Google Rankings in Danger - Dump Visible PR

The entire search engine marketing industry is quaking in fear and speculation as you read this, and the organic ranking of many sites is now subject to penalty at Google’s whim.

The debate over paid links seems to be coming to a frenzied head this summer, especially since the SES San Jose paid links session called “Are Paid Links Evil?” in August.

It’s been nearly six full months since a Google Toolbar PageRank update now, and some people have speculated that this might even be the end of the green bar as we know it.

Webmasters are now reporting drops in ranking, and insiders at Google seem to be confirming that yes, not only are they trying to discount the value of paid links and the ranking benefit they may impart, but they are actually penalizing the organic search ranking of sites that sell links.

As of Friday, the official word from Google came down that selling links on your site can lead to a penalty. The key work there is “CAN”, because it’s not happening to everyone equally.

To fully understand what is going on and how this is changing the industry right before our very eyes, you really need to grab a cup of coffee and spend some time reading these three articles by Jennifer Laycock.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Okay, now that you’ve read those, you must have your own opinion, right? Well here’s mine…

This is total crap. The hypocrisy of Google “allowing” link sales and even spammy doorway pages from sites like Forbes, while penalizing the small site for making a few bucks is ridiculous. Even when BMW got penalized they were right back in a few days.

Cronyism and antitrust issues aside, the “FUD factor” - creating Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - (as seen in Michael Gray’s SES San Jose presentatoion) seems to be the only weapon Google has at their disposal for influencing the behavior of te majority of Webmasters and in many cases, it’s working.

Way back in 2004, Jeremy Zawodny from Microsoft mentioned the “… increasingly PageRank driven advertising economy…” and the writing was on the wall even then. Has nobody at Google seen this coming?

By being based so heavily on a VISIBLE commodity, (the green PR bar) their search algorithm is flawed, and Google is powerless to stop it any other way.

Sure, they can identify the big networks that many of us have come to know and use, and those can and should be filtered out of the algorithm to improve the integrity of the search results. You can’t begrudge them that, since it’s their search engine and they should be able to do what they want.

Unfortunately, the hypocrisy factor is heavy, and in our world, money talks. Picking on the small guys while leaving the big sites unscathed seems to be acceptable. If Google had any real commitment to search integrity they would be applying this penalty evenly, but that’s just not the way the world works, I guess.

In my opinion the only thing that makes sense at this point is for Google to to remove the green PageRank indicator from the toolbar.

Even if that was just a temporary solution, while they continue to improve the algorithm, that would effectively shut down any incentive to buy links almost immediately.

As I said in my post a couple of weeks ago, asking if this was the end of visible PageRank…

“if you don’t want someone to sell something, then don’t consistently tell them how much it’s worth.”