I dumped text link ads. I nofollowed paid links. I javascripted links that might be mistaken for paid links. I canceled my sponsored review accounts. I switched to a different method of monetization (Scratchback) that serves Google-friendly, nofollowed links. (And btw, Google, that put a huge dent in my revenue, just so you know). Finally, after I cleaned up everything that might possibly make you hate me, I filed a reconsideration request about 5 weeks ago.
And I did all that for...what? Did you give me my PR back? No, you did not. Did you even communicate with me to tell me that you still think I'm naughty for some unknown reason? No, you did not. You simply did nothing. Others knelt down to you and you promptly rewarded them by giving them their PR back. Why have I not been awarded the same mercy? Did I miss something? Did I fail to nofollow something that you felt should be nofollowed? Or do you just dislike SEO Scoop and want me to forever grovel in my pitiful PR-ness?
In all fairness, it really doesn't matter what PR SEO Scoop has. It is meaningless and valueless. Still, I can't help but feel as though I've been slighted or overlooked, whilst all the other poor souls who have begged forgiveness have been noticed and forgiven? Why not me? Just curious, Matt...
Yeah, well, when you get an answer to this question, can you please ask them why the same thing has happened to me?
I foolishly relied on my TLA income to pay my authors. Now my site is barely breaking even. 🙁
heh I enjoy the little trackback/referrer nudge there at the end.
The fact is though, SEOs have given Google the power in our relationship.
When it started, we were the ones holding the proverbial pimp cane, smacking Google when it misbehaved. They were profiting off of OUR content. And beyond that, we were making the web crawlable for THEM. If we didn’t do our jobs, the accuracy of it went to hell.
Well, you’re seeing the effect of the complete 180 of that position.
Why would Google care about SEOs anymore? Their algo got good enough it can survive without us, no matter how legitimate the claim, we’d be laughed out of any court we went into complaining they copyright our content without permission, and we are 100% at your mercy.
Matt Cutts is the only remaining token that says Google gives a flying rats hindquarters about the SEO community. We’re just not a priority anymore.
If the Googlers were doing THEIR jobs, they wouldn’t be running around the Web spouting nonsense about “links are votes and endorsements” (which is absolutely false) and they wouldn’t be posting bogus defintions of doorway pages on their site and they wouldn’t be selling undisclosed paid links on their site (“You should use nofollow tags on paid links” — they should have added “even though we won’t use nofollow on OUR paid links”).
Google needs to focus on promoing the most relevent listings to the top of their search results. They need to stop their propaganda campaign about paid links.
Paid links are not the reason why Google’s search results suck.
But they are the reason Google can afford its own 747 “party plane” and rent space on NASA’a turf.
Hear, hear!
I’m not even an SEO, my sites not about SEO and I never sold a link in my life. My site must be quite good because it had a PR7 for 3 years – so I nofollowed any link they could possibly think was a “sold” link etc. etc. etc.
Did I get my PR back? nooooo….
(in fairness though my rankings have not changed and traffic is up +++) so maybe I should not say anything.
In general you want to go with the reconsideration request approach rather than invoking me (that’s not scalable :), but since you submitted a request I’m happy to check on the status of the site in the reconsideration queue.
P.S. Wendy, I’ll check on yours at the same time. Christine, you didn’t leave your site name so there’s no way to tell which site you’re referring to.
I… uh… wow, thanks Matt. 😀
P.P.S. Donna, I’m guessing your disclaimer might have been an issue; you still say “This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation… The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog…”
I’d check if the disclosure policy you have is accurate at this point.
Some folks might not have noticed this a confirmation Google is indeed “manipulating” page rank in instances where it thinks links have been “sold”
Ok, I’ve added a clarification to the disclaimer. I still accept advertising (via scratchback), etc., but the links are google-friendly now. That good enough? I mean, the disclaimer was still true…it just didn’t add the nofollow bit.
Hi Donna. Not much to add here except a) I think its shitty what happened to your site, b) I think it’s cool that Matt is here and willing to help and c) I hope everything gets cleared up.
I’m also pondering what graywolf said. It makes perfect sense.
Matt,
Can Google answer why it’s okay to sell advertising based on our content in Google’s index? If you want people to stop selling links – then Google should compensate people for the value they have brought to Google. That would stop people from having to sell links on their own sites – like the person above that can no longer break even.
I really do believe what Google is doing IS ‘evil’.
And how about the A-list that have business arrangements (passive income) with the companies they link to. Are they punished? Nope. In fact, some of them are on a very cozy basis with your blog. I especially like the ones with a PR6 that disguise their advertising links (without nofollow).
It’s wrong. You’re picking on the little guy. You’re picking on the guys that don’t know how to usurp the system.
I can point to more if you’d like… CNN.com? Oh wait.. that’s right, they have a ‘powered by Google’ so we won’t pick on them.
Hey Donna, I chatted by email with the person who looked at your reconsideration request when you submitted it. They pointed out e.g.
http://www.seo-scoop.com/2007/03/20/harpzon-marketing-blog/
where you’re still flowing PageRank in a paid post (you mention in the post that it’s a sponsored post).
See that’s why this kind of thing is so hard to deal with. I missed one. Oy. I found all but one…seems like I could have been trusted enough to say, hey, I see you tried hard, and all, but you missed one. Instead, it’s just assumed that I meant to miss it? Well, anyway, I’ve condomized it now. Thanks for letting me know.
@graywolf, we’ve said as much on our official Google webmaster blog (“Google officially confirmed to Search Engine Land that we were taking stronger action on this issue, including decreasing the toolbar PageRank of sites selling links that pass PageRank”).
Thanks, Donna. Before I go back to the person doing the reconsideration request, I also noticed this one:
http://www.seo-scoop.com/2007/02/27/niche-revenue/
“when I was first approached about a sponsored post for a new revenue stream for publishers that involved insurance, mortgages, etc., my first inclination was to turn it down. However, I decided to accept it after all for two reasons. … So here it is. SureHits Ad Network provides publishers with a revenue stream directed at the following markets:
Auto insurance, health insurance, home insurance, life insurance, motorcycle insurance, small business insurance, home purchase, refinance, home equity, and auto finance.”
@matt my bad then I missed that one on SEL
but I still think you guys have overstepped your bounds …
Geez, I should have paid you to find ’em for me Matt. I’m obviously not very good at it. That’s one’s taken care of now too.
Happy to try to help, Donna. The people that process reconsideration requests are some of the most skilled people on the webspam team, so it’s good to do a full review before submitting a site for reconsideration, especially with something like paid posts.
I’m not sure whether it will make it through the reconsideration queue tomorrow, but I expect the reconsideration request will be processed in the next few days.