What do I have in common with JohnChow.com, ProBlogger, Forbes and the Washington Post? Google spanked all of us. Hard.
Page Rank is plummeting all over the web today, it seems, thanks to an unfathomable shift in Google’s PR policies. Plenty of folks claimed at first that the dive in PR was limited to those folks who sell ads outside of the Google Adsense network but plenty of non-selling sites took a dive, too.
Something else taking a dive? Google’s stock value.
I sold my shares this morning. Yes, I realize the gesture was ultimately meaningless, since Google’s been a winning stock for quite some time. But it felt good — far better than, say, beating my head against my keyboard. Besides, I made a nice little profit and now I’m off to indulge in some retail therapy.
You can bet I’m going to be using Yahoo! to check for nearby sales, too. I’ve kissed Google goodbye, which ought to make it more convenient for them to kiss my fluffy rear end as I head out the door.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007, 11:55 am | 
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October 24, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Yeah, I knew something was going on. My traffic has spiked 50% with search results comprising all of the gain and covering up a bit of tail-off in non-search engine traffic.
October 24, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Because I’m so entwined–gmail, etc.–they have one or two more chances before I disentangle, but they’re on the road to it.
October 24, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I’m in the same boat, Anwyn. Gmail. Google Calendar. SMS all the time to find addresses and phone numbers when I’m on the go. Google analytics & Adsense on all of my blogs.
I’ll be spending a LOT of time this weekend finding replacements for all of those, if the current status doesn’t get corrected.
October 24, 2007 at 6:58 pm
You already know how I feel, but I’m not terribly embroiled with Google. I, however, will not use them to search again.
October 25, 2007 at 11:13 am
Trouble is, most of the world isn’t paying attention. Google is a verb. Yahoo is not. Well, not in the search-engine sense anyway.
Tell us what you get in retail therapy. They do sell naps, don’t they?
October 25, 2007 at 11:35 am
I bought shoes. Glorious shoes. Also, candy. And wine. Fortunately, I still have the shoes.
You know what pisses me off most about Google? They show that EV has 3,510 incoming whereas Yahoo shows 70,902 incoming links, and AltaVista shows a whopping 251,000.
But here’s the kicker: my Google backlinks are well over double what several other PR5 blogs show. (I know, I’ve checked.)
So Google is definitely discounting some incoming links, and possibly penalizing EV. Why? Well, perhaps it’s the links in the right sidebar, which compete with Google Adsense.
Thing is, I have YET to earn one single check from Google in 4+ years of running Adsense. If they were in the least bit profitable for smaller bloggers, I’d ditch the others. But they’re not.
Unfortunately, they ARE still the paradigm by which a blog’s “importance” is judged.
And. That. Pisses. Me. Off.
October 25, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I stopped doing paid blogging, so I am blissfully a) unaware b) uncaring about all this. Glad you got some shoes in the process, though.
October 25, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Kate, do you use Webmaster Central? I know we all hate Google right now, but just so you’re aware…they won’t show you your accurate inlink numbers with the link: command or any other tools. You have to verify your site with them through WC and then you’ll see more accurate data. I don’t want to slow the Google bash at all, but I wanted to make sure you knew that.
Shoes, huh? They’re like heroin for women. Yvette’s closet is stacked deep…it boggles my mind. I think I’ve maybe got 10 pairs at the most.
October 25, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I do use it, Matt. It shows the same number.
October 25, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Well, there’s that! Let me ask you, did those numbers drop in the past day or two, as well? I’d be very interested to know if there’s a correlation between the PR spank and a drop in backlinks.
October 25, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Oh, HELL. I take that back. I was looking in the wrong place. There are 80,039 incoming links to Electric Venom.
This just pisses me off even more.
Where’s my martini?!
October 25, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Damn! I was hoping I had stumbled on to something VERY juicy. I would’ve loved nothing more than to go on a tear about that…
October 25, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Well, there’s always the “juicy” aspect of having double the incoming links that some PR5 sites do but being rated a PR3 now.
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