Btw, just want to remind everyone of the on-going giveaway where I’m giving out 3 premium WordPress theme vouchers from ThemeFuse, each worth $49. Check it out if you haven’t joined yet. If you’re not into WordPress or premium WordPress themes, don’t worry because I have a few other contests/giveaways planned in the coming weeks so watch out for it.

Blogging

• 5 Techniques to Create Raving Loyal Fans
• Content Licensing 101 for Bloggers
• Top 10 Ways To Get Blog Readers Fired Up
• Build Your Audience with Facebook and Blogging

WordPress

• Join the WordPress Theme Review Team

How to Automatically Empty Your WordPress Trash

• 3 Ways To Integrate PHPBB In WordPress
• How to Add Custom TwentyTen Headers for Each Category

SEO

• Introduction to Google PageRank: Myths & Facts
• How to Build Links Without Fancy Tools
• Website Optimization: First Link Priority
• What I Look for with Google’s Panda Algorithm

Social Media

• How To (Successfully) Break The First Rule Of Social Media
• 6 Ways Social Media Helps Your Presentation Resonate
• 44 Signs Social Media Is NOT Working for You
• Tilting at Social Media Windmills

Technology

• Free Software Helps Disabled Use Mouse
• Are Computer Crooks Renting Out Your PC?
• The End of Content Ownership
• China Calls Out US Government on Internet Freedom

Gadgets

• Ralph Lauren Solar Panel Backpack Charges Gadgets On The Go
• 47 inch Transparent LCD-IPS Display from LG
• Asus launches worlds fastest external 3D Blu-ray writer- BW-12D1S-U
• BlackBerry PlayBook review

Pinoy Blogs

• ViewSonic V350 Two Smart: Dual SIM Android
• The Best Place to Learn Computer Animation in the Philippines
• I’m giving away an iPad this April!
• Globe’s Giving Away a Blackberry

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• HowTo: Use Custom Background Image on Gmail
• TweetBot – New Twitter Client for iPhone
• WordPress.com Servers Hacked
• 100 Things You Need to Know About WordPress by Anthony Montalbano & JTPratt
• Expected Downtime on April 16th
• A Google A Day – Daily Trivia Game
• Driving Innovation – Bosch Power Tools Asia Cordless Race 2011
• HowTo: 5 Pieces of Essential Technology For A Minimalist Office

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or would want to share your article or any interesting story that you found in the Internet and have it featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

As an avid fan and advocate of WordPress, it immediately caught my attention and I clicked on the link to check out the list. I wasn’t surprised to see the likes of Lorelle, Darren Hoyt, WP Tavern, WP Engineer, Justin Tadlock, WP Recipes, WP Hacks and a few others, but I was definitely surprised to see JaypeeOnline on the list. Another pleasant surprise was finding out that my blog’s Google Pagerank is now back to 4. I was aware of the recent Google PR updates but I wasn’t expecting mine to increase.

Anyways, here’s a screenshot I took of the Best WordPress Related Blogs list from WP Ninja.

I’m not sure how often this list is updated but from what I can see, it uses a script to automatically check and fetch the Google PR and Alexa ranking for each blog/URL. Btw, aside from Pagerank and Alexa, you can also sort the list according to the number of Feedburner subscribers. I wonder why my blog along with a few others aren’t displaying anything except a N/A. To see the list for yourself, go to Best WordPress Related Blogs.

There are a few other WordPress related blogs that aren’t included on the list yet and one of those is my friend Leland’s blog – ThemeLab. Oh yeah, I wonder why Weblog Tools Collection and Yoast aren’t on the list? Maybe the author hasn’t updated the list yet. Overall, I’m just happy and honored that JaypeeOnline is listed alongside the best WordPress related blogs in the blogosphere. Anyways, if you want to keep track of the recent WordPress news and developments, this list is a good place to start with.

Do you know of any other WordPress related blog or blogs that aren’t on the list? If you do, please do share it with us or contact the author about it.

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!

• Chris Pearson’s tip on how to format images for feed readers.
• A Google PageRank parody by McBilly, his entry for ProBlogger’s slogan contest.
• Learn how to make a short URL longer and larger from QuickOnlineTips.
• Abe Olandres asks: Does Google PageRank really matter?
• Edit images with Fauxto, a free online application that looks and works like Photoshop.
• The Numly plugin is looking for a new maintainer. This plugin automatically submits posts created in WordPress to be fingerprinted, have their ESN generated an then place the information in the post.
• Dexter shares has a list of 14 Free e-book sites.
• WordPress 2.3.1 was just released a couple hours ago. Here’s a detailed list of the changes from the previous version.
• Anyone using the Compiz Fusion desktop effects for Linux? Here’s a list of keyboard shortcuts.
• Prevent access or hide disk drives using group policy with this cool tip from Derek.

That’s all folks. Stay safe and I hope you all have a great weekend! :D

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!