I’m sure like many bloggers out there, I like to see that little green pagerank toolbar increase instead of decrease. As of this recent Google pagerank update this blog saw our ranking drop one point from PR4 to PR3. Why this happened in totally a mystery because the only things that have changed in between this update and the last update was the addition of over 60 quality posts and over 400 backlinks from reputable sources. There has never been any “link buying” or “link selling” or anything defined by Google’s resident search engine spam expert, Matt Cutts, as “gaming” Google’s search algorithm. In fact, there has been little or no SEO effort going on at this blog and it has been progressing on a natural basis, only focused on quality content and receiving incoming links because fellow bloggers have found interesting information here.
The one thing that seriously pisses me off is Google’s recent punishment of PayPerPost bloggers and others who have been accused of selling “text links” when Google obviously turns a blind eye to people selling text links in their Adwords advertising program. It’s one thing to play high and mighty with bloggers who need traffic from the search engine giant but to blatantly say one thing and do another is not only essentially evil, it’s an inherently dishonest business ethic.
Case in point: The following Adsense ad was found on a directory site I was submitting one of forums to and when I saw it, I was intrigued as to not only why somebody with a PR7 site would be selling a text link for $40 but I was curious as to how this site garnered a coveted PR7 from Google and why the site owner would risk losing their pagerank over blatantly selling a text link for the purpose of gaming Google for such small amount of money. Anyway, here’s the ad :
The link for this ad is leads to the following blog :
http://www.estacioncero.com/
Which is a valid PR7 domain, however, the blog has only 24 posts on it dating back to November 2007. How the hell could it be that this relatively new blog with no comments, no RSS readers, no viable content could outrank not only my blog, but some of my favorite blogs such as the wonderful Andy Beard or the ever witty SEO 2.0 blog.
So, I visited Backlink Watch to check out some of the backlinks coming into this PR7 site and I was amazed to see roughly a thousand less backlinks than this blog and the PR7 blog’s links were all coming from the same sources, except for one magical backlink. That magical backlink was (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/showcase/index.cfm?loc=es_xla) which is a PR9 page on Adobe’s site, entirely in Spanish, that spotlights a few sites using Adobe/Macromedia’s ColdFusion authoring platform. Adobe’s description of the PR7 site states that it offers free wallpapers, free icons, a photograph gallery and other elements that *ARE NOT* on the site. I also noticed the date on the Adobe page was 27/03/2006, however, the PR7 domain that is using Adwords to sell text links was registered on 25/10/2007. So, somebody got lucky and bought an expired domain with a PR9 link from Adobe and Google’s ranking algorithm is obviously so inaccurate that it can’t detect a domain had been fully dropped and re-registered and that it is not even the same content as it had been. So much for Matt Cutt’s claims that Google has a “duplicate content” filter. That fallicy is pretty much shot out of the water when Google can’t even detect a domain was fully *dropped* and re-registered. The most hilarious part is the Adobe page is to spotlight sites designed in ColdFusion and the last time I checked, Worpress didn’t run on the ColdFusion platform…
Now before anybody goes off thinking I’m against Google, that is not true. I am against dishonesty and corrupt business ethics and when a company pretends to be doing good by causing harm and turns around and does the same thing they punish others for, it reeks of hipocracy.
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I guess Google is allowed to indirectly profit from selling text links because they are not the ones selling them, they’re just accepting advertising revenue for the people selling them.
Great article! An interesting slant as to how these smart engines aren’t so bright.
Not only is this person sellign text links, he’s a cheat as well. His Adsense ad says “Buy a PR7 link for $40″ and when you go to the page, it says the link is $80 per month. What a crook.
hi, im the admin of the site, while i understand you have the right to publish this article, i would appreciate it(maybe a discounted link?,lol) if you could hide the name in a way that it would appear when searched for under google, thanks
Thanks for the offer of a “discounted” PR7 link on your site but that would just be irresponsible journalism on my part and would be unethical, which would make me as hypocritical as Google for allowing the selling of text links through their Adwords system.
Upon further research, I see the domain was purchased for $1000 on DigitalPoint forums a few weeks ago..
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=6244071
I guess that would essentially be like paying $1000 for a PR7. The whole thing stinks IMHO.
Kudos Dave, at least somebody has ethics on the internet and voices their opinion to stand up when they see something glaringly wrong. Seems like most people on the internet wants to lie and scam any way they can but you’re proving that there are honest people out there few and far between.
btw, I love Andy Beard also, he’s another outstanding ethical and honest blogger who stands behind his convictions.
[…] Why Google Pagerank Can’t be Taken Seriously Now before anybody goes off thinking I’m against Google, that is not true. I am against dishonesty and corrupt business ethics and when a company pretends to be doing good by causing harm and turns around and does the same thing they punish others for, (tags: Google PageRank) […]
Well i guess its kind of hypocritical dissing what im doing when you’ve got tnx.net banners plastered everywhere. So what if im selling links, im entitled to and not be criticised about it, your doing exacly the same by offering your services on sponsered reviews. My pr is valid and im not stealing from anyone.
Where are TNX banners “plastered everywhere” ??? You don’t see any TNX links on this site, now do you? After all, this site is called “Affiliate Best Programs” and the general idea is to turn bloggers and webmasters on to “Affiliate Programs”, hence banners for TNX, etc… As far as “Sponsored Reviews” is concerned, I have yet to take an opportunity and make a post, however, posting “fully disclosed reviews that are not intended to pass pagerank” is not a problem and SR *does* have opps that you can put a “nofollow” tag on to justify the “review” as not gaming pagerank.
Sorry man, you are blatantly gaming Pagerank and in case you didn’t notice, this post was about “Google”, not you. Your site was used as an example of Google’s inadequacy and hipocracy.
Your PR *is not valid* - You bought a domain for $1000 on DigitalPoint with a link pointing to it that is not intended for the site you currently have there.
Don’t try to justify yourself or make what you’re doing look right and don’t try to play the “pointing the finger” game because you’re only making yourself look more guilty by trying to dig yourself out.
Why does this person keep signing his name as admin and putting the link as esta-cio-ncero.com instead of estacioncero.com ?
Dave, I think you should change his posting name so that people don’t think it’s the admin of this blog (you) replying to the posts.
Evidently, this person can’t discern an affiliate link from a paid text link being sold through Adwords and from viewing the source of this blog, it looks like the affiliate banners for TNX and SR have nofollow tags added to them.
Isn’t the issue here that Google is allowing Adwords ads for people selling text links ? At least that’s what I was thinking ?????
I agree with you bro. Nver take the Google PR seriously. Just another thing that shows Google is not your friend. And to make matters worse…the other search engines are no better.
I have a website that has been up for almost 3 years and I have not been able to get it about PR of 1. I take that back I did have it to PR of 2 once but then it dropped down a while back.