Honestly, I really didn’t think I would be writing this post.
Google is on the hunt again, this time I am finding they are going after the mommies.
My blog dropped to a PR of 3 sometime in the last week. And the ONLY paid text ads I have on this site are run through TextLinkAds. So Google has stooped to a new low that I didn’t think they would do – they seem to be going specifically after their competitor’s publishers.
The last time they did this I had the impression they were going after sites that sell text link ads directly to advertisers or the PayPerPost crowd – I really didn’t think they would start targeting bloggers that were only using TextLinkAds.com. Obviously I’ve been flipping naive.
I really thought we had seen the end of Google’s cherry picking on bloggers.
Evidently not.
I hunted around and it seemed like my peers in the blogging/business space weren’t affected this time around. But I did find a several other prominent mom/women bloggers that were hit:
I’m not going to rehash the story of why Google is right or wrong. I will say that:
- We have no control over whether TLA follows or nofollows the ads they place on our sites. Our only choice is to either run the ads or give up the revenue completely, even when running the ads is actually appreciated by our readers.
- I have never taken money for an irrelevant ad on this site in the entire year and a half I have run it. In fact, my editorial guideline is that I am only willing to accept advertisers that I would be willing to link to for free.
- I have refused to sell “followed” text link ads directly to advertisers – to the tune of well over $1000 in revenue lost (probably more)
- I have never pimped my page rank – I have always sold relevant traffic to advertisers who add value to my readers’ experience. I have even turned away relevant advertisers if I didn’t think they would get enough interest from the audience on this site.
- Most of all, many mom bloggers don’t have a FRICKING CLUE as to what page rank or NoFollow is, let alone have the technical understanding to implement those changes site-wide in an appropriate manner
I was pissed before when Google dropped the page rank of my peers.
Now I’m downright livid.
It’s not about the little green bar, I could give a shit about that. I am concerned about a loss of traffic, which may or may not be following this devaluation (my guess is that it is, because I don’t trust Google at ALL). And with nine authors now relying on me to drive traffic and income, I’m not just gambling with my own livelihood.
Ah, but thankfully, the sites I featured last two weeks ago that are blatantly disregarding Google’s guidelines all still have their SERPs ranking and their page rank. Because, you know, I just love it when a company hits mom businesses and lets shitty companies continue to operate as usual.
You GO, Larry & Sergey.
Edit – Should I be taking this as a compliment? Google seems to focusing on sites that have some influence… I guess I am in great company because I noticed today that they have also devalued Yahoo down from PR10 to PR9.
So much for Shoemoney’s theory that we shouldn’t do anything to make Google look stupid. They seem to be doing a fine job of that all by themselves.
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