The PageRank Ripple - PageRank is Dead!
written by John Chow
This post was guest blogged by Jamie Harrop, a Web Entrepreneur and expert in a variety of Web authoring areas. He writes, records video blogs and conducts text and video interviews with other entrepreneurs.
Do you ever wonder what the Google War Room, the G’Plex that is, is like on a week like this? We all know Google has the ability, the means, and hell, some would even argue the desire, to cause complete chaos throughout the Internet. We ol’ bloggers don’t help much, in that we spread the word of Google’s Games at super-sonic speeds. With that said, I often wonder in a week like this whether G’Gals and G’Guys, the Google employees that is, are laughing at us or screaming at us for uncovering all their mistakes.
You see, Google have always been uptight when it comes to their algorithms, and when the word PageRank is mentioned they tend to lock down fast and do so in a swift motion to rival that of NORAD! So when the G’Plex outputs another wave of PageRank Poop, us poor bloggers have to sit here at our lonely desks with our G-Mug, G-MouseMat, G-Tshirt and G-Lava-Lamp, wondering what the hell just happened.
Well, I’m Going To Tell You What Happened
What happened this week, my fellow blogosphere blog-o-teers, was a mess. A mess in which PageRank, once affectionately know as “BackRub“, by the way, shone its true light. A light that shone so dim it almost appeared as if it was caught in the 90’s.
Well you know what? PageRank is caught in the 90’s, and that’s why I’m going to go out on a limb and claim PageRank… stuff it… BackRub, to be dead. Dead as a Dodo. Dead as an Alexa rating. Dead!
You see, last week we saw the usual quarterly update of Google’s public display of PageRank. But what we also saw was a huge wave of yellow cards for blogs. Ten minutes in the bin. A warning with a red card next. However you want to put it, a number of blogs were penalised with a drop in PageRank, apparently because they were… apparently, selling text links.
Two Problems With This
1. Google gave a yellow card to the wrong people. Last time that happened, the referee was suspended. Google penalised the likes of ProBlogger, who were not selling text links. This must have been a huge embarrassment for Google, let alone ProBlogger. Thankfully, after much uproar from the Blog-o-teers of the Blogosphere, Google realised their mistake and handed ProBlogger his correct PageRank.
2. I got penalised. So that’s not the real problem, because I didn’t get penalised. Actually, I don’t sell text links and so Google left me well alone, or so I thought. But you see, many Web sites linking to my blog were penalised (right or wrong, who knows). The effect that had on me, an innocent party in all this mess, was a drop in my PageRank. If Web sites linking to me don’t have a PageRank as high as they once did, that is going to reduce my rank. Not good, Google. You just hurt an innocent by-stander.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it was wrong for Google to penalise those blogs who sell text links, nor am I saying it was right. What I am saying is that PageRank, BackRub, KissCheek, whatever, is not fit for today’s culture of Internet, where most sites are out there to gain a financial reward, as opposed to supplying information, and information only, as was the case in the 90’s. The fact is, PageRank is becoming unstable, to a point where innocent parties are losing rank, in return losing visitors, in return losing income, in return making me freaking homeless! (Ok, so that was extreme, but you get the idea).
I’m sorry Google, but until you stop letting mindless humans mess with an incredibly complex mathematical formula that was developed at Stanford to work by itself with no human interaction, I’m not going to be putting an ounce of trust in any PageRank valuation. You’ve royally screwed a lot of innocent people this weekend by use of a formula not built for the 21st century, and I’m not going to forgive easily.
My solution? Rid the ripple. You pour a truck load of concrete in to the pond that is causing this PageRank ripple and start over with a ranking algorithm that is purposely built for the 21st century Internet! Hell, first start with an algorithm built for the Internet. Then work your way up to the 21st century Internet. Right now, PageRank is working at one thing, and one thing only… it’s working its way to biting you in the ass!
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(21 votes, average: 2.86 out of 5)
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John, I think you should stop bashing Google because they are more powerful than you are. And a successful blog cannot live without a good relationship with a big search engine.
Um ya John didn’t write this post. Either way, John really doesn’t need Google now, so really he can do whatever he wants. His blog absolutely can live without Google. Many blogs are in a different boat, but John’s blog is one of the exceptions.
Heh, I just made a post on my blog because I’ve been running less than 2 months and shot past John Chow for PageRank (I got 5)
Sadly I don’t have time to maintain it anymore, so it’s up for sale. So if you want to buy the site, John….
Totally agree with Court on this one. If your famous already you don’t need a search engine to help you get more famous.
Whether John needs Google depends on the Analytics for the referring traffic from Google. Who knows.
Anyway, John is a great blogger, I will visit his blog often
I think the message is that content is NOT king, abstinence from paid links is king.
I prefer the New York Times because of its content, but from what I have heard, Google penalized the New York Times for posting paid links. I wonder if Google penalized ABC, NBC, and CBS news? Do they have anything to say about Pagerank? I should would like to hear it.
Shurrup Michael - It was one helluva post. John didn’t even write it and Google already hates his ass.
Although John didn’t write it, John it post it. This means that he does agree with what the articles says.
Why does it mean he agrees with the post? I dont believe John restricts what his guest posters can and cannot write about. Debate is good
very true indeed….
Bashing or not, let me bash it again. So practically from ProBloggers case what I see is that Google is NOT really after those that trick their algorithm, rather from those that make profits from their algorithm. Because if making contests to gain backlinks is not tricking the algorithm than I do not know what In the heck would be tricking.
Things are much more clear now, they don’t care if you trick their algorithm, they care if you are making profits and they want the control over that and keep the advertisers in their AdWords.
You hit my pocket I will hit your brain, a pitty tho that I am much smaller than you and have to play nice if I don’t wanna get hurt….or play smart as long as you don’t catch me, thats what all this story of returning the pagerank to ProBlogger makes me think about the big (nasty) G.
um problogger does sell text link ads he’s listed in TLA with text link ads sold?
Maybe everyone should just stop selling text links for the purpose of getting ranked higher (which is abusing the system, which is probably why this whole dilemma started in the first place) and go back to selling ad space. That seems logical to me.
Sorry to all of the text link sellers (like textlinkads), should have thought of the implications before they got into this mess. Google’s just trying to protect their results, by making sure people aren’t cheating by buying their way to the top.
Another lesson learned for all of you that thought you could buy your way to the top, everyone jumped in and the boat sank.
Try to get to a life raft.
Let’s see if I can follow this.
1. It is bad to buy your way to the top…
2. unless you are bidding on a word in an Adsense bidding war.
Putting it another way,
1. It is bad to charge people money for an advertisement (link) on your successful website;
2. It is ok to charge people money for and advertisement link on your own website as long as almost all of the money charged goes into Google’s pocket.
Have I got that right?
Well written post. I agree with your points, it just seems like google is taking this a little too far. Also the desire to attain a pagerank by everybody makes it seems like its a class system. I had written a post on google’s pagerank system which I think defines itself as a class system in the real life - rich from poor.
Here is my link if interested http://worknplay.net/google-pagerank-its-a-class-system/
If pagerank is dead - then what are they using now for the rankings?
Technorati
Alexa
RSS Feed readers
Technorati - Fooled by link trains
PageRank - Fooled by link swaps
Alexa - Fooled by autobots (trust me - I’ve tested)
RSS Feed Counts - Inaccurate, at the best of times.
How SHOULD we rank our blogs?!?
Lol David…I agree with you…..Alexa is one super algo….errr You know what I ment …
Well, I don’t now then. We could use Technorati and Alexa is people stopped cheap!
I’m beginning to think those PR predictor tools are better than PR itself…
Posting your stats details will do the charm but I guess not many will dare to do this though…
That’s a good question, one I’d like to know the answer to as well!
I like this one:
http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength
how about by visitors and comment interaction like we did in the old school days when blogging was brand new and wordpress wasn’t invented yet…
A system that ranks should be done by a combination of people and machines, but it should be done by humans who have a good track record. And machines that see only quality content.
Site’s actual PageRank is much more complex than just what we call PageRank. The internal PageRank of a site and pages determines where your site is in Google query results.
PageRank is not dieing, and never will, because PageRank is the core of Google’s search engine ranking, and without it, they wouldn’t have a search engine.
Dead externally, alive and kicking internally.
Yeah, I am sure they will keep the PageRank. I mean, PageRank is what brought Google here in the first place.
Now that’s telling it like it is.
Thank You!
My concern is that Google will learn nothing from this debacle. I am also concerned that we will forget, only to have them pull something else equally bad or worse, in the future. I hate holding my breath. It’s counter productive.
They probably don’t care!
Jamie, this actually probably isn’t hurting your PageRank at all. This penalty is only a visible PageRank penalty, which means that pages still rank like they did before the penalty. This slapping was all about lowering the perceived rank of pages, not the rank itself. It’s pretty likely that links from penalized pages push just as much rank as ever.
Oh, I see - here is someone really angry!
i just dont what to react …i mean it is a good news but many of the new bloggers wont even know what this sh***y piece of code is…….neverthe less thanks for the LEAKAGE
maybe you can see my blog : for more…….
ohhhh so pagerank is officially dead now that… hold on have to scroll up to the top again. Now that Jamie Horrap has claimed so? Nothing in this post is “out on a limb” everything you said has been said again and again. The fact is you don’t know why google did what they did. and i have not read any official statements anywhere explaining it. People are just pissed that they arent getting that magical number that they want. There is no reason to have a public page rank. If google was smart they would keep it all to themseelves. It would probably lower the link buying industry if that is their goal.
How can a one month old blog with less than 60 backlinks ( http://www.showcasepoint.com )are getting PR5 from PR0 ? It does not make any sense at all. Can we turst Google PageRank anymore?
That was a good one. Little harsh But I think Yes Google should do something about PR. I have no hatred or anything against Google but Let us think round about now.
A small Theory:
1.What if all the sites put no entry board for google bots. Google will not be indexing any one and nobody will get traffic
2.So where will we get the traffic ? What if Yahoo and MSN people come out with updated algorithm and start giving preferences to blogs like google does….
3.And we start using MSN and YPN adservices instead of adsense…..
Ever though what an happen is what i said really happens ?
Google should update the PR algo before they update PR for other sites.
PS: ANybody Like it ? lol
Sounds like someones Pagerank went down
Google pagerank is a secret. That means you don’t know why it rates sites the way it does. There is no evidence why blogs such as problogger.net got downgraded from 6 to 4. You don’t know if it is because of selling links or another reason.
I rated the post with 1.
today’s one of the happiest day of my life , my blog’s 6 months old and i have the SAME PAGE RANK AS JOHN CHOW
, i am totally lovin the new PR Algorithm 
Wahaha Yeah Right Page Rank is Dead? all my blog got PR 1-3
really amazing lols..see how long this things will last
Heh…I bet most Americans are wondering…what the heck is a yellow card and red card? Most Americans don’t care much or follow soccer…
hey, its true..
my blog has pagerank 2, now it was pagerank 0.
damn it google..
but, my brand new blog, it was a months years old..has been updated, pagerank 2.
[...] PageRank update. Some bloggers were slapped and received a drop on their PageRank including Carl, John - who is still quite bitter with the slap, Darren and Abe while the rest of the world receives a boost. A few sites that now has a higher PR [...]
I guess Google is not hurting the “real ranks”. They are just lowering the PR of sites selling text links to that this can lower their chances of monetising and gaming the PR.
Anyway, it is true that PR must not be used as a rating for sites any more. Look at the site contents, frequency of comments and maybe Yahoo Backlinks, just no more Google Page Rank.
I think that the 3rd PR update should be final for this quarter, since new sites also have their PR updated as well
First off, thanks to John for publishing this. It was nice to wake up and visit his site, only to see my name slapped over it.
Anyway, I would like to say something. This article was meant to be a little dig at Google, and it was meant to divide opinion from the readers. It’s clear some people don’t agree with me and think it was just a post made out of a fit of rage, and others are thankful for somebody saying how it really is.
That’s the response I was expecting, and that’s the response I was hoping for.
For what it’s worth, I’m actually very fond of Google as a whole. I use many of their services and they are a fantastic company in my opinion. However, this week I just don’t agree with how Google was able to create complete havoc among the whole Internet from a system that seems to be collapsing under the strain of the modern Internet.
Well, that’s the reasoning behind the post explained. Now time to see if John is interested in me becoming a regular guest blogger. How about, John?
Life has been going on and I am sure that it will continue to. What really surprises me is, that despite all the noise, Google have not said anything at all. For a company that generates intense feelings in the IT community, such silence is counterproductive. Poor PR. (Public Relations, I mean!)
[...] a result of my guest post on John Chow’s blog, titled “The PageRank Ripple - PageRank is Dead“, I’m seeing a number of visitors coming to my site from John’s [...]
with or without pagerank, traffic is still the base of everything, you can be a 1 month old blog, but with no traffic like john, there is no way you can make it big..1 month old blog with 100 visitor a day selling $500/mth advertising spot? You must be joking..so pagerank is just a status you should be glad google ga