Last month, one of the hottest topics in the blogosphere was the Google PageRank updates. Many big time bloggers like ProBlogger, Copyblogger, John Chow, Quick Online Tips and Weblog Tools Collection were penalized and lost pagerank.
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!
@unoblogger – Yes, if you value your PageRank you need to be careful. You’re welcome and thanks for the visit! :D
Need to be very careful is soppose… I will be!! thanks
though my sites pagerank was not reduced… im not happy due to the fact that it was not increased! (LOL)
@Manila Freelancer – Good for you! Hehe :D
ehehe. Edited na po.
lalaki ka nga pala. Ang dami kasing female bloggers kaya na “She” ko heheheh.. :wink:
@Grace – Don’t worry about it. Thanks! :)
@FruityOaty – It’s all good! I appreciate it coz if you haven’t told me about it, I wouldn’t have known about it.
Thanks for the kind words! ;)
Ah, I was the bearer of bad news. :razz:
Low PR or not, you still rock.
Same here. my http://trialsofmylife.bravejournal.com has 3 last week but when I checked it, it is now PR2. And the worst is, the PRchecker.info still PR3 in result. weew. i don’t know what is happening in google.
@Grace – Welcome to the club! Hehe :D
I think some of the servers haven’t updated your Google PR that’s why it still shows a PR3. Btw, you might want to use other PR checking sites to check your blog’s PR.
@noemi – Glad to hear that! It’s good to have alternative sources of income and also for traffic. You can’t bet all your cards on one thing, you need to spread it out.
That’s true. Content is still king. As long as you have good content and steady traffic, PR becomes insignificant. :)
*knocks* on wood. So far traffic is doing well. The one thing I notice lately is I am getting lots of nice traffic from MSN. I don’t want to rely on Google for traffic.
I have one site that gave me a lot of income in the past. It used to be PR 5 and now PR 2. Rankings fell and traffic declined. When I noticed this, I continued to add good content. Traffic is picking up again. I believe that the key is to ignore the page rank for now, and build good content.
@My PageRank – Joining blog carnivals is indeed a very good way of promoting your blog and gaining valuable back links. Thanks for sharing and I’ll check out your posts later! :D
My career blog went from zero to 5, my carnivals blog created in august is a pr4,my other blogs are all 3’s….and my blog on USA TODAY is a PageRank 6…..all are no older than 3 months. And all link to eachother..which is why my sites rank so high…I even put a pkg together for others who want high rankings. You can learn just how easy it is to be a pagerank 5at http://blogcarnivals.blogspot.com
@Dre – Atleast you only dropped one rank. Many blogs including mine dropped by two ranks. Also, if you’re not into blog monetization, I don’t think PR is such a big thing, right? :)
My pagerank, from PR4 is now PR3 :neutral:
@Brown Baron – In my case, I was running TLA but removed a few weeks before the updates. I guess it was too late. I think the next penalty I received was the same one you got which is for sponsored reviews. :)
Yeah, let’s gun for a PR 7! Best of luck to both of us! Hehe :D
I don’t sell TLA and yet Google dropped me from a 3 to 2 lol. What’s funny is that iwebtool shows me at 3 with a predicted 6 haha. All I can think of is that Google penalized me for my sponsored reviews without nofollowed links.
I’ll just gun for a 7 next time lol.
@Kiven – Good for you! Same here. As long as my traffic and revenue is not affected, I won’t mind having a low PR. :D
lol i still get my regular adsense revenue so no biggie….not to mention my regular stream of organic traffic :twisted:
@Aahz – Thanks man! I sure hope we can get our old PR back. I’ll be posting about how to file a site reinclusion in a few days so watch out for it. :)
Sorry to hear about your PR drop. I’ve had the same problem. Can you tell me how to “file for a reinclusion at Google Webmaster Tools”? I’ve been looking around in the Google Webmasters Tools site and found out a lot of neat stuff for my site, but don’t see anything about PageRank. :cry:
PS: I just got rid of the TLAs, hehe.
@Teejay – I’ve heard about Scratchback but I haven’t had the time to check it out or find out more about it. It will be a good alternative for bloggers who decided to get rid of TLA and hopefully it won’t the cause for additional PR penalties.
Maybe ScratchBack will be the answer to TLA? I sure hope filipino blogs get their PR back.
Aww. Sadness! I hope mine won't be affected. Do you think I should get rid of the TLAs, too?
@Joni – It’s good that you got rid of the TLAs coz it’s been confirmed that Google is really going after blogs running it. I hope it’s not too late for your blog. :)