua and Codamon just to mention a few. The reason? Most if not all, were brought about by paid or sponsored text link ads that didn’t use the nofollow attribute.

In the recent Google PageRank update, my blog JaypeeOnline dropped from a PR5 to a PR4. I thought that Google was done updating pageranks but apparently I was wrong because I received a comment yesterday from one of my regular readers, FruityOaty informing me that my blog just dropped to a PR3! I was surprised and disappointed but I couldn’t do anything. The only reason I can think of for my blog to get penalized was having sitewide TLA ads on my sidebar. The thing is I even removed the ads even before the initial update and I had all my featured links use the nofollow attribute. I guess it was too late. Anyways, I’ll try to file for a reinclusion at Google Webmaster Tools and hope they accept it.

I agree with the comment left by Markku on PinoyMoneyTalk’s post about the recent Google update.

The need for traditional traffic building is here again, emphasizing that content is still king.

Content is still king. This is a good reminder for established bloggers and a lesson for those who are starting. Fortunately for me, my blog traffic hasn’t been affected by the loss or drop in pagerank.

Btw, PinoyMoneyTalk has a list of several notable Filipino sites and blogs that were affected by the recent Google Pagerank update.

What do you think about the recent Google PageRank updates? Do you think Google will update PageRanks Did your blog lose or gained pagerank during the recent updates? Share your thoughts!

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!