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I’ve heard this questions countless times on walkthroughs, blog posts and forums. Conventional SEO(Search Engine Optimization) tell us that it is really a fake PageRank that is being displayed in the Google Toolbar. I don’t think anyone had come up with hard evidence to prove or deny this, but a lot of conspiracy theorists(including me) support this claim. It it likely that Google develops it’s own ranking of a page, that is not disclosed, through it’s algorithms. A rank other than the one displayed in the Google toolbar.
Google’s main intention had been and still is to serve the most relevant content to the millions of search queries submitted daily. And the PageRank of a web site quite frankly sums up the quality of the site itself, evaluating it against the search query. So, in a nutshell, that’s how Google works.
Recently, sites that sell Text Links and Sponsored Reviews had been the targets of Google PageRank drops. I’m sure you might have heard countless stories on the blogosphere how blogs of PR6 went to PR4 and PR2 went to PR0. Just because a blog sells Text Links, doesn’t mean that the content becomes irrelevant to the extent that Google should rank it low now, does it?
So, in that case, these recent PR drops really defeated Google’s main purpose of content provision… Or did it? Would Google really be so stupid to penalize a blog on it’s ‘real’ rank for a few outbound links and lose the trust of the millions of Googlers by not providing them with the most relevant content? I don’t think so. In fact, that’s probably my main point to support the proposition of this question. It is very likely that Google is having it’s own secret PR hidden within the secret servers of Googleplexes.
Remember how many bloggers stopped selling text links on their blogs after the last PR drop? Remember how worried they were? Well, Google had done it. Their main intention was to make sure people respect the ‘nofollow’. Because of this, many bloggers adopted to the ‘nofollow’ usage and went by Google’s way. Few who didn’t do so, refused to bow down to the big G. At the end of the day, bloggers used outbound links sparingly, took the magical ‘nofollow’ very seriously, and helped Google by not messing up their algorithms for consistency.
Or was that what really happened? Is there another side of the story? I think so. So, here me out.
Let’s imagine Google is a nation with nuke warheads. (It really isn’t that hard to imagine something like that since they can wipe out most of the things we take for granted today within a split second) Like all of ‘em, a nation displays it’s nuclear firepower by demo rocket launches and so on. Just to let all of the others know that they have the capability of doing something nasty. And when they want to be taken seriously, they might go to the extent of actually doing something nasty. Likewise, Google has the fire power, and when they want web owners to take them seriously, they will actually go to the extent of launching a demo strike. This demo strike being “the fake Google Toolbar PR drop”.
Now why do I call this a demo strike? Wasn’t it “the real strike”? No, sorry. Don’t think so. Why?
Take a look around. Google launched the demo strike and almost everyone listened! Everyone took the search engine giant’s requisitions very seriously. Much like a nuclear nation being taken seriously after a demo ballistic missile experiment. Did Google really want the 3rd party (the people who search through Google) to be harmed? Did Google really want to provide those people with irrelevant content just because the 2nd party (we, the bloggers, the webmasters) messed up? Nope. They are smarter than that.
They threatened us with the PR drop, got us to listen and change our ways, pretended if we didn’t do so, we’d actually be stricken. And this whole time, they had their own real undisclosed ranking system running in the background. The toolbar was just a fake mask to make us dance to their beat. They achieved emphasizing the importance of outbound links, and didn’t get the backfire since dropping the actual rank was something they never did.
This is just something that popped into my head and I’ve got no hard enough evidence to prove it, except for the fact that it really makes sense about what SEO experts had been saying lately. I’m not portraying Google as an evil corporate entity., Oh no! I love Google too much to do that. But, could this really be true? Would love to hear your opinion.
Wow, what a conspiracy theory, but makes some sense. If this is true though, can bloggers continue selling text links without fear of being penalised in the “real rank” if they continue to put relevant and quality content on their sites?
Very interesting analysis mate, I also have read about how google hate any site/blog with link to gambling site but in the other hand, google adsense display a gambling site on their adsense content
My blog is recently dropped from PR3 to ZERO, but I guess that’s because I was changing my blog server that cause some links are broken/not found by their crawler?
Well Bobby, It’s a tad bit hard to tell. Mainly because it’s really hard to make assumptions on an algorithm that we have no proof of being in existence. But the important thing is that toolbar PR is considered valuable for many reasons including affiliate marketing and sponsored reviews.
But I believe, that prioritizing great content over monetization can save you from Google.
Thanks mate..
I guess so. Bad timing. Your links must have gone off just when Google was doing the PR update. Not to worry, the next update is anticipate within 20 days or so. Hope you’ll be able to keep your blog up-tight by then.
But page rank is so damn sexy.
Stop beating me!
Blog Blog Cherry
Let’s also not forget the fact that a penalization for toolbar PR (however real it may be) is meaningless in itself. PageRank has been a very useful way for Google to keep webmasters on a puppet string, in my opinion.
Everyone cries out when their toolbar PR changes, forgetting their fact that nothing has really changed. It’s only because webmasters rely on this out-dated, static value that it has any relevance. SERPs anyone!
Given all that, I’d probably be more surprised if toolbar PR wasn’t a red herring.
A few months ago, my blog went from nothing to PR2. I have TLA on my site and 1 sponsored review. The 2 days after that, it dropped to PR0. And surprisingly a few weeks ago, my blog turns up PR2 again… my blog is one year old btw. Does this have to do something with your theory?
Very interesting theory, except that I don’t believe very many of the people who were selling text links quit — I know I didn’t and most of the other people I know who were didn’t and IZEA sure didn’t stop, so I’m not too sure many of us “bowed down” to the big G’s missile demo.
And that may be why many got PR back in this last sweep of ranks.
You also forget the now huge “do follow” movement by those who buck authority and especially this “strong arm” tactic of Google’s.
My personal opinion is that Google wanted to adjust the PR system, went too far in one direction with it and are now coming back to center. Nothing sinister or “word dominating” about it.
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Exactly my point Simon. Very well stated.
Cheers!
Well, I’m a bit unsure about that. Yes, having TLA could potentially hurt your PR. But, the claim is that Google drops PR most of the time with a manual review. And normally, PR 2 blogs are not heavily penalized unless the automated process finds very strong evidence that your blog had something wrong with it.
I’m not saying your incident is isolated, but, I can’t link this to my theory unless you did something different to your in the one month that PR went from 0 to 2.
Well, I won’t say it’s something sinister. Mainly because, we were given the freedom to do what we wanted about it. But, to a certain extent, it should be about domination.
Having said that, I would say, you’re right to a certain extent. Blogs that went from PR2 to PR0 didn’t bother bowing their heads to Google since, they don’t care and even if they did, their advertising costs wouldn’t have increased or decreased considerably.
But many of the larger dealer did indeed feel the pressure to bow down. You can read many stories of that here. Some $1000 earning top-notch blogges completely halted their TLA sales because of this.
If Google is coming back around, it would be because the demo strike had done the best it could and Google can’t just go forever pressuring a number of bloggers who don’t care.
All in all, that’s just my opinion and I could be wrong.
Cheers!
interesting theory. I was also thinking of something like this. my blog goes from 0 to 3 in 75 days, than back to zero after 60 days. my other blog had PR4 last october, and got smacked early March. But after a few days, the big G returned half of the PR.
i even wonder why the toolbar shows changing PRs of google.com on different days.
Well, it’s a bit strange hearing about wavering PR on Google homepage since I’ve never noticed that. Maybe isolated technical issues? On the other hand, I have to agree… PR had been going back and forth a lot.
Cheers!
I didn’t do anything different. I kept my TLA (although the drop from PR2 to PR0) and kept on blogging quality content (health related btw) right until few weeks ago, that I got raised up again to PR2. Strange but true.
I noticed that too, some days it’s PR7 some days PR8
Nice find
This could be the next loose change, lol.
Great header! This is the first time I have seen your blog and I am very impressed
Well, by the comments I have received from this article, I should say, PR is stranger than I thought. But, if you kept blogging throughout, then it’s natural for your PR to go up since you’ll have quality content that improves the quality of your blog.
Thank you Jim. Really appreciate your words of appreciation.
I agree with you – One of the sites that I’ve worked on a lot in the past was sent from a 2 to a 0. I did focus on only doing nofollow ads from then on at that site, but have since then moved my focus to my newer blog.
However, interestingly enough: From that pr0 site I linked to a family member’s site which has basically only two links from both pr0 sites.
Guess what my family member’s site had at the next pr update? A PR of 1.
Interesting.
I think it had something to with link bleeding then. It’s a bit natural for Google to set a higher PR if the site has a few outbound links. And that’s why we see a relatively higher PR when people start blogs I presume.
Hmmm.. Nadeesha I feel the same way bro. You know Google seems to be acting two different ways. For the face of it G’s law looks pretty solid yet I don’t feel so. Private example of mine is slBlogs. At the bigining I never expected a Syndication network gain search Engine traffic or a Page rank due to duplicated content. Infact a syndcator could be like a splog for a crawler and would definitely knoc down after 3 months. Yet, slBlogs traffic from google search still goes up… Donno why!
Another thing is slBlogs carry a Page rank of 0.. he he.. yet we get around 30 uniques from Google search alone. My private blog which is PR1 basically have no visitors, and another PR 3 blog which I have with fresh content also get only 30 people a day…
Crazy ha!
Exactly mate! Although I believe that you should have taken search relevancy into account when experimenting this, can’t say I disagree with you much.
Excellent conspiracy theory and a very well written, interesting post. I’ve only been around your neck of the woods a couple of times but I’m picking up your feed and will be back.
must be really true, because the google search results of my blogs and sites weren’t change despite a zero page ranking. hmmm…
I want fake pr of my sites for link exchange coz my all sites have no any pr. reply me as soon as possible
we will never figure out what google is doing