I’m sick of being slapped around

Seriously. Is Google still slapping bloggers around or what?

One of my few remaining main blogs that had PR after the last Google slap just lost PR today. It’s down to a big fat zero.

Why?

I’ve slowed down on posting on all my sites quite a bit over the last few months - in part due to our new puppy (very sick for first month with us) - and if there was anything wrong with what I was doing in the past there really shouldn’t be anything wrong now. My sites are all cleaned up - free of any badges that it seems the big G doesn’t like anymore or perhaps never liked because those companies must have threatened Google’s Adsense biz.

I think this whole thing is ridiculous. I mean Google is selectively penalizing certain bloggers while exempting “A” list bloggers from their slap. Is there really something terribly wrong with making some money writing about sites or products that you would have written about anyway? No. I don’t think so.

Not that I’ve done many posts on this site in the last few months, but I can say that there hasn’t been a paid review on this site for 3+ months.

Tags: badges, blog, bloggers, Google, google slap, money, penalized, posting, posts, PR, puppy, site, Writing

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 7:05 pmand is filed under Blogging, Making Money, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

26 Responses to “I’m sick of being slapped around”

Toronto News (0 comments.) Says:
January 16th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

I noticed Google updated PR a while ago - and i got a PR3 - i think their strict policy only means one thing - they wanna dominate the online advertising industry, period!
Daniel (0 comments.) Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 1:04 am

google does that everytime whenever any sites activity slows down.in the process the sites r the sole sufferers.they kind of want to dominate the internet advertising arena.and they cant stand someone else biting into their pie, be that be for good or for bad.
Stock Trading Software (1 comments.) Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 am

I hear ya… one of my sites went up to 4 then back to 0… never ever done a paid link once… i think it may be due to the site being a subscription service
Jan-Willem Bobbink (1 comments.) Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 8:35 am

Google is now focussing more on actuality! So maybe if your frequently post blogs your PR will rise again!
Forex Online Trading Systems (0 comments.) Says:
January 29th, 2008 at 10:56 am

Google is just a bully imposing it’s will on small websites… I switched to YPN to get back at the,,, bet they will miss my $5 per month lol
Cuban Cigars (1 comments.) Says:
February 5th, 2008 at 4:00 am

Surely the time will come when Google are challenged legally.. Microsoft was taken to court and lost as they had the monopoly. Surely it’s past the stage of Google having the monopoly?
Tech News (1 comments.) Says:
February 12th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

There’s no point stressing about what Google is doing. 99 percent of their decisions are money driven and they use their monopoly to great advantage.
Russell at Internet Marketing Toolz (0 comments.) Says:
February 13th, 2008 at 11:45 am

Ouch!
I just checked one of my blogs - hardly ever post there - and it’s still at PR2. Doesn’t seem fair to somebody like you who has more frequent, relevant posts. The comment about G wanting to dominate online advertising…
Doesn’t take a rocket scientist does it?
Russell
Penny (0 comments.) Says:
February 14th, 2008 at 2:54 am

I just can not understand what google actully look, I think it is more like a luck, one of my site got PR 3 in last updation and the other just 1 , But I did almost equal work for both the sites.
sport (0 comments.) Says:
February 14th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Several of my sites have also been slapped, but I stopped caring about PR a long time ago. As long as the SERP are not affected I’m fining with running a few PR 0 sites. However, I get the feeling that more and more webmasters are unhappy with Google’s “no comment” policy and I hope that the Microsoft/Yahoo goes through, so that big, almighty Google is forced to reconsider some of their business practices.
DeadFly SEO (0 comments.) Says:
February 27th, 2008 at 8:02 am

I would be interested to know what happens next. Have you filed and resubmit emails?

Keep us posted.
Bobby (1 comments.) Says:
February 29th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

wow, this has to be the hottest topic in the blogsphere right now, everyone is getting slapped! Im hesitant to monetize because of it.
Jason Pearson (0 comments.) Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Yeah, Google has been giving a lot of people headaches. On a side note, how is your puppy? I am a dog lover and I hate it when mine is sick.
Tricia (8 comments.) Says:
March 11th, 2008 at 12:20 am

No I haven’t files to resubmit my sites because that would be an admission that I did something wrong and I don’t believe that I have.

The funny thing about Google PR is that I have a few new domains. Some that have only one or two posts and two that have no new posts and they all have PR now. Now doesn’t that tell you just how stupid and meaningless PR really is? My blogs that are a couple of years old and that have 2000 posts are zeros and the ones with none to one or two posts have PR2. So really do the new blogs honestly have more value than the ones that have good decent regular posts? I don’t think they do … but Google does.
Ceremonial Shovel (1 comments.) Says:
March 14th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

I got slapped too on one of my sites and it lasted around 3 weeks. I kept tweaking it and suddenly I was back listed again. Not sure what it was.
David (1 comments.) Says:
March 15th, 2008 at 9:30 am

The number of posts on a blog has no effect on PR. I have a blog PR3 where I have not posted in a year and the PR does not change.

What you may have to do is go through all your posts and check all the outbound links that are in paid to post articles and add rel=”nofollow” to the link. Check every post on your blog carefully. Even if you leave one link without the nofollow Google will not give you back PR. Once you have modified the links you will have to contact Google for reconsideration:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843
Matt Saunders (1 comments.) Says:
March 17th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

thankfully my website PR has not fluctuated, but i’m a bit miffed as it hasnt gone up in over a year despite me building over 200 extra backlinks. keep your blog nice and tidy and reguarly updated and i think your PR will come back!
Thai (1 comments.) Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

You guys are getting me nervous. Should I do PPP or should I leave it (or other “paid post programs”) alone?
Meta (0 comments.) Says:
March 20th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

The PR going up and down for little reason is enough to drive a person mad and so is the new Google ranking algorithm that shows different results (on some keyword phrases) depending upon whether there are captial letters in the words or not. I don’t have enough hair to pull out anymore.
Jeremy Hobbs (1 comments.) Says:
April 1st, 2008 at 10:37 pm

PR is useless; but it’s like nicotine. Everyone thinks they can live without, until they try. Very frustrating.
Emirhan (2 comments.) Says:
April 11th, 2008 at 11:02 am

As some folks already said, it’s Google trying to get a monopoly. For the “search engine” part they’re already up-front, but they have lots of side-projects that they’re trying to link into one big slice.

Ads should be able to compete in one page, that’s the meaning of capitalism. Google kickin your PR because of that is the first sign that they’re biting too much from the pie. Unfortunately, it’s a long time until this is going to backfire at them ..
Mark (1 comments.) Says:
April 20th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

Luckily sites without PR can still receive huge amounts of traffic. Though no PR at all is not very good, specially when you had a rank before. I hope Google will stop with the PR someday, or introduce a PR2 without the nasty side-effects..
lift chairs (0 comments.) Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

I think the PR thing really is a very flawed system that often seems to be rewarding those who don’t really deserve it. In regards to being slapped, I have been lucky so far, but I have seen it happen to a lot of people I know.
Michelle Sterling Las Vegas Real Estate Agent (0 comments.) Says:
May 6th, 2008 at 7:28 pm

I have been competing successfully on Google for the last few years with a real estate website and two corresponding blogs. I have to tell you that PR rankings continue to be a mystery to me. My site used to be a PR5 and now it’s a PR4 and I can’t imagine why. I try to ignore it, but it’s hard not to feel frustrated when you put forth serious effort and end up confused. Oh well, I guess that’s life on the search engines!
DoesWhat (1 comments.) Says:
May 31st, 2008 at 7:17 am

Obviously Google won’t release their secret algorithms, their PR system is extremely automated and its hard to know exactly what you should be doing in order to increase your PR. Although I rarely see a PR go down unless the site has been seen to be linking to ‘bad’ sites.
Chris (0 comments.) Says:
June 1st, 2008 at 2:12 am

I had a recent dropped down on one my bog related to Musical Industries. Its really hard to coup up with Google interaction.I will have to update with newer posts but still I am not sure why Google is not picking my contents.