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.

Kenneth

Maybe you could look around and then let us know

p.s. sorry for my English.

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!

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.

“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).

If not, then you’ve done it all for nothing! …

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

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”.

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.

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

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.