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http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/10/24/what-on-earth-is-going-on-with-the-latest-google-pagerank-update/ -
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I noticed Google removed about 2000+ links from my site last week in Google's Webmasters Tools. I imagine either forum links, blog comment links, or both, are about to become worthless. I can't blame them, why should I get authority from pasting my signature all over the web?
I know people don't like this, and are going to grumble about it for a while, but think about it. Google is building a better web. Which side of the fence do you want to be on?
I'm not too concerned about selling links, as that's been debated to death now. But what about getting penalised for cross-linking? Do you think that penalising a site as big as Engadget so dramatically (even if it does include selling links) is justified?
We've all done things to manipulate our site's authority, I'm certainly not innocent. I don't sell text links or participate in link building schemes, but I have thousands of forum .sig links and blog comment links. I will continue to use both even if they're worthless now, because forums create a lot of my traffic, and I have grown to like frequenting blogs and commenting.
Is Google going too far? Probably. Yes. But they let us get away with murder up til now. It will balance out and they will relax their guidelines a bit, but some long-used seo techniques are probably done for.
Lets hope so. If they are going to start compiling all non-relevant links then the pain is going to continue for a long time, especially if you've been a 'good' blogger and leaving your sig all around the web.....
One potential side benefit. I'm still a 6, so maybe I'll start stealing some of engadget and friends' traffic ;-)
I for one am not going to change my behaviour. I never understood Google's alogrithm before, so why should I suddenly act different???
Just look at http://www.autoblog.com/
The bottom like 20% of the long page is about *55* links out to other unrelated sites in their network. For all intents and purposes they are paid links.. to themself. True, a company can plug its own stuff all it wants, but this seems a bit extensive.
Google cannot tell if a site is selling links. Impossible for them to tell. But it has always maintained that linking to bad sites hurts you. How can you be a 'highly respected' site on topic X when you link out to unrelated stuff 55 times on your main page alone. It makes sense in all honesty. I doubt it was 'penalties' per say, but likely a change in the algorithm...
Kinda weird that the pagerank update still isnt a proper update....
Google/Matt Cutts have stated time and time again that outside factors cannot *hurt* you, they can only fail to help you.
If buying links could get you penalized, I could launch a smear campaign, buying only the worst links I could find, and link to my competitor. It would be like a reverse googlebomb.
It makes me kind of want to rethink using tnx.net, since the site quality for those links you are placing on your site is absolute garbage. I'll probbaly keep it up on one of my lesser built up sites.. just for giggles..
Let's put paid links to one side, if, as has been suggested, that it's down to an aggressive outbund linking policy, why not say so?
Blogrush is Javascript, so you won't have to worry about it affecting SEO - probably the only thing John Reese did right about it - so far. I'm still hopeful about their v2 release.
>>It seems PageRank is no longer a measure of how relevant your site is (was it ever?), it’s now a measure of how well you abide by Google’s rules.
I believe you've nailed it there - bang on.
You know what's amusing? Google has started hitting javascript recently. I shit you not. Nothing complex, it's pretty bad in what it chooses, but I'll be damned if google isnt hitting JS referenced AJAX calls for a ratings engine I wrote for one of my sites. I've seen it in other places, and verified that the URL it was hitting was only refereneced from within javascript. Still very rudimentary parsing of JS, but it is doing it all the same.
Probably in the same way they look at flash files for obvious linking, but do it poorly.
the drop does not actually seem to have had any effect on rankings imo...
again ill say.. its weird that they've changed the rankings on existing pages, but it was not a full on pagerank update. I have about 20 domains with enough promotion behind them to kill a yak, and still not even showing a 0 PR. (all tests of various ranking schemes i've come up with to try out).
also have legit domains that still arent showing any change, not that I really expect them.. takes some time to move up past 4-5
I've heard about Google being able to parse flash files to a certain extent - can they do it with JS too now? This would be big news!
I think that just proves how random the whole system is, rather than the directory or toolbar being 'accurate'
In reality, if you aren't making a career out of TLA is, who cares. I have a PR 2 blog that I am reviving from the near dead. What difference does PR mean to me?
The fact that I have one of my desired search terms on the front page of the SERPs definitely means something, though. SERPS results certainly aren't driven by PR as some seem to think, I see plenty sites with higher PR who rank below me for my term.
One of them even runs a paid subdirectory like iwebtool on his blog. His site lost PR for the same reason.
I'm planning to stop advertisng TLA and paid advertising by next week.
There seems to be little correlation between PR and SERPs these days.
Maybe they should roll out trustrank in force and ditch PR?
And you fly under the radar
It surely looks to be like random picks but I could be wrong. I think that someone probably reported lots of those sites in the Webmaster Tools area to hurt the competition.
Yea, it certainly isn't intelligent by any means... but I can guarentee the urls they are hitting are linked from nowhere on the site except for in the JS (the js is on page, not in a .js file). It is *quite* stupid in how it hits it..
the code is like
var url = '/ratings/rate.php?rating=' + rating;
... send AJAX request code...
and its just hitting /ratings/rate.php with out any parameters... and i am sure it is google doing it.. dunno if they are just looking for anything looking like a url and just being silly, or its starting attempts at looking at JS parsing.
That's still important news - there are a couple of webmasters putting links inside JS to avoid Google penalizing them, but yet being able to send traffic. But if that is the case, I guess I'm being paranoid here - what about the links on widgets like Adsense and Chitika and the like?
Also, have you tried it to see if it works even if its on a separate file like you hint?
They did start on a similar foot when they tried indexing URLs with parameters beyond the "?". Now they can do it quite well - so I'm guessing if they've figured as much, its just a matter of time.
S.
p.s. I'm not affected with this update yet :)
Yes, its nice to be a PR 7-8, however if you are a PR2 and your #1 for your keywords who really cares.
shush, big brother Google is watching
A strange update anyway... we've waited for 6 months and now a lot of sites have lost 1-2 or eve 3 pr points!
PR as seen from the toolbar is outdated since PR is actually updated everyday. As webmasters we really should not bothered much about the toolbar PR as it does not determine traffic. What we want is keyword rankings, and an increasing PR is a result of a keyword ranking campaign.
The only usage for toolbar PR is to sell text links, other advertisements, and gaining link partners. Though when caught selling links the PR would go down anyway!