Last fortnight, Google reduced the Page Rank of Stanford Daily from 9 to 7 because that website was selling text link ads. It was later confirmed by Google that PageRank scores were being lowered for some sites that sell links.
Well, that may have picked up steam as Google PageRank values of several prominent sites have taken a hit during this week. Some examples:
Washingtonpost.com - from 7 to 5
Statcounter.com - from 10 to 8 (and 6 in some other Google data centers)
MasterNewMedia.org - from 7 to 6 (and 4 in some other Google data centers)
Problogger.net - from 7 to 4
Blogherald.com - from 6 to 4 is some Google data centers.
TechCrunch, BoingBoing, NYTimes and other popular web properties that do not sell text links have retained their Google PageRank score.
Related: Google PageRank and Other Tools
Note: Google PageRank can be different across different data centers as the new scores may not have been propagated to them.
If the PageRank of a site is lowered by Google, there may not be any visible dip in search engine traffic immediately but that could change in the long run. Use rel=”nofollow” if are to sell text links on a site and avoid getting penalized by Google.
Find this article at:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/design/google-page-rank-crash-affects-dozens-of-websites/1620/
web: http://www.labnol.org/
email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Add johnchow.com to the list.
6 to 5
But he has been playing with Google for long …
Maybe its not only paid links… Google is against sponsored post as well…
#1 - written by Ashwini on 10.24.07
Amit,
Over the last few days even my Adsense ‘Channels’ are reporting very erratic data…
Guess some major algorithm changes are going on at Googleplex.
#2 - written by Vijeesh on 10.24.07
Actually I just check the Stanford Daily and it’s down to a 5 from a 10. Crazy!
#3 - written by Lavernius Pedigree on 10.24.07
Ya Vijeesh I too observed some strange Adsense data reports for channels. Even around 50% daily revenue hike too !!! I thought it might be due to adding Google custom search with revenue option but coulden’t figure out what could be the problem.. or really don’t know even it is a problem ;-)
#4 - written by Vijay on 10.24.07
Well, even I’m noticing some strange problem with my Adsense reports. I wonder what could be wrong with Google ! Any idea, Amit ?
#5 - written by Mayur on 10.25.07
Few of internal pages, uploaded a fortnight back, acquired a PR of 2.
Never happened before.
And, for the keyword ‘create web service’ this page is in top 20.
Coming so close for internal pages is a nice feeling.
#6 - written by Madhava on 10.27.07
hey amit think my site was penalized i was selling textads , anyway learnt now so removed all the text ad links how much does it get for google to recognize this now another year from now .
#7 - written by ganesh on 10.28.07
my sites PR have gone up but not to what I expected
#8 - written by Vignesh on 11.03.07
I was hit by this recent update by Google. My pagerank dropped to 0 from 2. I ran PayPerPost in my blog.
#9 - written by joel badinas dot com on 11.19.07
The new Google page rank algorithm sucks. It not only affected those who were in the business of selling links, but also affected the web sites of those innocent webmasters who did not participate in any of the black hat SEO tactics.
Ironically, there are still many sites who are getting away with basic tricks to fool Google into thinking that their sites are information packed. A very common trick appears to be replicated content from public sites slightly modified to look different. They pack these pages with back links to their site. How can Google miss this?
#10 - written by Orhan on 11.25.07
yea google is making it a lot harder to monetize websites… which isn’t the coolest thing :/ I dont see why they are so against it; it just makes tons of people irritated.
#11 - written by DReTeN on 12.12.07