Google Sets PayPerPost Blogs’ PageRank to Zero

I’ve been reading story after story about how Google has eliminated the PageRank ranking for thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of bloggers who have posted for PayPerPost.

At first, I felt worried: “would I lose mine next?” Mine may not be much, but its a 4/10 and it took me many months to work up to that. Then I felt guilty, like I was a spammer or something. After that I felt really pissed off. My wife and I have both worked really hard on our recent posts for PayPerPost and we selected the opportunities because we felt there was something to say about them. Meanwhile, I get trackbacks from junk blogs who have completely plagiarized posts of mine and their Google PageRank is higher than mine. I think villainizing PayPerPost folks, posties as they are called, is the equvalent of what Microsoft tried to do leaving capabilities out in hopes of squashing Netscape … unAmerican,

My Message To Google:

If you really want to eliminate useless blogs in a search, eliminating pagerank for PayPerPost writers is NOT a solution. I’m debating going back to using Yahoo as my search engine, taking adsense ads off my site, and using Sitemeter as my analytics choice. You can’t protect your interest by sabotaging your competition. Something better than PageRank is bound to come soon and I hope you relent this crazy and unfair practice soon before that happens.

Many people are starting to see the writing on the wall that Google is not as “open” and “user centered” as it would have us all believe. As for my work on PayPerPost, you can bet I am sticking with this new company. I’m always for the underdog in a good fight. If my page rank disappears, I wont worry about it. As long as you, the readers, keep reading … that’s what I’ll be ranking myself by.

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10 Comments »

Comment by April
2008-01-09 02:45:20

Problem is that with no PR there are hardly any jobs available.  Yesterday I asked for the PR on one of my blogs to be given back and it was granted.  That way I can still make money with other companies like blogsvertise.

 
2008-01-09 05:46:26

Sounds like technorati! LOL  I’ve seen some of my blog posts pop up on other sites and blogs, too. I don’t even know how that happens, but there is always a link back to my site, so I guess I’m not complaining too much!!! I say if you want to write PayPerPosts, keep it up! You’re right, next week, month, year, something new will come out and change everything again!Jessica

 
Comment by Damien Riley
2008-01-09 07:15:40

@ April:  I’m glad to hear they gave your PR back.  But why is it different to Google whether you write for blogvertise or PayPerPost?  I’m confused.

@Jessica: Yeah, I’m new to all this and no one has set my rank to zero yet, so I think I’ll just be free and do what I want and see what happens!  Technorati is an odd bird as well.

 
Comment by Regina Thomas
2008-01-09 08:57:03

Google is not targeting blogs with Smorty or SponsoredReviews posts.  I am for PPP too; however, perhaps you should wait longer to see what’s going to happen.   I lost my PR.  I didn’t even know it would affect me.  It did.

 
Comment by Damien Riley
2008-01-09 09:49:37

Thanks Regina.  I haven’t lost my rating yet.  But if I see a great topic on PPP that I can write and get paid for writing, why in a free country of capitalism should I wait for Google to tell me I’m "safe,"  I don’t want anything to control me that way.  I will hand them my rank if it’s gonna be like that.  I am sorry you lost your rating.

 
2008-01-10 08:03:09

So that explains where my pagerank went on my main blog… It slowing growing back, but I’m sure I was penalized in the past. I had only done about 10 posts in a year. I don’t see the problem with getting paid to post. Google ranks newspaper sites, they get paid to write their stories, right?

 
Comment by Damien Riley
2008-01-10 08:57:32

Yeah.  I’m so mad about this.  I think Google needs to be shown a lesson that you can’t penalize people for doing their bread and butter work and meaning absolutely no harm. It should bite them back imo.

 
Comment by Derek
2008-01-15 11:45:08

The catch-22 is that sites like PPP use PageRank to determine the opportunities that you are qualified to accept.  So if Google drops your PR, you may find that you don’t qualify for as many opportunities with PPP even though you’re not all that concerned about PR.

But I certainly agree with you that Google is becoming less and less open, moving closer to the antics that so many despise from Microsoft.  Personally, I plan to continue on my path and will let the chips fall where they may.

Derek’s last blog post..Speedlinking - 14 Jan 2008

 
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