Her Domestic Page Rank
Posted by: tony on 10/29/2007 11:11 PM
Updated by: tony on 10/29/2007 11:11 PM
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Expires: 11/29/2007 12:00 AM
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Elena at My Domestic Church despairs her dropping page rank on Google which she attributes to the paid text link ads that she has on her blog:
Everything I have been reading about the Google Page Rank restructuring seems to verify that blogs and web sites that had paid text link adds were severely penalized in this latest go round.
Elena and I have gone round and round about this in the past. I enjoy her Catholic commentary which is intelligent, enlightening and sometimes gives me a different, though valid, point of view to ponder.
However, I have spoken to her about the paid blog posts. These are blog posts where she gets paid to review products on her blog. The products that she was reviewing had nothing to do with Catholicism. It's like tuning into EWTN and getting an infomercial for rug cleaner. I read Elena's blog via the GreatNews RSS reader which has substantial watch list capability which is able to be turned around to filter those posts that have the little "full disclosure" widget.
But Elena has mentioned that money made from her blog allows her to stay home and parent her children. I respect that. It is a holy and admirable decision. However, all decisions come with consequences.
Some bloggers suggested taking all of the paid posts off, and then requesting that Google re-review the site and change the rank. Some are boycotting Google. Some are trying to find other ways around the Google Page Rank system.
Google has not only the right, but the responsibility to their stockholders to encourage the greatest number of people to use their search engine. The vast majority of searchers are not looking for Viagra ads when they are looking for Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae, so search relevance is most important to them. So for someone searching for "Catholic" dropping page rank on a site which was 90% Catholic content, and has become 50% Catholic content is a natural consequence of the change of focus of the blog.
Payperpost depends pretty heavily on the Page Rank system. That's how they get advertisers to pay a certain amount to appear on blogs with certain ratings. I imagine that if an advertiser wants to be on a blog with a rank of 5, they' re going to pay more for than than on a blog with a page rank of 1 or no rank. The irony is that blogs with Paypepost adds, get a lower page rank, and then get penalized again by Payperpost by not having some higher paying opportunities available to them. Payperpost is going to have to come up with a way to fix that - soon.
This is quite a conundrum, isn't it. Payperpost relies heavily on page rank for a site lowers the page rank for the site by polluting the content upon which the site is ranked.
Links can only get you so much. Since so many link farms have been set up which are simply sites that everyone agrees to link to everyone else with no concern for whether what you are linking to is valid for the audience you're trying to attract, the content of those you link to has to be evaluated too. So if you link to lots of unrelated stuff, your link for your main focus drops.
I on the other hand have decided to operate on the "If you build it, they will come" theory and hope that readers find their way here despite my lower page rank. But ultimately I am going to do what I think is the best for my family and my audience. I for one have learned a lot just by doing the paid ads. Even some of the opportunities I didn't take or couldn't take introduced me to other services and web sites out there that I never would have known about otherwise. The opportunities I took and blogged about were always ones that I thought were interesting and fun to learn and write about. The earnings from those posts also helped my family. So am I going to stop doing it for a better page rank? To me it was sort of an easy decision . Higher page rank and bragging rights don't pay the bills. But even more importantly I don't like the idea of an anonymous power trying to manipulate my behavior. I've got to do this blogging thing to please myself, my family and my readers and if that ends up being its own reward, so be it.
The big question that any blogger has to ask themselves is: "Why do I blog?", and Elena seems to have answered it in her last sentence. However, you can't fault Google who is also looking out for their "family".
Some may know it (I really don't mention it a lot) that I run The Cigar Diary. This is a site I started quite a few years ago when my interest in premium cigars intersected with my interest in learning web based database design. So the cigar review database was born. I decided on a clean, easy to navigate interface, with a basic and consistent color scheme. This was before blogging was popular, and the content management systems brought web publishing to the masses.
I also decided to try ads. So I made a single ad, 120px X 100px that was in the upper right corner of the page (first place the viewer looks). I have no ads buried below, no banners, or flashing lights. First and foremost, I want my site to be a place where people are comfortable to go, and return again and again.
The ad hasn't made much money. In a couple of years, I still haven't gotten to the $50 threshold that I need to get paid. But I'm running a page rank of 4, and I hover somewhere between the fourth and fifth page when someone searches for "cigar". In order to jack that up, I'd have to invest time "working" the site. I find spending my time discussing Catholic issues here more enjoyable. But then again, I'm not a stay at home mom trying to help make ends meet while homeschooling her children. I have the luxury of having this remain a hobby.
This is not an indictment of Elena, who I like a lot and still read on a regular basis. It's just the realities of Google, "democratic" web placement, and the impact of placing ads on your site.
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