I’ve been thinking about this all last week and I’ve decided to make some changes to this blog. In response to the Google PageRank penalty slapping, which in my case dropped this blog from a PR 6 to a PR 3, I have decided to adhere to Google’s demands.
I am no longer selling text links via the Text-Link-Ads.com service and all direct text link sales I make will have the nofollow code applied as per Google’s instructions. I’ve already had the Text-Link-Ad sponsors money refunded for last month and I’ll be contacting the direct text buyers to figure out what they want to do moving forward.
This will impact my bottom line in the vicinity of about a $400-$700 a month, which was mostly from the Text-Link-Ads.com income on this blog.
I’ve submitted a request via Google Webmaster Tools telling them that my site no longer breaks their text link selling rules and asking if I could have my PageRank back. Hopefully in a week or two they will get back to me with a positive response.
The reason I decided to do this is because I feel the credibility of the PageRank green bar is more important to me than the $500 or so per month I was making from selling text links and I want to be on Google’s good side.
I haven’t seen any changes to the level of search traffic coming from Google - in anything it’s increased - however I don’t want to risk further penalties impacting search results because I do get a significant amount of traffic from Google. Even if the PageRank penalty is largely cosmetic and doesn’t reflect any changes to the actual SERPs for my blog, given what I do for a living and what information products I’d like to put out in the future, it helps to have a solid PageRank.
I’m making some slight changes to how I monetize this blog, which isn’t because of Google, it’s because of the new blog design I’ve got coming out. Thankfully those changes will more than make up for any lost income from text links, but it does demonstrate yet again, as bloggers, we need to always be careful how we monetize our blogs and stay dynamic. You need to be able to adjust based on the conditions you face, and there is only one constant in the universe - change - so be prepared for it at all times.
Should You Sell Text Links?
I’m doing an audio for my Blog Mastermind students to instruct them on how my monetization strategy has adjusted in light of the text link selling changes and to offer my recommendations for whether bloggers should sell text links and if so, how they should go about it.
If you want the audio, you have to be a member of Blog Mastermind.
Am I Giving In?
I had a real chuckle at a post from Robert Clough at Search Engine Guide, which outlines the conversation history he had with Jennifer Laycock, the main writer at Search Engine Guide and what they went through deciding how to deal with the Google PageRank changes.
It’s a hilarious read and I have to concur with everything they express in their conversation - I feel exactly the same way.
You can read it here - Composing the Perfect Letter of Surrender
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If TLA offered a nofollow option at a lower rate would you go back?
Gary - Yes I would, assuming Google is fine with that.
Then for TLA to stay in business I hope they are listening
Interesting decision considering you previously wrote that PageRank didn’t matter.
I quote: “we really should stop caring about PageRank” and “so there will always be a sense of uncertainty, which is not pleasant for the small time webmaster or blogger who relies on PageRank for important things like revenue. If that’s you, it’s time to look for income streams that don’t depend on PageRank.”
Yet, your decision in this post seems to indicate that you are dependent on PR, at least for “credibility” and the ability to sell your products.
I don’t want you to see this as an attack, but it just seems a little hypocritical to write that everybody should stop caring about PR and then say how dependent you are on it earn money. Surely that means your previous advice would actually prevent others from earning money (I hope you didn’t tell it to your BM students!)
I’d greatly appreciate it if you could further clarify your stance on PR.
Love your work.
@CashQuests — I guess PageRank is probably less than relevant with organic traffic these days, if you are depending on PPM or PPC based income. However it is still an often-used measurement by the direct advertisers, i.e. how much they are willing to pay per month probably still depends on how long is that green bar?
Also Yaro has already explained
Like, if someone asked “is Yaro credible in making money online?” “Nah, his site is only a PR3!” From what I have gathered, Yaro is not just running a fleet of sites earning money from PPC ads, but also run a course where “credibility” is important.
Yaro,
I can’t wait to listen to the audio. I fear that this text link issue is really negatively affecting the blogging business.
“If TLA offered a nofollow option at a lower rate would you go back?”
What do you mean by a nofollow option?
Before I ask my question Yaro, I like to say your blog provides solid entrepreneurial information.
But this post…
Don’t you feel some of your loyal readers might have a problem with what you’re saying now (flipflop), especially after you said PR doesn’t matter?
Yaro said, “Even if the PageRank penalty is largely cosmetic and doesn’t reflect any changes to the actual SERPs for my blog, given what I do for a living and what information products I’d like to put out in the future, it helps to have a solid PageRank.”
I do agree with your new stance — PR does matter to some degree. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been so much fuss about it around the blogosphere.
@CashQuests: I agree with you. Totally! It is annoying that a lot bloggers say PR is irrelevant (prepotency), but now they are shocked. Yaro is an excellent blogger, but when my income depends on Google by an important percentage then I should be very cautious.
Yaro..
do you think selling text links directly s an option for bloggers… without going through TLA…
Even provide paid links within posts instead of using them on the side bar as sponsored or featured websites?
Carl the Kidblogger once wrote to TLA and request for an nofollow option to be added but he was given a cold shoulder.
I am wondering what TLA will do after so many withdrawals from their service. Anyway Yaro, I am agreeing with you that somehow in some way, the green bar shows the credibility of a information site.
I am interested in knowing what will you do if Google decided not to listen to your appeal.
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I think it’s a shame that you’ve had to back down in this way but I can understand it. This is a high profile blog and for it to drop so drastically is really silly. PR3 simply isn’t representative of the quality. Let’s hope you get it back Yaro.
I stand by my statement that PR shouldn’t matter and we shouldn’t care, but the fact of that matter is, as an industry, we do.
If I intend to one day sell information products about SEO, which I do, PageRank counts for my credibility and will impact my ability to make sales.
However - and this is part of what I said to Blog Mastermind students - that’s my situation and for this blog only.
The situation for other bloggers who don’t leverage a public profile for credibility and thus sales, as I do, or who are not operating in an industry where PageRank counts (although almost all industries where links are bought advertisers take into account PageRank even if the site owner doesn’t know what it is), may not have to worry about what google does to their green bar.
It’s something that needs to be reviewed on a case by case basis, blog by blog basis.
There’s one other thing I pointed out to my students in the audio - Google only penalized the public PR display but have not, as yet, changed people’s SERP results.
That doesn’t mean they won’t.
Perhaps the PR penalty is a test and if you don’t do what Google wants, then next comes a search result slap too - and that hurts a lot more than a PR drop.
As much as we all might not like it and state not to care about it, Google controls a very large chunk of how traffic is distributed online, which means they make the rules if you want your share of that traffic.
@maneesh - Yes, certainly, I’ve been selling text links outside of brokering services like TLA for a long time - long before TLA even existed.
However if you intend to continue doing that and stay on Google’s good side, you have to apply the nofollow tag to any paid for links.
By the way, if you are not sure what nofollow is, take a look at this entry from wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow
Thank you for the clarification Yaro.
It may still be on a blog by blog basis but I feel that most of your students (who seemingly all want to make money) and readers of this blog would be affected by PR and a more appropriate statement to your audience would’ve perhaps been that “everyone should care about PR”. Hence, I found it quite contradictory to say that “we should all stop caring”. Again, thanks for the clarification.
Hi Yaro,
This is a tough one for me. I personally like the Text-Link ads approach. It’s simple, unobtrusive to my readers, and I get a check each month. Obviously this new situation with Google changes things. For now, I’ll probably take the links off as you have. I’m developing online information content via the teaching-sells program which is the future direction of my blog. To have a low page rank or a loss of traffic could really hinder that effort.
Please keep us updated about the whole no-follow thing. An online linking tutorial would be really good for many bloggers given the new realities of Google.
Surely that I don’t want to much care about the PR greenBar
but, “the fact of that matter is,as an industry,we do”
as we know, Search Engines Optimizer is care , Webmaster is care.
and people who run PPC should care about.
@yaro
Why do you think, R penalty is a test?
btw,
what happens with Google and Text-Link-Ads.com?
why Google care about paid links ?
Kumiko (AKA CashQuests) - I can see where you are coming from. I could have written we should care about PageRank because it impacts your ability to make money, that is the present reality, the thing is I actually believe people shouldn’t care and that’s the knowledge I want people to take away after reading my article.
Perhaps I would have been clearer if I said you shouldn’t care because is none of us did than it wouldn’t matter, but because so many people do, we are forced to care.
It’s like telling people to stop driving their cars for the better of the environment. It might be something we all should do and I would recommend, but in reality the majority of people still drive to work, even if it might one day be a contributing factor to our planet not supporting human life anymore.
PageRank isn’t as dramatic as that of course, but the sentiment is the same.
Hi Yaro… I’m thinking that it’s the right thing. People coming to your blog don’t know - is it an ad they’re about to click on, or is it you recommending something because you really believe in it. I’m surprised that you, Darren, and some other major players were caught in this… It’s like a paid endorsement that you’re not being transparent about. Anyway, good work - love your blog and read it daily. Vern
I think this whole experience may be yet another warning to diversify your business model - not have all (or even a major majority) of your income derived from any one source (ex. ads).
I understand you are heading in the direction of creating more of your own products Yaro - that is the real answer since owning your own products means you can sell them online in many different ways and offline as an alternative - you’re not as heavily dependent on competing with the ad-based revenue giants like Google.
Jeff
I had the Text Link Ads plug in on my blog activated for several weeks and did not see any activity so when all this google page rank stuff came out, I figured what the heck I’ll take it off. I took it off last week.
Now come to think of it the number of visitors to my site have increased over the past few days. I’ve been wondering why the big jump and only now after reading this post, I think it may have something to do with me removing the Text Link Ad widget from my side bar. Wow…an epiphany.
Since I run some impression based ads on my blog, this may end up increasing my meager blog revenue a bit.
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Hey Yaro,
I’ve never left an anonymous comment before - by my email address you’ll know who I am.
I do feel sad that I am scared to acknowledge this publicly.
I really didn’t get hit too hard by Google, but I REFUSE to comply with their rules based on principle. It’s very easy for me to say this with my page rank intact, I do completely acknowledge that.
I’m so concerned with the direction Google is going with this. To force millions of people to change a system that PREDATES Google is beyond reprehensible. And I won’t even go into the hypocrisy of it.
Google states that we can’t sell page rank. We aren’t, and I never have. What we are selling, in the end, is traffic - which is the same thing Google sells with AdWords, the world’s largest text link ad marketplace. And don’t even get me started on their “Quality Score”.
I’m sad to see you comply, but I completely understand it as well.
Honestly, I hope and pray that some very smart attorney is watching this saga closely - as when I recently looked at what U.S. law says constitutes a monopoly, I found Google to be well into the realm of unlawful control.
But I am not a lawyer… though the last few weeks is making me wish I had chosen a different career path as I would love to be on the cover of Time someday as “The One Who Brought Google Down”.
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Yaro,
You got bitch slapped and you are crawling back to Google.
You are a page rank skank, you will probably start selling links again until you get busted again.
If Google gives you your page rank back it is like saying ‘its ok to sell links until you are busted, and if you remove them we’ll give you your PR back’ SOFT!
and one more thing, you say PR give you credibility? Please! Anyone can pay for 5,000 inbound links and get PR.
Ah, well, no need to be anonymous anymore. I dropped down to a PR3 sometime in the last week.
I still refuse to give up TLA, though, based on principle. But only time will tell if that will hurt or help me in the long run.
-Wendy
Google is headed for anti-trust trouble in the near future if they continue this tactic of using their control of search results and rankings to damage competitors to their own advertising service.
Well, Yaro, you submitted, but I noted that your PR is still 3… I’d be interested to know if they do reward you with your PR ranking back.
If not, then you’ve done it all for nothing! …
Yes, I agree Google is now treading dangerous waters, trying to leverage its search results by eliminating threats to the competition. Regardless of how it really is, the effects of this decision will likely begin to cascade into legal circles where Microsoft who similarly tried to leverage its platform in the 90’s and received huge fines, lots of bad publicity, increased competition, and legal curtailment of its excesses. Result: it’s stock price has gone nowhere in the last seven years (soon to be eight). This fate could happen to Google… but I doubt they care. After all, history never repeats, does it?
@Wendy
“Ah, well, no need to be anonymous anymore.”
Ah, well, no need to have been anonymous in the first place. Same result in the end, no? They’re going to kick your site(s) in the butt either way if that’s what they want to do — do you really think cloaking your criticism or fear of Google’s actions behind a mask of anonymity will protect you or anyone else from that?
Like, “If everything I say ‘on the record’ about Google is nice or at least neutral I’ll have no worries, and less need to blame myself if there are any problems…”
“But if I say *this* on the record, they’re gonna hurt my PR/ban me/reduce my SERP…” who gives a flying-whatever if they do? Is Google *that* important to anyone? I’d find other ways to make money online/attract visitors/keep advertisers before I’d resort to crawling around in fear of them or giving into their every capricious little demand.
People’s ginger handling of Google reminds me of me of how people are in China - ‘Don’t go against the dictatorship/government - or at least, not in public - and everything might just be OK’. Which is how those dictatorships get started - too many sheep, oh-so scared and obedient - no one speaking the truth (or speaking it only after they add - ‘but please - don’t use my name!’).
Gggrrrr.
And there *is* redress for Google’s heinous actions against websites that use legit paid links, write pay-per-posts, etc: it’s called an anti-trust lawsuit and they’ve got it coming to them as badly as Microsoft ever did (and just to answer the next question that might or might not be on anyone’s mind, no, there has never been a single big company that I have ever actually liked–they’re all evil).
Google can take months to respond to a message, so I don’t expect to get my PR back for quite a while.
If after a month Google doesn’t respond to me I may go looking for a Google rep via my contacts to speed up the process.
Twice I’ve tried to contact Google without any luck. I suspect this is not helping their stock price at the moment and the news stories to follow in the coming months will paint a terrible picture of bloggers and their lack of trust in Google.
Bloggers, don’t give in! Google should not be able to determine what people can and can’t do with their own site. Search engines should be neutral and Google has way too much control here. I would hope that advertisers and others will see this and realize that PageRank is not a neutral ranking; a high PR merely means that the site has some links to it and is playing nicely with Google, and that is all. PageRank had little to do with traffic before and even less now - a traffic ranking system like Alexa, though far from perfect (especially considering subdomains) is the sort of thing we should be moving towards.
Someone (preferably a group of bloggers with some clout) needs to start a site dedicated to fighting these actions by Google and debunking PageRank. Show that PageRank is meaningless, and it will be!
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PR is not showing any credibility anymore. People can buy PR with money. So, i don’t feel i start charity because google don’t like that i can do business directly with my advertisers!
Actually, is there an alternative to TLA which is using nofollow? There should be no problem to the page rank if such a thing exist, no?
p.s. sorry for my English.
Piyo - I don’t know of any text link brokers that use nofollow, but I’m sure they exist somewhere.
Maybe you could look around and then let us know
I know of one that gives you the option: LinkWorth allows you to choose whether links, etc. are no_follow. Other companies are still slowly coming around to it, but TLA currently doesn’t. Neither does PPP.
Kenneth
Yaro, did you notice a drop in visitors from google when going down in PR,or was it all the same with 6, 5, or 3? Were you penalized in the SERPs also?
I didn’t experience a SERPS drop at all, however I’m still worried that Google’s next penalty for sites that sell links will impact SERPs.
That’s why I was eager to get this site penalty free. I’m pretty sure the penalties applied so far are purely the visible PR, not the real pagerank as part of the algorithm.