PageRank Drop Frenzy
We are much too lowly in the PageRanking world to have been hit by this, but in case you missed it, Google has updated their PageRank and dropped many major blogs and sites in the process- some went from a 7 to a 4 (ouch), others from a 6 to a 3, and so on.
You can read more on this from Scrivs (whose post contains enough links to keep you busy reading for a couple of hours), or see a list of all the PageRank drops over at Daily Blog Tips.
The question is, of course, whether you should care. Sure, it’s nice to see your PageRank bar all filled up, but does it matter to your readers? Does it mean that your content is less valuable?
If you were one of the bloggers hurt by the recent PageRank downgrade- or if you’re worried about it happening to you in the future- I suggest reading this article: Selling Text Link Ads and Google Penalization by Robin Good. Pay attention, especially, to her final recommendations:
1) If Google traffic is important to you avoid using text links.
2) If you have used text links before or are using them now consider seriously dropping them before Google catches you. Getting back in is not easy, fast or assured.
3) If you have used text links before or are using them now and have decided to drop them altogether as I have done do submit a “reinclusion request” by utilizing the dedicated form inside the Google Webmaster Tools main page.
4) If you don’t want to play by Google rules, have a site that doesn’t depend on Google for traffic and you have the time and skills to hack your contebnt pages the way you want, make sure your text links are completely invisible as such to anyone, don’t talk about them and do not make your site URL visibile on text link auction sites and databases. That is, if you do it, you better not tell anyone and make a very fine job of this.
5) If you like Google and want its search engine to work better, do not cheat the system. Those like you who do honest content writing work have all to gain from this.
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