世論 What Japan Thinks

Following on from a post a couple of weeks ago about this site getting Google-slapped and me highlighting that Japan Today had prominent paid links on its front page, I now see that Japan Today too has been hit by a three-point penalty, down to PageRank 4 from PageRank 7. As it has recently changed hands, I wonder how much the PageRank 7 figured in the evaluation of the sales price?

Additionally, I’ve had a question from one of my friends about what to do, as they have noticed a drop in traffic. First off, I have not noticed a drop myself; indeed Google Images and Yahoo! traffic are both up whilst standard Google search is holding steady and the keywords I want to rank for have been if anything improving, but as with all search engine issues the changes are usually subtle and take a few weeks to manifest themselves. However, my AdSense earnings have halved in the last month, but I don’t know how much of that is due to being Google-slapped and how much is due to other factors. Another friend in this niche who hasn’t been selling links has also mentioned their AdSense revenue has died.

If you have been slapped, one measure you can take is to remove all sold links and ask Google for a re-evaluation of your PageRank penalty. However, I am yet to see any definite evidence that the PageRank penalty is anything more than a cosmetic change; most Search Engine Optimisers judge displayed PageRank to be nothing more than a rough estimate of relevance and the slap is not a change to the core relevancy calculations but merely a tweak upon an output estimate.

My personal opinion (based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever!) is that Google is wanting to stop link dealers and paid post dealers using PageRank as part of their equation when evaluating what price to sell links or posts at. Here’s a good post from Twenty Steps on why he thinks Google did what they did.

However, if you want to get your PageRank back (but there’s no promises that this will work) you should drop all paid links, then through the Webmaster Tools at Google request reinclusion or re-evaluation of your site, and hope…

Looking at the Google Webmaster Guidelines, they say:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

I stand by my links as they are relevant to the theme of the site; if someone wanted to advertise printer ink or used cars I’d reject these links for a lack of relevancy.