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Less than a week ago I posted about how my Google Page Rank had suddenly dropped from a PR4 to a PR2 (in the midst of writing a paid post) and today I have found that it has dropped once again to a PR0. A ZERO! What in the blue hell is going on here??
As much as I'd like to believe that Google is not actually punishing people for having paid posts on their blogs that are other than Google AdSense Ads, it sure looks like that is the case as I appear to be in very good company here at the bottom - Claire from
A Little Piece of Me, Kai from both
The Buzz Queen and
Just Me, Tisha from
Crazy Working Mom, Mags from
Ms Maggie Moo Talks 2 U, Misty Dawn of
My Dogs Keep Me Sane, and countless others found (or will find) their blogs to be ranked a big fat zero this morning. What I don't get is that there are others whose blogs have not quite tumbled yet that do paid posts but I guess it takes time to de-rank thousands of blogs so their time will be coming.
After getting bumped down to a PR2 last weekend, I spent some time researching how Google actually ranks pages with their fancy-dancy algorithm and the best that I could find was that it was based on backlinks. Backlinks are not supposed to expire according to what I read so how on earth did I lose all of my backlinks since last Sunday? I am confused, I am angry, and I am hurt.
I thought long and hard before I started doing any paid ads even though other friends who had been doing them for some time had encouraged me to do them due to the extra income that they could generate. I didn't want to "spoil" my blog with a bunch of ads but after giving it a lot of thought and deciding that chances were good I could still maintain the "integrity" of my blog while earning a little very-much-needed cash on the side, I decided to go for it. I started doing paid posts in September and I've tried very hard to make sure that they were quality posts and didn't detract from the regular, unpaid content of my blog. I still wrote about the things that I wrote about before, there were just ads in between that people were more than welcome to skip over but I can say that I tried to make those ads uniquely my own and I also tried to put a little extra into each one of them as I have always believed that if you're going to do something - do it to the best of your ability and make it something that you would be proud to say "yeah, that's mine".
I thought I had done that - was doing that - but apparently that matters not to the folks at Google. Despite the fact that my Traffic Rank, Reach, and Page Views have all increased over the past six months, Google has chosen to drop my blog's ranking to a lousy zero. I feel like I just flunked a test or cheated on my taxes or something. Boo to you, Google, and shame on you for punishing people who are trying to make a better living for themselves by doing paid posts.
Fortunately, the powers-that-be at IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) are aware of what's going on and are working on fast-tracking their new RealRank system which will eliminate Google Page Rank as being a factor in what a blogger qualifies for when it comes to eligibility for paid ads. If you're a Postie and are interested in reading about that, check out
this post here in the IZEA Blog. In the meantime, though, it looks like that money I was counting on for Christmas presents is going to be hard-pressed to come by. I still have an opportunity or two available but until this mess gets straightened out I'm sure they are going to be few and far between.
This stinks - on ice - and I feel like I've been sucker-punched but what's a poor, helpless blogger to do? Well, this one has to go to work and put in some overtime today to try to earn a little extra cash which will keep me from visiting other blogs until tomorrow (I held over at work last night for the same reason) but I promise to get caught up as soon as I've had a chance to sit in the corner and cry over the fate of my poor little blog and feel sorry for myself for a bit.
I was taking a look at some of my Stat Counter searches earlier this evening when I came across an entry for "page hits blogger" so out of curiosity I took a look at the Google search page that brought people to my blog. At the very top of the search page was the entry for:
