If participating in PayPerPost wasn’t questionable enough morally before, today it’s now a poisoned chalice as Google has commenced punishing PayPerPost bloggers by completely removing their page rank.
IZEA (the new holding company for PayPerPost) CEO Ted Murphy is not surprisingly calling foul on the move, claiming that it’s part of some sort of censorship conspiracy by Google. Better still Murphy claims that it’s part of Google’s attempts to deny competition because PayPerPost is a “a very attractive alternative” to Adsense.
Murphy goes on to claim that TechCrunch should be punished because our occasional posts thanking sponsors (like this one) is nothing different to what PayPerPost bloggers do.
WTF?
TechCrunch, like many blogs occasionally puts up a post (usually monthly) highlighting our great sponsors, but lets look at one of these posts. They nearly always include the words “TechCrunch Sponsors” in the post title, and are very clear that its TechCrunch thanking our sponsors (”Thanks TechCrunch Sponsors”). There is zero editorial on the benefits for or against the sponsors such as PayPerPost, and it’s clear what the post is about, unlike your typical PayPerPost blog post. We also don’t take money for writing editorial content; TechCrunch publishes posts for and against without favor, where as your typical PayPerPost blog distorts the line between truth and paid advertorial.
Unlike Michael I’ve never been as strong in my dislike of PayPerPost, and although I’ve never used the service myself (I did sign up for an account when they opened so I could review the service) I’m all for exploring different ways for the little guy to make money, even if personally the ethics and morality of PayPerPost has never sat well with me. Yet if PayPerPost ever wanted friends, wild conspiracy centered posts such as this one just say “mad” to me. This looks and smells like a company that is not in a good way, a company that is lashing out as its business model starts to fail around it. I’m predicting Deadpool within 12 months; I can’t see a lot of bloggers being happy with losing Pagerank so we should see an exodus of bloggers out of PayPerPost (particularly ones with traffic) over the next few months. This will leave PayPerPost with inventory deficiencies that will result in diminished revenues making the PayPerPost business model unsustainable going forward.
thanks to Trace for the tip
“punishing” ??! with intent? is that what you mean to say? doesn’t bod well for the future, cross google, you will be punished… are you sure that is what you meant?
#48
Sorry Ted, I don’t buy it.
I come out of the old media — specifically newspapers — where selling mentions in the news columns was heinous. What you’re doing is equally heinous for the same reasons. It’s essentially deceiving readers, especially unsophisticated readers for your advertisers’ benefit.
You’ve built a nice little business promoting deception by trying to manipulate Google. Google noticed and finally took action. Oh well.
Your claim of censorship is a little strained, at least to an outside observer. Google isn’t removing these blogs, or even the posts. All its doing is adjusting page ranks — which you just claimed don’t mean anything.
Frankly the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot from where I stand. But then I don’t try to build my business by deceiving people.
I run a small blog http://www.SoUrban.net and I face a very common problem, how can I make some money through my blog? Adsense is one option, but I haven’t received any money from it yet.
The next option is Pay Per Post. I think the Pay Per Post service is great; the bloggers who misuse it give Pay Per Post a bad name.
In Pay Per Post I select topics that are relevant to me and ones I can write about. I then write a post about the topic and include a disclaimer. None of my posts have been rejected for not being favorable enough. This means that I can write and include my honest opinion with a disclaimer. If you can be honest and include a disclaimer, I don’t see a problem.
Google shouldn’t punish bloggers like me and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because their option (Adsense) isn’t a viable solution. This will weaken Google because their search results will less comprehensive and relevant.
Greg
http://www.SoUrban.net
Nice reply, Ted.
This story is SO MUCH more than about PayPerPost, in my opinion. Google designed a system around inbound links, so naturally links are now the currency. Very few among us haven’t thought about SEO/SEM strategies — moral or not. It’s only reasonable that Izea, TLA and every non-paid link as well is taking advantage of it — there are splogs, web rings, sponsorships, and friends just giving each other some link love. It’s everywhere.
This is a problem we all face. Let he/she who hasn’t ever thought about “link juice”, pagerank, and SEO/SEM cast the first stone.
It’s funny how they never penalize sites that are out to game pagerank, like sites that are just littered with adsense, no relevant content but has a URL that google thinks is most relevant.. wtf? reason why they don’t penalize those sites? pretty obvious ah?
It’s also funny how no one cares about Google’s ignorance with click fraud by allowing sites that has no content but set out to “trick” search users to those sites that are just littered with adsense ..
Ted is a very smart guy, he knows what he is selling. He has to deny it publicly, because of the ethical questions, but his product
iswas paid links.This is a rail road spike through the heart of the PayPerPost business model (and the other link brokers) – not because PPP bloggers are afraid of The Google – because PPP advertisers are afraid of The Google.
Like I said above – I sure do hope our competitors were buying links through PayPerPost – because the “advertisers” will be the next ones to see the penalties…and when it happens, PPP will surely die an ugly death.
@Rick – Old media? Is that related to the media that often runs pre-packaged advertorials as news? Why should a blogger be penalized when he clearly writes “ADVERTISEMENT” on top of the post? Don’t newspapers do that?
I’m in agreement with Ted. Google uses PageRank as a club to keep it’s advertising business free of competition.
It’s all very funny because Google is a big proponent of Net Neutrality but you will never find them in support of “Search Neutrality” will you? Oh no, if Google thinks you should have to pay for Google traffic (TLA) it will remove you from searches (for your own name) and make you pay for an ad spot on the search results page. Yeah, real nice!
All this hub bub tells me is that Google is clueless in how to create a search system that is automated and immune to gaming. Remember, Google is an ADVERTISING company not a search company and certainly not your friend.
PayPerPost (or whatever it’s called) won’t have my respect until they force PER POST disclosure. I read most blogs in Google Reader, not on the page. So if there isn’t disclosure PER POST (as in “this post is sponsored by…”) then I can’t know that what I’m reading is an advertisement.
Google has completely and utterly lost the plot.
All they are doing is drawing attention to deficiencies in their own algorithm which obviously can’t cope with the concept of paid links (something that’s been going on since way before Google existed).
It’s mean, it’s vindictive, and it will probably be the beginning of the end for Google. Now they have started taking editorial control over their index, search results can no longer be considered accurate and impartial.
There have been a lot of good comparisons between what PPP is doing and traditional media/the real world. Here’s mine.
I’m left feeling that there is a place for PPP – just like there is a place for those annoying leaflets that get stuck on my windshield when I park my car in a public area. Sure I hate them and wish I could hunt down those responsible but we don’t have the lovely IP fingerprinting of the digital world. So I can’t
At least Google, the people who run the parking lot, are doing something about it. Put up a big fence so they can’t get in. Or kill the pagerank to those people feeding links to advertisers and it hurts the pagerank to the advertisers. What Google has/or hasn’t done (Note: Google has not said they’re doing anything to PPP bloggers) is try to stop unwanted spam.
At the end of the day, PPP is an old school advertising concept – spam people till they buy something – continuing to spam people in a new and annoying way.
Google is trying to make advertising better (at least in my opinion) by making it helpful. Their model is hey, let’s give people relevant services when they’re looking for them and people will pay us.
Not a bad idea if you ask me.
Google is already facing potential anti-trust issues over the DoubleClick deal, they are only asking for more government attention by ruling over the Internet with an iron fist.
Since it is their search engine that is the only one being affected by PageRank, then they can do whatever they want with it. However, they are becoming too big, too fast for the government agencies not to notice.
I was a PPP blogger. “Was”, as I just left that company, having my blog slapped with a PR0 (down from a 4).
Every single post had a “this is a sponsored post” text in it, along with a “sponsored post” tag, and a graphic stating the post was sponsored, and a site-wide disclosure policy.
Not every post had a link in it – but the vast majority did. I only posted my actual, honest opinions about the product or service, and only posted about opportunities I thought my readers would enjoy anyway.
So, now I have a PR0 for my effort. I have left the program, and deleted every sponsored post, and every mention of PayPerPost, from my blog. I’m hoping Google forgives me and gives me back my 4.
payperpost.com still has a PR6. Bollocks, I’m out for a walk.
Blogs that work to prop up bad products can really be compared to any type of advertising that props up a bad product. You cannot sustain a blog if you are not honest. People want reliable opinions and advice on your topic. If this is not given the blog fails and so will PayPerBlog if they continue to have problems with dishonesty. I don’t have a problem with what they are doing but the market will ultimately punish the if they can’t control their bloggers.
As for Google I don’t know why they think they are the internet police. I do use Google for my blog, but that is because I have learned to rely on Google’s services. They can be trusted. This shows they only have to worry about their reputation. This shows that the market polices itself.
At the same time Google should be able to do what they want it is their business. It just seems their a bit cocky. Someone needs to remind them that they are not the end all of search engines.
I think the real question is why everybody thinks Google should have to give first amendent rights to everyone? They don’t have that responsibility a large part of their success is that they censor sites for reliable content that is related to the users search topic. THIS IS HOW THEY ATTRACT ADVERTISERS.
PPP stinks but hats off to Ted for articulating Google’s Achilles heel.
@Duncan – the way I see it is that the bottom line is the links in the post that Ted brought to attention that were thanking your sponsors directly resulted from the fact that those sponsors paid money to Techcrunch.
Yes, many, many blogs thank their sponsors from time to time. The problem here is that Matt Cutts/Google has been fairly explicit here that these links should be “nofollowed” as they are “paid”. That is the only form of disclosure that Google’s algortihm’s understand. I’ve never seen it implied by Google or Matt Cutts that they are sophisticated enough to infer nofollow status from the surrounding text.
So, sadly, all nuances are lost. Those links that Techcrunch issued are most likely helping those companies in their Google rankings.
Of course, I have no problem with this — links are made for a myriad of reasons and there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to thank your sponsors with a normal link. Still, according to Google, you’ve now engaged in “black hat” activity in Google’s eyes.
It really doesn’t matter how the paid links got there, does it?
@Michael – This isn’t about Google’s PageRank policies per se. This is about the tremendous power that Google is exerting in the marketplace to protect their business model. Google is effectively the gateway to the web and they make more money of this than the GNP of some small countries. I don’t think that this is a conflict of interest that can be dismissed so easily…
Mark brings up the best point I’ve seen so far.
Folks. Google does not give a hoot whether you are a PayPerPost blogger or TechCrunch. If they find a way to accurately map a “paid for” link to your blog, chances are in the next 6-9 months you are going to get a PR slap.
Before you get upset about this, recognize the fact that the SERP is Google’s ball and they can do whatever they want with it. They are not beholden to help anyone get rich off of the backs of their search pages.
With that in mind, there are only two really -rationale- things for a publisher to do.
1. If you want to play in Google’s playground, follow the rules. If you think it’s a paid link, use nofollow. Simple as that. Do this and Google no longer cares that you exist, let alone get paid to post.
2. If this idea makes you upset, rely on other traffic sources. Don’t tie yourself to Google if you are going to balk every time they adjust their algorithm.
As for the ongoing PPP / TC flame war . . .
I have a site without a single paid link, (no ppp, no tla). Over the last couple months the site has gone from PR5 to PR0! Google had some success with their search algorithm, but now they have a false confidence that algorithms will solve all their problems. As far as I’m concerned their image has changed from a company that puts out neat products to one that is conceited bunch of math nerds causing headaches with the trust they’ve received.
Hey Google, your algorithms are broken! Go back to school math nerds. You’re soooo Web 1.0 with this algorithm crap. We trust our friends now (defintely not blogs either PPP). Facebook feels much better than Google, at least they can’t slap my friend rank down.
Oh, and Google… open social is hopelessly boring and android is a linux geeks mobile phone… no thanks.
Google is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
They are further destroying the . . . (integrity is not quite the right word) perception of integrity that they still had.
If you can not go to Google, do a search and get close to the results you are looking for within a page or two what is the point?
You sure can’t do it in China. Google censors results and sites there.
Now, you can’t do it anywhere else either. Google censors it here now.
I do not trust Rupert Murdock to filter my news, I do not trust Lou Dobbs to shape my opinion on anything either. I sure as hell do not trust a faceless corporation like Google to tell me what has been written subjectively.
Let me figure it out. I am smart enough to identify what is important to me, what has been influenced and weight it relatively speaking (Scoble if you can’t make this distinction then you are a moron. Personally, I think you are not a moron, and that you are just grand standing. and btw they will be requiring disclosure on every article with the new system, unlike all those affiliate links, TLA links etc.)
Personally, I think disclosure is over kill. I do not want to read an article here nor in the WSJ that discloses every single connection the writer, the editor, the paper, the corporation etc has to every item, product, company, politician, and faith based movement. I’m not playing Kevin Bacon’s six degrees of separation game every time I read an article, I’m reading media.
Media is not perfect. News papers these days are terrible. CNN doesn’t even feature new, just the poignant vignette of the week on a loop. Bloggers are not journalists and never will be (some have more talent than so called real journalists). Bloggers add value not by their objective perspective, but by their subjective perspective.
People read TechCrunch in part because Michael Arrington is ’supposed’ to be plugged into silicon valley wankers. His subjective close proximity should give him a view that an objective person at 30,000 feet does not have. People used to read Robert Scoble because he was a subjective Microsoft insider. Now he is just an ex-insider with lots of inside connections. That’s all subjective.
I do not want to view a three dimensional map of every connection Scoble has to every fool at Microsoft (one of my favorite companies) when ever he writes an article. When he worked there and wrote about Microsoft, we did not demand that he post a scanned in image of his latest pay statement or employment contract. We knew that he was providing a subjective perspective, because WE are NOT morons!
Imagine that, people can read things on the internet and not believe everything they read, they can take some analysis with a grain of salt, they can question what they read, and if they really must know, they can go search the internet (through Ask maybe) and find all the relationships that they like to understand why someone would spend sooooo much time writing about ‘AdultFriendFinder.com.’
If Google has spent a fortune hiring the ’smartest’ geeks from MIT, and they are unable to determine a subjective view from an objective view in an algorithm, then that is their problem. Short Google today. If you hire the best and the brightest and the best and the brightest must have every stupid thing spelled out for them, disclaimed, footnoted, popped up with warnings, and trigger a hand that reaches out from under their laptop to give their short hairs a good tug, then maybe they are not the best and the brightest . . .
Or Google is suffering from the worst undocumented case of Group Think ever.
Separately, I think its going to be relatively funny, when Matt Cutts gets called in front of Congress to testify and has to justify every blog post he ever made and every email he ever exchanged inside Google.
I suspect the EU probably won’t be as friendly.
Brettbum: but when I worked for Microsoft you KNEW I worked there. With PayPerPost posts I often can’t tell that those posts are advertising. In fact, we know that many PPP’ers don’t do disclosure of any kind. That’s evil. When it stops happening, let me know and I’ll change my opinion of the company and the people who support it.
Robert Scoble:
I’ll agree to disagree with you, but would suggest that PPP bloggers or TechCrunch bloggers disclosing or not is the lesser evil compared to Google Censorship.
I might also suggest that it is inherent in the title of all bloggers that bloggers blog subjectively. Even the people that ‘do it because they love it’, ‘do it with a passion’, ‘write what they know.’
They all have a bias.
The value is in their words, not what incented them to write those words.
For What its worth, I do not value product recommendations from anyone.
I’ll do my own investigation before I buy and then suffer or benefit like every one else that has lived with the concept of Caveat Emptor for the last few millenia.
I definitely do not need more noise in the media messages I receive, coming in the form of disclosures and asterisks etc.
For that matter, even if a person were to disclose on their article or on their affiliate badge or on their YouTube video or bumper sticker or whatever, would their disclosure actually be that valuable?
If you do not trust what they write due to the lack of disclosure, then why would you trust their written disclosure?
If say, you have an A list tech blog, and take advertising money from a new start up, and you run their banner in the sidebar and forget to put the nofollow on the link, do you really care as a reader?
What if you mention the advertisers site in a general article later on and again forget to put a nofollow tag on it?
Then again, if you are writing an article about a company that happens to be a sponsor and you provide a link to their website, is the purpose of the article, the keyword on the link and everything else all very accurate.
Shouldn’t this link be followed? Isn’t putting a nofollow tag on it as Google would require, actually compromising the integrity of what the article is about, what the link is for, what the keywords in that link are for?
Should a link get more juice from say a blogger that writes puts a link on the word Microsoft and follows that linked word with the word ’sucks’ and ignore the juice from an A list blogger that just happens to take some advertising money from Microsoft?
What if you are John Kerry and you have been attacked by a bunch of PACs that did not take sponsored money, but went out and wrote a bunch of articles on their own sites and linked to a source article on say ‘Swift Boat’? Is it then wrong for John Kerry to pay for articles that link with a keyword ‘Swift Boat’ and do not use the nofollow tag, because he is trying to defend his reputation in the Google Top 10 for those keywords?
And then if Google does slap the sites that run John Kerry’s sponsored articles, hasn’t Google denied free speech, which per the Supreme Court in regards to politics is linked directly to money?
This nofollow tag concept and the penalties Google is doling out is very flawed and even more dangerous.
Following and the link juice that goes with it should not be binary. As an intelligent person, you do not look at an advertorial or even a sponsored article disclosed in print and say to yourself, this information is completely worthless. No, instead you assign it some value and say, this is something that comes from the advertiser. I need to interpret it within the context of coming from that advertiser and not completely discount it.
Google is not complaining about textual or even image disclosure. They are attempting to categorically ignore and exclude the value of links in a binary fashion and that is censorship.
That is why their actions are more evil than long tail bloggers (or Forbes for that matter) that accept some revenue streams from paid links through TLA or PPP or direct buys).
They are dismissing links that actually do have information value and meaning in favor of other links that have less merit and relate less.
Well U just cant do anything about it!
Google is the god of Internet!
I wonder why the topic of conversation keeps moving to being more about Google being evil than about PPP trying to game the system. Let’s be clear Google is not censoring all search.
At the end of the day, sure Google has the market leading search engine, but that certain doesn’t mean we can’t use 1 of a dozen other search engines out there. It’s not like Google’s search algorithm effects all search on the internet, only their own company’s – and isn’t that what competition is all about? If businesses don’t like it when Google modifies their algorithm, then support the use of a different search engine.
Andy – this is to do with defamation of character so far as it doesn’t have any affect on search results, only the perception a user of Google’s toolbar has when they visit a website and see a degraded green bar.
At least monopoly money is worth the paper it is written on
Brettbum: if you are taking money and you don’t disclose that financial renumeration IN THE POST THAT YOU ARE BEING PAID TO DO then it’s evil and we can’t have further discussions. Yes, that’s more evil than what Google is doing. At least to me.
There is no way out but to follow Google’s doctrine. PPP was obviously an innocent way to earn money where you need to keep a sharp eye on post quality (Conforms to Google criteria – quality!).
You can’t do anything else but to show Google Ads in your website for earning money.
Google has not only grabbed the search market, it has dominated website publishers, or bloggers as well.
You are the Judge, the Jury, the executioner! So go ahead.
Hey, Duncan…nice UNCOV ripoff with that doctored image (or should I say “FAIL”?)
P.S. someone please take the keyboard away from Robert Scoble already (fail…again!)
Unfortunately Google is clamping down not on paid posting as such, but on posts and links without no_follow such as the “Thank the sponsors postings” that TechCrunch usually do (Which by the way do NOT have no_follow next to the sponsored links). … Just giving you a heads up… All sponsored links will now be required to have no_follow according to Google to prevent passage of PageRank.
However, whether bloggers decide to accede to Goog’s demands is quite another affair.
Thanks.
My page rank when from 4 to 0 and I have only done 2 PPP ever and they were 18 months ago, this seems a bit harsh. How does Google know my posted a PPP link.
google is smashing PPP today. who’s going to be next? scary enough? what’s wrong with PPP? bloggers are making a few bucks on PPP while google employees are making millions.
@11 “One change in their algorithm can put hundreds, if not thousands of companies out of business.”
There is a lesson here to be learned about fairness (or lack thereof), risk of overdependence on a single marketing channel, and the need for diversification in ones marketing/sales strategy. This applies to all business. Wal*Mart suppliers know this all to well. Don’t blog about getting squeezed or screwed. It happens. Blog about how you plan to diversify to reach your audience. ( See “Wal-Smart” by William Marquard. )
Like it or not, Google is God. As in ancient times, those who defy God often do not live to regret it.
alright, while it was a little bit harsh of PPP to imply that there was some sort of favor Google showed on Techcruch, i still go with PPP. i really do hope that advertisers will soon consider rankings other then GPR.
i hope that RealRank will be implemented ASAP.
There’s a complex issue here that Google needs to address a lot more directly, which is this:
What if a *great blog* (let’s take TechCruch for example), decides to do things that are clearly bad stuff in Google’s eyes but that readers don’t care much about (e.g. hidden text, buying links, selling links). If Google keeps them in they are helping compromise the integrity of the algorithm, but if they take them out Google is breaking the cardinal rule of doing what users would want them to do.
So, in the PayPerPost controversy I think the key question for Google is to support the idea that when they kill a site the users would want the site to be dead. I hope Pay Per Post shows some good blogs that got killed.
This is what I fear:
“Extremism in the Defense of the Algorithm is No Vice”
Barry GoogleWater
@Señor Scoble – I’m not sure that a blogger with a few hundred readers a day could ever be regarded as evil for posting an undisclosed ad. Google on the other hand has (at least been accused of) operating in a way that could be thought of as a little evil. Nasty at the very least.
I’ve just signed up and done a few posts for PPP. Still awaiting approval; crossed fingers. You know, an ad is an ad, regardless of whether it’s Adsense, a paid banner or a post. It should be clearly labelled for what it is though.
I have Adsense running on one of my blogs. I have no say in what is advertised. I’m sure many ads are of a dubious nature.
I have PPP on my other blog – I can choose what I advertise, and have a little fun creating the post. What’s the big deal?
Well…the disclosure is the big deal. I must confess, I have just done an post for an advertiser who requests no in post disclosure – which I have put on the other paid posts.
I live on a pretty low wage, with little hope of getting the Nikon D40x DSLR. Unless PPP comes through for me. I’m as greedy as the next person. I did the ad. It pays a good price. I want that camera. I’m prepared to whore my blog – just a little, if I have to. I’ve promised myself not to do it again, but I’m pretty sure if the money is right, I’ll do it again. I want that camera.
But Ted, I really don’t want to ‘have to’. If Social Spark sorts out the disclosure issue, then all well and good. But PPP needs to be more than just transparent with a site disclosure in a hidden page buried deep in a blog, with a little sidebar button. It needs to be whiter than white.
Personally, I can’t hate anything that might get me closer to that camera. I hope PPP develops into an accepted form of advertising with a model that is 100% ethical.
(1) “Reducing PageRank to zero”: By this, do you mean not showing the sites in search results at all? As far as I can tell, PageRank has nothing to do with anything. Our site has fallen from 6 to 5 to 4 over the past couple of years, and the traffic (from Google) and income (from AdSense) has be climbing up and up and up.
(2) It seems like if the goal of Google is to present its users with relevant search results, then a post-by-post banning would be more appropriate. If a good blog has one paid review, that would deprive Google users of ever seeing it. So this seems Draconian and counterproductive (and one more crack for Yahoo and Ask to take advantage of).
Google makes their revenue from advertising. They are an advertising company that happens to use the internet to earn revenue. We, as site owners, should be dictating on what terms we will post advertising on our sites. I am calling for a boycott on all adsense advertising starting November 19, 2007. If sites take down their adsense adds through the end of the year, that will hit google where it really hurts. It is kind of hard to sell advertising, if you have no place to put it.
This is a very exciting debate! So forgive me for bringing up an underlying fact that everyone seems to have forgotten about. Maybe I wrong but didn’t Google state the page ranking is an proprietary, internally used tool? Didn’t they state that everyone else, advertisers and bloggers, should not use PR in their financial and business-making decisions? Yet, this is what pay-to-blog type companies have done. While it is upsetting to watch of my page rank drop, I’m a fool for having relied on it to begin with. In light of Google’s intention with page ranking, I’m not too happy that I was forced into relying on it to begin with.
Of course, when PayPerPost got started in June of 2006, what did yardstick did they have as a guideline for advertisers? Still, here we are 18 months later and PPP is only just about ready to begin using an alternative metric. Given their success already, will they be able to sell it convincingly to their advertisers – their bread-and-butter – without a downturn in business? Will their bloggers go along with the changes? Actually, the bloggers don’t matter. There is more than enough hunger posters in the Internet world that will fill the spots created by deserting ‘posties’.
Maybe this crisis of PR will return page ranking back to Google for their internal use … as it was supposed to be all along. Then we can all laugh about the silliiness that we brought upon ourselves.
Google said it is coming. Nobody can claim now that they didn’t know.
They said that PayPerPost is ok if you add nofollow to the links.
Those who ignored are paying big time.
Welcome to Google PR0 club.
Round 1:
IF Text-Ads-Links exist
Drop Pagerank
ELSE
Remain SAME
ENDIF
Round 2:
IF Text-Ads-Links OR ReviewME OR Payperpost exist
Reset Pagerank=0
ELSE
Remain SAME
ENDIF
From a PageRank 5 to a PageRank 0 in a few short months. I can’t say I wasn’t warned. I’ve since removed all PPP posts. Heck, I’ll even donate the lousy few hundred dollars I made to a charity of Google’s choice. Just restore my Pagerank!
I’ve written for PPP before and my pagerank is uneffected. I’m so tired of reading the same PPP sucks post on TechCruch each week. If TechCrunch is so hot and awesome then why don’t they come up with a service for bloggers to make money? TechCrunch has become BitchCrunch and I’m tired of the reading the same boring content on TC that I read on Mashable.com.
Mashable.com is a way better site and updates more often then TechCrunch. They do not interject their personal vendettas into their post. And once again
YOU CAN”T GET PAID FROM PPP WITHOUT DISCLOSURE IN THE POST. You have to insert text that states that the post has been paid for or PPP will reject your post. Nore can your blog be set up for just ad postings. Your post before and after a PPP post must include original content or you will be rejected.
So I wish BitchCrunch would take the stick out of their asses and work on making their content better. Cause right now this site is wack.
If you lose PR b/c of this, can you ever get it back????
bmw.de
before: http://blogosco...-02-04-n60.html
after:
http://www.iweb...r?domain=bmw.de
It’s pretty clear what google’s up to: they’re eliminating income streams for site owners to increase dependence on adsense income. As adsense becomes the defacto standard of monetizing a content site (again) they stand to make more money through adwords sales. Watch for Google to start punishing sites with amazon affiliate links or something similar in the near future.
I’m not fond of pay per post in particular, but google is headed down a slippery slope.
“TechCrunch, like many blogs occasionally puts up a post (usually monthly) highlighting our great sponsors, but lets look at one of these posts. They nearly always include the words “TechCrunch Sponsors” in the post title, and are very clear that its TechCrunch thanking our sponsors”
Now Duncan, you made a jackass off yourself. You write for your sponsor, PPP posties write for theirs. You write Techcrunch Sponsors, and we have a full disclosure made. Now, if I were to pay you whatever dollars you charge, you will get my website too on that ‘Techcrunch Sponsors’ and I can enjoy your Google juice. Now, that’s divine..What these small time bloggers do to earn their $5-$10 is crime, isn’t it.?
Hypocrisy at its f*king best!
The PageRank hysteria continues.
Public PageRank has done nothing but add to the crazy linking schemes devised with anything but content and visitor readership in mind.
Would be fantastic if G could catch everybody…or nobody… but as it is you cant compete in some niches without buying links and engaging in crazy schemes.
Get em all or get none would ya.
The comment above about adsense scraper spam sites says it all…
Since pagerank doesn’t appear to be related to traffic, Google may be targeting blogs purely for marketing. They may be dropping blogs’ ranks to try to assert Google’s relevance. The more bloggers who notice the drop and discuss the drop, the more Google stays relevant. The more bloggers who have their pageranks dropped, the more they get scared and fear Google, the less they use non-Google advertising. It’s a smart move by Google; and it’s yet another reason to ignore pagerank.
But they’d better be careful. The link economy might be a lot like the US economy. Fearful investors and consumers can react en masse and change the value of things dramatically. Google is built on the link economy so if they cause a link recession, they’d better have a good back-up plan.
@greasyguide “YOU CAN”T GET PAID FROM PPP WITHOUT DISCLOSURE IN THE POST.”
That’s not true. See my comment from yesterday. I’ve found numerous offers on PPP that specifically tell you not to disclose that it is a paid post. I also included two screen shots of what I’m referring to. PPP does not make you disclose every paid post.
I thought PPP was a good idea at first but now, I’m not so sure.
This is what we call ‘power’..mr G use his power..