Low Google PageRank, higher Adsense income

While we’re busy on April 1 playing a prank on our PMT members about paid posting on the PMT Forum, Google was apparently busy too updating the PageRank of websites.

For the uninitiated, Google PageRank (PR) is a numerical figure from 0 to 10 that supposedly shows the relative importance of a site. A site with a PR of 10 is considered “more important” than a site with a PR of 2.

In the Philippines, popular sites with a high PR include the online version of newspapers Inquirer.net, PhilStar.com, and ManilaTimes.net — all with PageRank of 7.

Filipino blogs with a high PR include FilipinoLibrarian.blogspot.com (PR 6) and BryanBoy.com (PR 5).

As for PinoyMoneyTalk.com, well, we have a head-turning, jaw-dropping, and mind-twisting PR of zero (0). Yup, zero as in zilch, nil, nada. Prior to the update, our PR was 2. We’re not alone, though. Macuha.com shared that his site dropped from PR 4 to 3 while Selaplana.com, like us, dropped from PR 2 to 0.

We don’t know yet what the consequences of having zero PageRank would be. Until today, we still rank high on the SERPs (search engine results pages) in some of our keywords such as “mutual funds Philippines” and “stock trading Philippines.”

More importantly, income from Google Adsense is recovering. After seeing our Adsense income drop by 50-60% in March 2009, it is now back to its normal level. Actually, during the first 3 days of April 2009, we experienced high daily incomes never seen in the past recent months.

Even though our site has low PR, as long as our online income is not affected, we’re not complaining. If we are to choose between high PageRank and high income, we’ll definitely choose the latter.

What about you?