Google Goes After PayPerPost
If trying to beat up Text Link Ads wasn’t enough, Google has got its sights on a new target: PayPerPost. CEO Ted Murphy is claiming that Google is going after bloggers in the PayPerPost network and reducing their PageRank from whatever they previously had to zero. That’s right, zero!
Murphy is of course calling foul for what he see as Google trying to defend their “monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertising.”
It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers. Unlike the Google AdSense black box, we are palms up when it comes to revenue share and give bloggers the lions share of advertising dollars that they deserve.
Murphy also took a shot at TechCrunch, asking how come Google doesn’t de-rank them for making posts that thank their sponsors.
I find it laughable that high profile bloggers like TechCrunch aren’t being penalized in the same way. Perhaps it’s the fact that they use AdSense. Perhaps it’s the fact that they are silicon valley insiders and are invited to special Google events. Either way I don’t see the difference between a sponsored post in our system or this sponsored post. Both are paid for, neither use no-follow.
TechCrunch rebutted Murphy’s statement in this post.
In what looks like an attempt to fight back against the Google machine, PayPerPost’s parent company, IZEA, is working on something call RealRank (code named Project Goo Gone), an alternative to Google PageRank. Hopefully, that works better than the Blogger Choice Awards. Have your PageRank been affected for being a PayPerPost publisher?
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- 175 comments what's your take?
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Wow! This is crazy Google!
Reply to this commentGoogle is starting to piss off a lot of people and companies. Is this now a turning point from their ethos of just “not being evil”? Have GooGle had enough of being the nice guys and are now turning on the internet users because they have gained such a huge market share that it just doesnt matter any more?
Reply to this commentI went from 4/10 to 0/10 in the last page rank update, so yea, it affected me.
Reply to this commentits effecting everyone i know!
Reply to this commenti think google is just making a point. they will eventually get back to being google and make everyone happy.
Reply to this commentOk, as some of the regular readers may have noticed that I have defended Google about the TLAs issue, but I think I will slam Google this time. I mean, punishing someone who writes a sponsored post is just totally absurd!
Reply to this commentHey Google! - What’s next huh? PUNISH PEOPLE USING ADSENSE! What idiots!
Money control is the only thing that comes in my mind. I actually got upset about all the penalizations when problogger gained its pagerank back, its than when I really felt that Google hits your pocket and doesn’t really care much about the algorithm but rather to have the control of the money and sit back on the seat who they think is dangerous.
Reply to this commentthat by itself shows the worthlessness of pageranks…google “Page rank” can be renamed “bitch rank”,nothing based on quality…they give you page ranks if you oblige them…
Reply to this commentI was at PR4, then I went to a 3, then to a 1, now I’m at zero. The process took 2 weeks.
I have a bunch of other sites with static crappy text that get 1-2 visitors a week. Yes, a week!!! They went from PR0 to PR2.
Reply to this commentI know, it is a very
time
Reply to this commentPR5 to PR0 … this sucks for me
Reply to this comment“RealRank” Haha. I just find it funny how Google are destroying their own ranking system. Unless they heavily penalize the actual serps rank and not just the ‘toolbar’ pagerank its all a joke.
Reply to this commentThat will be next.
Reply to this commentWhen that starts to happen then Goog’s SERPs will begin to become a lot less relavant.
Reply to this commentGoogle is acting like a silly child right now, if they don’t change, everyone will start using Yahoo.
Reply to this commentI couldn’t care less. I’ve got a 0 two days ago, but the traffic is actually up, and so are the earnings. It’s true that I’m shown very weak PPP opportunities, but I wasn’t writing that much anyway, so the loss is minimum.
Reply to this commentI have the same happening here, but then I only realized that my PR got bumped to 0 just now. However the search engine traffic today and in the last few days was not affected at all.
Reply to this commentYeah. Same here, my pagerank is 0 now. I have since removed TLA and pay-per-post stuffs for the time being. But, my traffic is actually increasing.
Reply to this commentAt first I didn’t really care that my 6 dropped to a 3 - hey Argus was coming so nothing to worry about. It quickly became apparent that PPP didn’t view my see it the same way since all the good opps dried right up. They really fucked up in peoples eyes by not grandfathering the high PR sites. Especially when they knew of the coming drastic Google PR changes.
Each actually got punished at PPP for our lowered pageranks. Now that boys and girls is totally fuc|<3d up. Don’t get me wrong. I love Izea to death but they treated us wrong on this one.
Reply to this comment*hands up* My PR 5/10 blog and a big bunch of PR 4/10 dipped to zero. I can handle that because I reaped a lot of moolah already. But I have several sites that are static ones (on WP but I don’t update it, use it more as CMS) which got hit as well. These are community sites I run on a voluntary basis, using my own money, for bereaved parents and critically ill children. I guess I got bitched slapped across all my dozen plus blogs because of the association with PPP.
BTW, John, we are on Yahoo for make money keyword. You #6, me #8. Out of a BILLION pages. That’s why I had no choice but to severe ties with all paid posts and text links on my Make$ Money$ blog.
Reply to this commentI read that Murphy also stated he thought Google was looking for words like ReviewMe and PayPerPost in text, and using that as a way to penalise people. Looks like sponsored posts should start thanking the sponsor if they want to disclose - keep who you are using out of the equation entirely. Failing that, just go ahead and don’t disclose - not the end of the world.
On a broader note, if MS was criticised for its desktop monopoly, then Google should be getting equal treatment for their attempted monopoly of the web (wait until their Mobile OS hits the phone market).
Reply to this commentI second you simon. We all should dump google for trying to be the god of internet. Google doesn’t own internet, it’s just a search engine.
If google continues to do something like this, the fall of google is only a matter of time. I hope some one soon comes up with a better replacement of google.
Reply to this commentWell John Chow is still using text link ads, so it’s all good!
Reply to this commentBut John Chow doesn’t care about what Google thinks. He got more power than them.
Reply to this commentYeah, he got slapped already… So, he fought back.
Reply to this commentI’m not taking any chances… I just removed the PayPerPost snippet of code from my site.
Reply to this commentNothing new here - big boys trying to run the little guys out of town. It’s annoying but part of business life :/
Reply to this commentYeah, my PR5 blog plunged to PR0 in the last week - I had no idea why. Well, the $900 I make from PPP a month sure beats the $25 I make from AdSense!
Reply to this commentYour comment put everything into perspective on the latest Google nuking!
Reply to this commentYeah, but how long are you going to be able to making $900 a month from PPP when your pagerank is 0?
Reply to this commentI would say for quite a long time. PPP is going to replace PageRank (or just make it more obsolete in their opportunity system) in the next couple of weeks with RealRank.
More information here :http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/11/project-goo-gon.html
Reply to this commentWhat site do you use PPP on? … not deepmarket i`m guessing.
Reply to this commentThough I agree that PPP has been responsible for the proliferation of a lot of USELESS BLOGS, there are a few out there that spin the opportunities tastefully. It’s really not fair for them to kick them all. However, this isn’t the first time that PPP has been picked on. A while ago, Technorati curb stomped myself and a whole bunch of other blogs for dabbling in PPP.
Moving forward, I thought it was safer to not do PPP at all. I also felt better about myself because I didn’t have to give products “Positive” or “Neutral” reviews.
Reply to this commentUnfortunately, it’s not just PPP that is being targeted, it’s many kinds of money making ventures that rely on linking… Google is trying to control the linking market, whether that is the direct object or not of the whole PR exercise. Hence, I am beginning to see ‘monopoly’ flashing everywhere as they try to bend everyone to THEIR will… It’s not just a question of whether you do or don’t do PPP… it’s a question of whether or not you link to external websites for any reason, and whether or not you are willing to use ‘no_follow’.
So, if you think you are free because you DON’T use PPP, then you really need to think again:
“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent; I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Am I being too dramatic?
Reply to this commentKenneth
Nope.
Reply to this commentSo when is Google going to penalize Techcrunch for using Text Link Ads?
Reply to this commentTechCrunch doesn’t use Text Link Ads. Text Link Ads is a TechCrunch advertiser and sponsors. Now if Google starts going after sites that TLA advertises on, then that enters a whole new level of evil.
Reply to this commentWhat is ironic is that you will find Google AdSense ads for TLA on sites that have lost PR for using TLA.
Reply to this commentIf Google was being evenhanded here they would penalize Techcrunch as well for being affiliated with TLA, just as they’ve punished other sites that have mentioned or advertised PayPerPost, yet did no sponsored posts (as many bloggers appear to be reporting).
Reply to this commentI think Google is trying to say to those TLA publishers to watch out… mmm May be next target will be TLA and Sponsoredreviews?
Reply to this commentI don’t think most bloggers who use PPP have anything to worry about. How is Google going to find all of them anyway? Besides for most of them the paid posts don’t remain on their homepage too long and since Google most likely doesn’t index them daily I doubt they have anytime to fear. I don’t use PPP myself but my friends do and their Google PR has remained the same so far.
Reply to this commentThey’re easy to find if you’re good at finding patterns in linking structures over the world wide web.
I wonder who might be good at detecting patterns in linking structures over the world wide web… Hmmm… :/
Reply to this commentWow. I started writing a post about why my PageRank dropped to 0. I didn’t even see this post yet or about Google going after PayPerPost. So I’m right too. I put a link from my post to this post to get some credibility. Man this sucks.
PageRank Drop to 0
Reply to this commenti just went down to pr 0 today. it took my 3 month to build up a pr4 close to pr 5 blog and i took google 2 weeks to go from 4 to 2 and now from 2 to 0 !!!! there must be a way to strike back !!!
Reply to this commentWe’ll we can’t really do anything. Just hope for the best for RealRank.
Reply to this commentYou can do something. Ban Googlebot. Allowing Googlebot to crawl your site carries with it an unspoken agreement. You send me traffic, I contribute my content. Break that contract and lose your privilege.
Reply to this commentWhat good would that do? As we can see from what just happened, you need Google, Google does not need you. You ban the bot, and you get delisted or get old content.
Reply to this commentCat and mouse game? More like the Terminator against Sarah Connor. Undoubtedly, these decisions will soon apply to ReviewMe too.
Reply to this commentMaybe we should all start a revolt and get all our readers to start using Yahoo instead!!
Reply to this commentIt’s time we bloggers fight back!
We can replace:
Reply to this commentGoogle search with Yahoo! or Dogpile;
Gmail with Yahoo! mail or Hotmail;
Google Reader with Bloglines;
Blogger with Wordpress or LiveJournal.
If Google keeps up its current nonsense, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.
My blog Aaron Cook Dot Com™ suddenly went from a PR4 to a PR0, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why…unless it has to do with the PayPerPost widget I have on the main page. If that’s the case, then I think Google is crossing the line.
Reply to this commentJust further proof that Google is evil.
I know a lot of people comment saying, “Well, it’s Google’s index, they can do what they want with it.” The problem with that line of thinking is that Google controls over 50% of search. Getting de-listed by Google can have a huge impact on your traffic.
How would those same people react if Alexa dropped them from their index because of the content of their site? As flawed as Alexa is it is also blind.
Remember, Google is an advertising company that uses search to sell it’s advertising inventory. They see anyone who is not running AdSense as a competitor. The easiest way to fight back is to remove AdSense from your site. Unless you are one of the very few who makes a living off of AdSense what do you have to lose?
Reply to this commenthey, i also have pr0. i will remove the payperpost tag if this solves my problem, what do u think?
Reply to this commentIs there nowhere left to hide? Google the new Big Brother. 1984 all ove again.
http://www.notjohnchow.com
Reply to this commentNo, they’re simply the next big company that’s setting out to squeeze out all competitors.
Nobody’s being brainwashed, tortured or imprisoned here. We just all lost a bunch of PR.
Reply to this commentThere is a conflict of interest when your a search engine but foremost an advertising company. I imagine it would be easy to shut out the competition when you have that kind of power.
I wonder if they will come out with their own PPP tool for blogger users.
Reply to this commentI never thought Google could be so damn stuck up. And I always saw people say Google is running the internet and I just thought “pst, how are they running the internet?” But I guess I was wrong… I think Google is going to lose valuable people if they keep this up.
Reply to this commentIt is a war…. a business war to monopolize the market. Boomers be careful when blogging. Think before you take side otherwise Google would penalize you and slap on your face for not doing the things right.
Reply to this comment
Google is just evil, they are determined to police the internet, it is time we showed them that it is the little people that really matter not the massive corporations!!! 
Reply to this commentLike with any business Google is untouchable UNTIL someone designs a better mousetrap, err I mean search engine. As long as Google search is used by more people than any other engine taking the company down a notch is not an option. “RealRank” is just another app, reduce the number of people using google search and you WILL get shareholder attention.
I’m sure Google is well aware that should a few very prominent sites switch to yahoo search (example) and build yahoo apps many smaller sites would follow suit.
This is laughable though, technicaly GOOGLE needs to give themselves a pagerank zero because I got a nice screenshot of a google adsense ad promoting link sales yesterday. To Google, I love many of your services but you’re going too far when you attempt to mold the web into what you want it to be instead of embracing what it is. Selling reviews is not illegal!
Reply to this commentHi,
I have from 4 to zero as I have pasted the pay per post banner in my site. Nowadays Google become so monopolistic in its approach. First it slashed TLA followed by widgetbucks and now payperpost and review me…
Reply to this commentI’ve been away for the last couple of days. When I came back today I saw that my blog about blogging had dropped to zero. I was glad to see this post then. There’s some comfort in not being the only one!
As it happens my blog about blogging only has one sponsored post on it. What it does have are lots of referral links and posts about how sponsored posts are a great way of making money. My other blogs, where I do most of the posting haven’t actually been affected yet so that may go towards comfirming that Google are searching for references to PayPerPost in text.
While I am annoyed about the loss of PageRank I am happy on the other hand that I am making money from blogging! I made $102 this week alone. The majority of that was from various sponsored post sites, including but not limited to PayPerPost. On the other hand I got one dollar and a few cents from Adsense this week!
Reply to this commenthttp://www.johnchow.com has a PR of 0.
Reply to this commentWow - Never thought I’d see the day!
Not cool Google!
Reply to this commentit’s so evil - now google is more evil if compared to JC
why me? suffered a lot when my PR6 dropped to PR0..
PPP, I will still work with you..no worries..
Reply to this commentI think we should boycott Google Adsense after this
I think it’s really sad that Google is doing this to honest people with GOOD blogs. It really hurt a lot of families who use that money to pay bils and put food on the table. ALL my PPP blogs were knocked to 0 and my NON PPP blogs remain intact. I don’t use TLA so I know they were going after Payperpost. I made $700 in about 2 days compared to my $12adsense.
Reply to this commentLike I said, it’s more dissappointing to see them hurting good people instead of the spammers, scrapers, & sploggers.
Then why do you care so much what Google does?
If you make $700 in two days then to hell with Google. Just keep doing what you obviously do well …
Google can do whatever they want with their stuff. If you don’t agree, then start using Yahoo or something else.
You’re right when you say it’s more dissappointing when they hurt good people, but unfortunately, that’s the way the world works. It’s f00ked up. But complaining and calling Google the evil of mankind won’t change a thing about that. The only thing you can change is you.
Reply to this commentI made that much because of my PR..now that it shows 0, it will dropped down big time. There is a new rank rolling out with PPP so I guess I will see how that works.
As far as Google goes. I have cancelled my adsense account, removed my blogs from analytics, currently getting my personal blog off of blogger, and switched my reader to bloglines. I realize that this won’t hurt them but it will make me feel better that I’m not feeding to their selfishness. Of course, they own feedburner, youtube, ect so it will be hard to get away from that but at least I’m doing something.
Reply to this commentGood for you! Ii’m behind you but a little further behind…
Kenneth
Reply to this commentI too have had several blogs get hit with the dreaded zero pagerank. Guess Google doesn’t like us making money from other places. Wankers.
Reply to this commentYou all give the power to google .. just come back to yahoo and start promoting yahoo search engine or even msn live search engine !!!!
Reply to this commentIf everyone turn they face to other alternative !! trust me google will make major move !!! but of course I can understand google position… they don’t like compagnies that use their properties ( pagerank) as a tool to make money with that … or compagnies who make money ( like TLA) by tricking google properties ( google index ) with anchor text and link ….
Calling Google names won’t change a thing.
Reply to this commentIf you don’t agree with their policies, stop using their service. You can’t change how the world works. The only thing you can change is you, so start there.
Hi John,
Reply to this commentTwo of my blogs dropped to PR0. Two dropped to PR3 (one was 5 and one was 4) Those last two are both well established and one has been online for over 4 years so I think there would be little cause to dro them completely to zero.) Those four blogs are PPP. I have a new blog called Read to Me Dad that is brand new and has a PR2 and one even newer than that called Google Is Not God with a PR0. Ironically I host it on Blogger and use Google analytics. I regret not introducing myself to you at Blog World Expo, looks like you had a great time.
I really do think its time webmasters start to boycott google. stop using adsense, stop using adwords . maybe we can make dent in their profits.
Reply to this commentTrust me, it won’t make a difference. Even if we have hundreds of bloggers “boycotting” Google services, Google still owns the internet.
Reply to this commentYes, I believe they bought it last week for $9.95 on a sale on EBay, with a 10%-off coupon.
Since it’s a downloadable purchase, I’m sure they were taken to a hidden link after paying via Paypal, and are busy downloading the entire Internet onto their servers… Perhaps that’s why my I-net today is so slow…
Apparently, it was a BIN price, too. The original price for the Internet was $2.00 but there was some stiff bidding between $3.50 and $6.00… Fortunately, Google just went straight for the BIN price, it shouldn’t make too much dent in their cash savings.
Rumors are that they are going to hive off parts of it as DVDroms, esp. the parts they can’t monetize themselves…
Let’s see how things go… Google’s price should now rise by about a similar amount.
Reply to this commentPeople will just take advantage of it and profit from people not using Adwords (and same with Adsense, I suppose).
It’s similar to “Why Gas Day Won’t Work (not my blog, just an interesting post).
Reply to this commentMy PR went from 4 to 1 in the last little bit, and I’m guessing this is a part of as to why. That crappy part is I’m signed-up for it, but haven’t even done any actual PayPerPost posts.
Reply to this commentNice, I like this article, but no pr at the moment, thanks!
Reply to this commentsomebody should start a blog post about “Why we should dump Google” or “Why yahoo/MSN is much better search engine” . The post should encourage everyone to remove google`s service , and make a meme out of that post. One blogger does not make a difference but how about a millions bloggers? The post/campaign should be repeated again and again .
Reply to this commentBloggers are already working on this… At least it makes us feel we are doing something!
Reply to this commentWhen Microsoft was dominating online, Google was the savior. Microsoft services and tools where boycotted, in favor of Google.
Now Google is what Microsoft used to be. Albeit, Google Index and PR belongs to Google. Their game, their rules.
We can’t have our cake and eat it too. Unless you’re John Chow, then you can do whatever you like with the cake.
Reply to this commentis it possible to protest google? i know to a lot of bloggers google is the hands that feeds them but they are a monopoly and they have to be checked.
Reply to this commentI was hit on two of my blogs by this, one PR3 and a PR2 down to 0
Reply to this commentIt really sucks, as of today though I will start using the rel no follow tag on all links in a sponsored post.
It would be very hard to defeat the empire like google, unless millions of bloggers gather together and start an internet war with google or turn terrorist to bomb google’s main center and kill every single god damn human in their base.
Corrupt them and then take over with multiple blogs gettting pagerank 9! That was a joke..
Reply to this commentNow what would be the point of that? I mean, if we bombed them then there would be no google and no PR at all!
Reply to this commentThe PR zero is the just the beginning. It will probably followed by the actual traffic slow down for our blogs in the Google search and advertising empire. Then little bloggers like most of us would feel the hurt inflicted by Google. What can you do now in anticipation of such a blow from the giant. Surrend with a white flag? Fight back like a Union of Million Lion Hearts? Petition to the Congress?
Reply to this commentMan! That’s crazy for google to do that. They have to much money for us bloggers they pretty much own the internet. I think thats B*llsh*t.
Reply to this commentThis post explains what happened to me, I think. In the last Google update (last month) my PR went up from 1 to 2, and then I do some PayPerPost reviews as well as put up their “Hire Me” banner a couple days ago, and … boom, my PR is 0! Zero! … I mean NIL!
But guess what, John, I could be as evil as you! I found this PR checker site http://www.xenyo.com/seotools/verifypagerank.php which actually shows a PR of 3 for my blog, and they give a button too, saying “Verified PageRank 3″. So I stick it on my blog, though the Google toolbar still shows 0. How evil is that!
Xenyo is not a fake, I think they pick up the PR from Google’s cache, so my PR is 3. But sooner or later, it will pick up the ‘refreshed cache’ from Google and show 0??? Not sure… but at the moment, I’m cool! lol
PS: I hear soon Google will have a negative PR system as well. Means your site could drop from PR6 to -PR4. (Joke)
Reply to this commentI’m not really sure why a PR from a cache would be useful, other than to show off. The search engines don’t care about it, which I think is why most people want a high PR.
Reply to this commentInteresting info. have checked your index page is still pr3, your blog page is pr zero as shown on the google green bar. what will google do next, every body just guess and hope for the best.
Reply to this commentGoogle goes at it again, but no matter what they do, we can’t do anything. Google = Internet.
-Mike
Reply to this commentYeah, Krizka, I understand that! If my PR is zero, the search engines wouldn’t care about what I display. (For all we know, I can design a little button showing PR 8!)
Yep I added that button just to show off… lol… and try to cushion the fall to 0, a weeeee lil bit!
Reply to this commentMine went from a 1 to a 3 and now a 0.
Reply to this comment