Matt Cutts emailed Search Engine Journal last night to let us know that in fact, the partial Google ‘Toolbar’ PageRank update which happened last week was a result of Google’s campaign against paid linking and advertisement links which influence PageRank.
The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.
Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.
No word from Matt Cutts or Google yet on how exactly sites are targeted for Google’s change of opinion, or how a site can redeem itself (if it wants to do so, as PageRank seems to have no effect on rankings or Google search traffic).
This is however, one of the first responses from Google on the PageRank update, and its effect on sites which sell paid links, so if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them below.
I’m confused; if PR doesn’t matter in Google rankings why do they bother updating the toolbar? Surely if they wanted to get rid of PR selling and buying they should just get rid of page rank all together?
Its very mixed messages :)
if PR doesn’t matter, please make my site PR 10 matt.
I would assume that over a longer term, a demotion in terms of authority (which PageRank is supposed to measure) from Google will in fact result in changes of the ranks. Or at the very least that seems to be the only obvious conclusion, because if PR is strictly symbolic, why would the want to keep it?
Just because some of those who were hit didn’t see any immediate effect, I can only assume that those who “disobey” will suffer the consquences in the long run.
Another possibility is that the lesser PageRank because of selling links is simply a way of making it so that the affected sites can’t actually lend authority to other sites, but don’t necessarily lose authority themselves. I would love to hear some fact on this from Google, as it is quite frustrating really having no idea of what types of effects selling links might have on your SERPs.
Lesser PageRank does have a direct effect on link pricing metrics, SEOMoz PageStrength (which has become an unofficial pricing metric), and the way undereducated link buyers (or builders) view the value of a site.
So, in a way, the direct effect may not be on rankings, but as Matt says “opinion” or perception, not only by Google but by the advertiser, who may decide not to buy a link for a premium price, or do so for less (PR 6 price vs. PR 4 price), hitting webmasters where it counts, in their wallets.
In that train of thought, if a site is selling links for PageRank, and did not get slapped by Google, and still have higher PageRank, they can now effectively raise their pricing :)
Is it just toolbar PR or some site’s did get penalized after this update? One of my site from 2003. was penalized but i don’t have one single paid link there.
I have never paid for links or invested in adverts, however I was penalised for my main keyphrase when the more unethical sites that concentrate on getting just any old links ranked higher.
The only reason I can think of is where Toxic Lemon and Limeysearch used to be free directories (when I listed in 2001), they now charge something absurd like £3 .
PR update is happening…
and yeah the PR might not be used in searches but when it comes to selling ads than you need to have a scale to show and that is where PR comes into play. It is to show to the general public so that you can be measured on http://WWW...!!
by the way my PR is 3 from zero even though my URL is just 2 months old .. I guess transferring my blogger posts from wordpress did the job for me!!
I am afraid our super hero’s (you have to check out http://internethunger.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-action-figures-limited-edition.html) comments just are not enough to explain all the changes.
Many are claiming that they have never purchased or sold a link, yet still took significant hits.
I understand the concept of the visible page rank vs. the SERPS, but where I am fuzzy is how much pagerank am I now passing – is it my internal-to-google pagerank (most likely a 4) or my visible pagerank, a 2?
I am glad to see that there has finally been a confirmed report of Page Rank, for a minute there I thought it was almost going to Join Bigfoot and Nessie and be delegated to the land of myths and legends had they held out any longer. In the meantime it’s strange to see Page Rank turn into Rage Rank for so many hit by the impending devaluation process of their links.
Mark, there are different types of PageRank. The PageRank that Matt Cutts refers to here is not the Green Bar type. Matt is Referring to Link Equity or Link Juice. You have probably read some variation of every link being a vote. What Matt is saying is that Google does not want to count votes made by paid links.
Never sold a link before, but definitely got hit. I’d guess they’re still working out how much to crank the paid link knob… (site is a member of 9rules network tho).
Mike, I like your “adjusting the paid link knob” analogy, but what the radio’s pumping out :)
So, they set the knob all the way down and then adjust it for the sites they they later find out are not selling links…. with the mindset that if the site is not selling links to begin with, the drop in PR will not hurt them.
Problem is, and I’ve said this many times, not all people understand what Google PageRank is.
I believe it’s very easy to explain. Of course Matt has to threat PageRank sellers, but Google used an pragmatic approach. They have only excluded the incoming links to websites from their algorithm. Nothing more. This is the reason why all websites (also those not having bought or sold any links so far) have been “downgraded” with PageRank. Of course Google must explain this in a more mystical and sophisticated way.
Sorry. – I believe that only incoming links from Social Media websites are taken into account for this TBPR-Update. (Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social communities etc.) – But, at the end, no changes happened in SERPs caused by PageRank.
Well, I think we had one of the first confirmations of this :)
http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php
That’s my official confirmation from Google back on October 7, and I’m amazed people are still pondering what might be behind the drops. Google said pretty clearly those selling paid links would get hit.
I guess I should clarify more. When I wrote that post, Google told me that sites would be seeing PageRank decreased, and that this would rollout over time. Guess I should have put the ROLLOUT in big capital letters. Instead, I thought it was pretty obvious that if sites started seeing PR decreases, they’d know why from that confirmation.
Anyway, as part of our own follow-up on the PR saga, I’ve worked with Barry to try and explain things more:
http://searchengineland.com/071029-084449.php
The key thing seems to be sites that might have been hit for link selling that then started saying they weren’t appear to be getting reverses.
Now the decsion to purchase a link will have to be based on traffic logs and potential targetted traffic for the link buyer. Sites will have to perform or lose their revenue not makes tonnes of money while they sleep just because they have a nice chunk of page rank to justify their extortionate rates for an “AD”. Some of these sites definitely deserve their authority status as a great online resource the mistake they made was not stopping selling links or placing a no follow on the ad when Google told them to. I am sure if they clean up and get rid of the links the status quo will be restored.
Is if fair that Google can do this maybe not, I personally think it is. It certainly levels the playing field for the Mom and Pops with no money to o buy links.
“Google’s campaign against paid linking and advertisement links which influence PageRank.” – Translation: We are going to eventually penalize anyone who doesn’t use AdSense exclusively for all their sites’ advertising.
And since when do paid directories have a negative effect in Google.
As long as the links are relevant, I don’t see what the problem s.
Google is getting pretty shady.
I want to know how sites can redeem themselves, then again if it doesn’t affect search results it’s only the ignorant advertisers that care… sadly what they think that matters the most.
They don’t want to remove PR because they won’t webmasters to remove their toolbar..
See PR was on one of the most important reason why webmaster installed the G toolbar like crazy !!
@Danny : Well, I guess this was confirmation ‘after the storm’, bravo on the initial forewarning.
We had it in our alerts, but misjudged the wrath and reach of the storm :)
Lorne – (I posted this in the Sphinn Comments also) — thank you!
Our site dropped down to a PR 5 and we neither buy nor sell links? I have also seen MANY other sites that have dropped in PR, that do not participate in link selling. It is not part of their business model, so I am pretty confident in this assessment.
I have only been reading about Google laying the smack down on bloggers and sites that are monetizing based on the site’s PR, and therefore perceived value.
The search marketing blogosphere is discussing mostly ‘their own’ affected industry. I feel what is missing from all the conversations is data from outside the search marketing sector, which may better explain and understand Google’s overall intentions.
I have seen many sites not in the search vertical also being effected by a drop in PR, but haven’t seen much reporting on it. (are we to assume every site that has dropped in ranking is as a result of link buying or selling) That is very presumptuous. and I believe there has to be more to Google’s motives than JUST smacking the link traders, when many sites have been effected.
Thoughts?
Danny I hope you realize that those link drops are not worth anything anymore…. now that the site has had a big PR drop!!
And I would have used some anchor text instead of the plain url.
Sorry Loren – didn’t mean to spell your name wrong! :)
Frank, your too funny.
Come to think of it Danny, I thought I set Akismet to hold all comments with more than one internal link in moderation :)
Some sort of WordPress Jedi Mind Trick going on?
A bit of talk around seems to think they are rolling out TrustRank; it could be that all the known paid text linkers have been manually edited to have poor TrustRank, lowering their ranking, and all websites who don’t happen to be linked from a yet trusted site. Who knows though, its all speculation until our Lord Google speaks :)
“Never sold a link before, but definitely got hit.”
Mike, I clicked on your site and saw a post saying “This is a sponsored post, of Axosoft OnTime 2007 Beta” If I can find that, I’m guessing search engines can too..
@ harrison – I have no idea what you are referring to? Can you be more specific?
Mike b, I was looking at the comment by Mike Papageorge. Sorry that was unclear, too many Mikes!
I saw after — sorry about that. You scared me for a second!! :o
I think Lars-Christian has it right when he says, “Another possibility is that the lesser PageRank because of selling links is simply a way of making it so that the affected sites can’t actually lend authority to other sites, but don’t necessarily lose authority themselves. ”
To me this makes sense. Don’t impact a site’s traffic, just stop them selling PR.
Personally I couldn’t care less about my drop from 5 to 2, other than it reuqires me to have to explain to a prospective link partner why it’s worth exchanging links (to get real traffic, dumbass) if they don’t want to link to my shitty little PR2 site.
Because I don’t sell links to pass on PR, I can only speculate that I might have been penalised because Google don’t like affiliate links either. Perhaps they might also class them as a form of paid link. However, as Eric Enge says on searchnews, “Google will never win that battle. Monetizing sites is something that every site owner has the right to do.” My affiliate links pay me to create my content. Without the income, I would not be doing what I do.
Fair enough, go after sites that are simply selling “authority” to others. But the question remains, how will Google tell the difference between this form of link selling and genuine ads designed to create traffic and sales for the buyer and a meaningful (and entirely ethical) business model for the seller. And if they do come up with a way, won’t the PR sellers simply cheat the system?
Anyway, at the end of the day and to return to the start, if this is just a means of stopping sites selling PR then fine, it makes no difference to me, since I don’t sell it and I don’t buy it. If, however, it turns into something more sinister and impacts real web traffic, then the only conclusion can be that Google are simply trying to protect their own link advertising interests in an anticompetitive manner. For me, the good news then would be that, given the number of genuinely decent quality sites that appear to be affected, I would not see Google remaining the no.1 search engine for very long since their search results would likely be significantly poorer than at present.
But I don’t believe that will happen because Google are very clever people, right? :-)
Danny, as one of the networks targetted by this update, I can tell you equivocally that many of our sites that were hit were NOT selling links, and never had (www.copyblogger.com among them).
This update *was* about text links, as Matt said, but tens of thousands of sites that had NEVER sold text links were mistakenly penalized as well.
For some reason, this fact simply isn’t being covered properly (or, really, at all). Hitting up Google in the WMC and asking for reinstatement for this sites WILL work, though.
Instead of using Google PageRank for measuring a Web site’s popularity, bulk link sellers can start using free Alexa traffic stats instead. Alexa traffic stats are not influenced by Google and its corporate decisions, or algorithmic choices, and is instead based on actual traffic measurements. The only problem with Alexa is that is a sampling-based approach, but its coverage is steadily increasing and thereby getting more reliable.
It is very mind boggling to see people keep on trumpeting this “PR Euphoria” bandwagon. For a very long time I looked at PR to measure the success in SEO. But having seen some sites perform well in search despite the low PR proved otherwise. Here I have noticed someone talk about Alexa and its purity over Google. Lets be mindful here, both Google and Alexa alike are organizations with their vested interest. To think their metrics are unbiased would be very foolish.
If it was for selling paid links why is then W3 Cons not punished/penalized yet??
PR is 9, still.
Anybody knows they are selling yearly paid links, starting out from $1000/year.. and her eis the list of their so called supporters (read” paid link buyers) http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup
Oddly, as one can see there linking to bad neighborhood is a rule!
just my 2 cents
I dropped from PR5 to 4 although I’ve never bought or sold a link and in fact I’ve more quality links now (including 96 .edu and 11 .gov) than I’ve had in the two years life of this site.
The part I don’t like is the arbitrariness of it all. Terrible piece of Public Relations on Google’s part. And really don’t like those bastards and I hate what they’ve done with YouTube too.
I think this news confirms that Google really does not care about content, just about the presence or absence of paid links, affiliate links, and advertising. Content is not king. Abstinence from paid links is king.
From one hand Google penalized popular sites selling/buying links and from other hand assigned high PR for thousands of new or less popular sites that do nothing else than selling/buing PR.
Additionally Google penalized sites never selling ot buying links and the reason was that they’re hosted from same IP as main site to be penalized.
This is how it looks. This is what shows us how stupid Google algo is. This shows us Google is not able to track sites selling PR.
This shows to many how to play with Google PR now. This is what will hurt Google much more than ever before.
Matt did a post about what to be for Halloween…
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/halloween-2007-what-should-i-be/
I think if he wants to personify Google he should put on a blindfold and start swinging an axe… they know they will get most of the bad guys and are willing to lose some innocents along the way
Do Googles latest algorithm changes indicate that any site ( that has webpages for each business and also has a link through to the business’ webpage), will get penalized if they are charging for that business to have a webpage on the site?
Just because a site sells links to cover costs or even make a few bucks does not make that sites content any worse….so being penalized in the SERP would just make Googles results worse. I think dinging visual page rank is a kinda silly though, it makes Google’s page rank look like a joke. I don’t know why they just don’t get rid of it from the toolbar?
Ok great so what about google adsense when you put sponserd links above the ads could this be mistaken as paid links if its anywhere near other links..
I really think that all this fuss about PR is useless. It’s taking over almost every blog on the blogosphere and nobody can stop talking about it. PR should die! :P
If PR doesn’t weigh anymore in the eyes of Google, then please give my site a PR10.
I would surely believe it right there!
So now that the threats have turned into actual penalties, I wonder now many webmasters will start adding “nofollow” to their “traffic Only” link sales?
No doubt Google will be watching to see if this will increase compliance with their demands.
@msnchat : Google AdSense ads, or other contextual advertising programs like YPN or BriteAds, are not mistaken by Google as paid “natural” links.
The paid links being discussed in this thread are ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ hypertext links which pass “link juice” as being real, coded and anchored links.
The links served in AdSense ad code are served links, not natural, and do not pass PageRank or ‘link juice’.
Hurting non offenders is the “baby with the bath water” approach that their inactive terms, and max bid additions to PPC.
They have gone from a “Do No Evil” to “Some Innocents Will Get Hurt Is Okay” model!
Working my way through trackbacks I see a very welcome one from SEJ… come to the post and it seems not to be in the post.
What gives?
I know a lot of websites who sell links and they have the same PR look at the strongest domains they lost -1 PR (many PR9) lost to 8 many 8 go to 7 many 7 go to 6 when You look at BL from last update domains You will see that they lost BL (if they had 10x PR7) now they have (10x PR6) and this is one thing another thing is that this time to get PR6/7 domain You needed not 10-20 quality PR6/7 links but 100-200 quality PR6/7 links and those are the real reasons why so many PR6/7/8 have lost their PR!!!
Show me one site that have 100-200 BL from PR6/7 (not from 1 domain) and not get PR6/7 . I have many PR6 websites and I sell links of some of them and they have the same PR like on the last PR update. And this time i need to use many more quality BL to be this way (Google PR algorithm changes in number of BL) last time I need 10 quality BL to get PR6 this time i use more then 100 to stay with this PR.
@Andy Beard : I was spamming you! No, I had added an update, with your chart (and embedded link). But the table’s width was too thick for the SEJ template, due to the full URL’s in the text. I deleted it (or saved to drafts) with plans to make edits, then had some meetings to attend to.
Totally forgot about it until reading your comment on the mobile. I wasn’t trackbacking you :)
@ Group : Lots of reports of new sites gaining PR. I had one go from a zero to a three (small site). Anyone care to share their positive PR changes?
I have many from 0 to 6 :)
This won’t be the first time you will feel the heavy backhand of Google. Remember in the Wizard of OZ when they saw they little man with the fireball machine behind the curtain, and he said “Don’t look behind the curtain!”. Anytime the SEO-ers start to say “hey, it is just two little guys and a fireball machine”…WHACK! Each one will hurt more than the one before. Most have a freshly slapped face. And everyone on this thread is for the most part being pretty diplomatic, as if the Wizards of Google are reading it. But talk to people offline and they are quoting Will Rogers “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”
The easy solution to the width problem is just to wrap the table in [small] [/small]
No worries
I should note that I know blogs that Matt Cutts reads that write paid reviews that didn’t receive any penalty.
I think they need to spend a lot more time training their human evaluation team in what qualifies as valuable content far beyond token payments made for consultancy.
“If it was for selling paid links why is then W3 Cons not punished/penalized yet??”
Anon, for the url you mentioned and there’s a meta tag on it:
meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”
so those links are not passing PageRank.
Make my site page rank 6
Google services such as Adsense, blogger etc have their own blogs. Why cant Google put up I a blog dedicated to PR issues? Why should we getting Google’s information through third party communication like this.For some of us, it took us a long time before we knew that Matt Cutts speaks for Google. As part of their social responsibility, Google should be more transparent. If you can, please get the whole story here:
http://nthambazale.blogspot.com/2007/10/need-for-google-to-be-more-transparent.html
Colleagues
I have been asking myself this question. How does Google distinguish paid links from links in paid reviews? In my short online career, I have observed that paid/sponsored review are fast becoming the norm of the day and they pay really well. But these reviews are supposed to include a link to the reviewee’s site. Does that make it a paid link?
@betty betty: If that is the case then TV and Radio adverts must also be strongly discouraged because they are as well in in no-one’s interest but the seller, and the guy who can’t get a job who whores out his mad advertizing skillz.
If google continues to update the PR, then they cant eliminate PR buying/selling completely. A few sites will be penalized but a few not. Soon they will be loaded with complaints with paid links reports. Also webmasters will find a new way to buy links thru contextual posts or blog posts or else. I think google is smart/intelligent enough to understand that. Why dont they remove the PR from the toolbar ?
@Avik: If they remove PR from the toolbar, people will still check it out online using the various online tools.
@Clement : But they know how to hide it from those tools ;)
@Avik: That will be backtracking. In the first place, people did not know anything about PR, it is them(Google) who brought it to the masses. Why should they rehide it?
Yeah, that is true, but there is no other way to eliminate buying/selling links. Penalizing a few sites wont solve this problem. Webmasters will continue to find out other ways/tricks to increase PR.