More Pinoy sites lose PageRank as Google updates… again
November 8, 2007
Boy, and we thought the Google PageRank (PR) update was over.
I’ve gone bloghopping today and noticed through my Google Toolbar that some of the sites I frequent have dropped PR. Nope, this was not the same PageRank update in late October that saw a lot of sites got penalized. When I checked the PR of those sites in October 30, it showed a different (read: higher) PR. Now, the latest update has got the following Philippine sites affected.
New list of Philippine sites with reduced PageRank (checked November 8)
| Website | Original PR | PR as of Oct. 25 | PR as of Nov. 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| pinoytravelblog.com | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| seophilippines.org | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| rickey.org | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| jrocas.com.ph | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| jepoyeng.blogspot.com | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| macalua.com | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| quezon.ph | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| jaypeeonline.net | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| man-blog.com | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| pinoytechblog.com | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| pinoycook.net | 4 | 4 | 3 |
Original list of Philippine sites that got penalized (updated November 8)
| Website | Original PR | PR as of Oct. 25 | PR as of Nov. 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| inquirer.net | 6 | 4 | 6 |
| manilatimes.net | 6 | 4 | 4 |
| philstar.com | 6 | 4 | 5 |
| yugatech.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| jozzua.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| aboutmyrecovery.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| retzwerx.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| pinoymoneytalk.com | 4 | 2 | 3 |
PageRank penalty was Google’s warning vs. paid links
October 30, 2007
It’s now confirmed. The Google PageRank (PR) update on October 25 that downgraded the PRs of hundreds of sites and blogs was Google’s way of saying it is serious in the campaign against buying and selling advertising links.
This was confirmed by Google employee and popular blogger Matt Cutts himself in an email sent to Search Engine Journal. The gist of the email:
The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.
Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.
Google has, for several months now, reiterated its aversion against the growing trend of paid text links in websites. Although Google’s Webmasters’ Guidelines has long advised site owners not to “participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank,” the recent PR downgrade was one of Google’s first clear moves to curb this trend.
Some sites incorrectly penalized
Interestingly, however, a few websites that have not participated or have stopped participating in buying and selling of links were also penalized. Google initially slapped these websites with a PR penalty but revoked it after confirming that the sites are not (anymore) involved in paid links.
Google PageRank downgrade and the curse of the 666
October 25, 2007
Is Google evil?
At the same time Google (GOOG)’s stock price eerily struck the $666.66 level (see screenshot), webmasters and blog publishers are abuzz with the recent PageRank update, where several popular sites were apparently slapped by Google with a PR downgrade.
PageRank or PR is Google’s own algorithm that analyzes link structure to indicate the value of an individual page. A higher PR generally means that a page is more “important” relative to other pages with lower PR.
The recent PR update showed that a lot of sites, mostly popular ones, were penalized with a -2 PageRank reduction.
Read more to see a list of local and international sites that got a PR downgrade and discover for yourself what might be its cause.
