Google Gods are Killing Me – PageRank 6 drops to PageRank 3
The Google Gods are really starting to piss tick me off. For years the VoIP & Gadgets blog has had a PageRank of 6 (PR6) and sometimes as high as PR7. As of July of last year the PageRank dropped to PR3 and then went back up to PR4 for quite some time. This week it's back at PR3. I have never seen such as precipitous drop in PageRank except for sites experiencing a dreaded "Google Penalty". So I went through all the steps Google recommends to see if there is indeed a penalty. First, I tried the Google Webmaster Tools and submitted a sitemap, but I didn't see any reported penalties. I also did the suggested Google reinclusion request but still my PageRank was stuck at 3/4. It's now been over a year. We use virtually the same templates globally on all blogs, so if there is a penalty, I would expect it to occur on all the blogs
However, all of TMC's blogs (even brand new ones) have a PR5 or PR6, which is better than mine even though I have more links & traffic than any of them. Not to toot my own horn, I've been quoted/linked to by Engadget, Gizmodo, San Francisco Chronicle, GigaOM, Slashdot, The Inquirer, O'Reilly,TechDirt, and many more. I broke the major Skype outage news story back in 2007. I'm also a Microsoft MVP award winner and have written many reviews on gadgets and VoIP products. Let me stop slapping myself on the back and present some facts why I believe Google is either intentionally penalizing my blog or their Pagerank algorithm is faulty. Either way, Google needs to make it easier for legitimate websites to discover why their websites are being penalized or explain why a PR6 site becomes PR3 overnight.
Check out this chart of similar gadget and VoIP blogs followed by my analysis: (Note: Higher is better for all values)
| Website | Description | *Google Backlinks | PageRank | **Yahoo Backlinks |
| http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/ | TMC VoIP & Gadgets Blog | 1,740 | 3 | 2,035,831 |
| http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/ | TMC Communications Blog (my own boss beats me with less backlinks!) | 1,400 | 5 (was 6 recently) | 84,286 |
| http://www.gadgetvenue.com | Similar gadget-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog | 421 | 6 | 34,669 |
| http://www.voip-news.com/ | Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog | 1,220 | 6 | 56,565 |
| http://skypejournal.com/ | Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog | 1,740 | 5 | 16,548 |
| http://www.asteriskvoipnews.com/ | Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog | 300 | 5 | 50,564 |
| http://www.planetasterisk.org/ | Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog & they aggregate my content | 216 | 5 | 10,324 |
| http://blog.digium.com/ | Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog but with multiple bloggers | 191 | 6 | 4,788 |
| http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/ | Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog | 2,190 | 5 | 85,764 |
| *Google doesn't report all your backlinks |
**Yahoo reports backlinks more accurately |
You'll notice that every single one of these websites has a higher PageRank than I do. Yet, if you look at the Google Backlinks, I'm tied with Skype Journal for the most Google backlinks, while all the others are lower - often much lower. I should point out that this 1,740 number is not accurate. Google limits the number of backlinks they display, which probably explains why Skype Journal and I have the exact same number. I actually have many more backlinks than 1,740. This is confirmed when you look at Yahoo! Backlinks where I sport a whopping 2,035,831 backlinks. I beat all the other websites I listed combined (343,508) by nearlt a 6X factor!
So how is it that I only have a PageRank/PR of 3? That's simply not possible. So the next question any webmaster might ask "Is there a penalty due to any blackhat SEO going on?". Well, there certainly isn't any blackhat SEO going on within my blog's HTML source code. Still, I poured over my Movable Type CMS templates to see if anything might trip the Google penalty filters. Nothing out of the ordinary. I ask another SEO expert his thoughts and he thought my blog was clean. He suggested I try the reinclusion request again.
Continue reading Google Gods are Killing Me - PageRank 6 drops to PageRank 3...
Tags: google, google gods, pagerank, reinclusion request
Related tags: google backlinks, google itself, number backlinks, similar gadget, reinclusion request, google
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Comments on this Entry:
(aery on
Aug 6, 2009 7:47 AM)
Best of luck for future...
Just wait for 2 more months for new PR update.
(John Driscoll on
Aug 6, 2009 9:57 AM)
Nice Greek Google logo, but you've got your gods all wrong. Google is Zod not God.
But don't worry, Tom. Just when it seemed Zod (evil Google) was about to conquer the world, Superman (good guy) stood up, crushed Zod's hand and threw him into the depths of the Fortress of Solitude.
Best of luck getting your PageRank back. I'm a regular reader of your blog for years, so doesn't matter to me whether you're PR3 or PR6. You have a great blog!
(Andy on
Aug 6, 2009 10:02 AM)
Ditto what John said. I've been reading your blog since 2004. I'm in the VoIP industry so I have to check out your blog daily. You have some great insights and I love the mix of gadgets and VoIP stuff. VoIP can be boring, but somehow you make in entertaining.
Keep up the good work!
(Tamara Field on
Aug 6, 2009 11:45 AM)
Wow, I am sorry to hear that Google is giving you such a hassle. You have a great site and I often refer clients and friends to it for more information. Something is definitely fishy considering all the facts you presented which is frustrating for those of us still trying to get our SEO optimized...if a big site like yours is struggling with page rank how are we supposed to get there?
(luca on
Aug 6, 2009 12:15 PM)
Great analysys Tom. My blog dropped from 5 to 3 a few months ago and still can't figure out the reason. Will give another look to Google Webmaster too but I doubt I can solve it that easily.
(Garrett Smith on
Aug 6, 2009 3:31 PM)
Tom,
If you and TMC need assistance straightening this out let me know.
(panicaway on
Aug 15, 2009 7:13 PM)
How do you win under these conditions? I hope some smart guy can figure out something to get you back on track. Way out of my depth. Best of luck. Frank
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