Japan Probe and others get Google-slapped!
Following recent news that Google has been not just updating PageRank in the normal fashion, but also applying penalties to certain web sites, specifically for selling links for PageRank, and more specifically, for using Text Link Ads to do the selling. I noticed that Japan Probe, previously PageRank 5, is now PageRank 3.
Of course, in the big picture, PageRank in itself doesn’t really mean much, but for us second, third or fourth tier sites, PageRank provides a quick and dirty way of evaluating our worth.
Out of interest, let’s look at the top sites tagged with “japanese” and with inventory for sale at TLA’s web site, sorted by value. The TLA Current PageRank has not been updated recently. I’ve not published the names of sites I recognise so as not to point fingers at them. This table is sorted by PageRank order.
If your PageRank has changed, please leave a message on this thread. See Dig PageRank for a tool for doing mass checks.
| Site | Old TLA PageRank | Current PageRank |
| News blog, member of a blogging network | 6 | 3 (ouch!) |
| Me! | 5 | 5 (whew!) |
| Japanese entertainment blog | 5 | 3 |
| Silly stuff from Japan | 5 | 5 |
| Can’t work out who this is! | ||
| Advertisement-heavy Japanese cheesecake | 5 | 3 |
| Can’t work out who this is! | ||
| Anime and stuff blog | 4 | 4 |
| Blog about Japanese adverts | 4 | 3 |
| Can’t work out who this is! | ||
| Japan and sailing | 4 | 4 |
After this point, most of the web sites became too difficult to recognise.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or check out my weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!
Read more on: pagerank
Subscribe to feed
Send to mobile
Subscribe to 世論 What Japan Thinks newsletter
James said,
October 27, 2007 @ 23:31
Can’t say I’ve noticed any decrease in search engine traffic, and it looks like the site is still on the first page of major search keywords that have always brought in traffic. Google might just be slashing public pagerank numbers to create confusion and maintain its control over the link sales industry, but it’s far from certain.
An interesting note: you currently have the same pagerank as the Google-slapped Washington Post!
Ken Y-N said,
October 28, 2007 @ 22:07
James, the long-term impact of this is as yet unclear. Should I stop selling TLAs? Have I just got lucky? Will my link price go up because a lot of people above me have been slapped down? Should I start trying to sell ad space directly?
I had an idea this morning that perhaps the Japan bloggers (or another group) could form an “Ads for sale” community. A central point where advertisers could survey the wares on offer from a bunch of similarly-themed sites, and we could sell directly cutting out the middleman, such as the 50% TLA takes. There would be no charges to list your blog, etc, as it could be self-funding through advertising.
James said,
October 29, 2007 @ 17:28
Ken:
I don’t know what the long-term impact of this Google-slapping will be, but for the time being I feel like I should stick with TextLinkAds until its revenue or my search engine traffic drops significantly. That being said, I’d be all for the forming of a n ad network of Japan-related sites, since BlogAds has brought in nothing for months and TextLinkAds’ middle man charges are simply outrageous.
Ken Y-N said,
October 29, 2007 @ 22:09
James, sadly I don’t have time to do that sort of organising; I was just thinking out loud to see if anyone would bite. I never understand why your BlogAds never sell, and yes, the 50% cut for very little is painful.
I plan to start experimenting with these 125×125 ads that seem rather popular these days. I think I could squeeze two into my header, for instance.
The Google-slap catches up with What Japan Thinks » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
November 23, 2007 @ 22:03
[…] few weeks ago I posted about Google removing PageRank from a bunch of blogs but I escaped unscathed. I knew it was too good to last, as the latest data suggests I’m now […]