Google’s recent PPP actions questioned

Posted by Les Scammell on December 24, 2007
Posted in: Blogging, Ranting. Tagged: , , , , .

I read with interest the reactions and views of many bloggers in relation to Google’s apparent punishment of Pay Per Post bloggers. I must admit that Google’s own actions do puzzle me somewhat, unless of course some of the allegations about Google’s actions being directed towards the one Pay Per Post organization are true.

When looking at this action the whole issue needs to be put into perspective. Google state that pay per post activities are a form of Page Rank selling.

Google instigated a form of ranking sites. These rankings purportedly help to place well performing sites at the top of search results. Google had a choice. They could have kept these rankings internal and used them silently, or they could release them to the general public. They chose the later. Consequently, many aspects of the internet, including blogging, rely on these ratings.

Bloggers of course use these ratings to determine ‘who they want to get close to’. Who they would like to link to and of course, who to look up to for inspiration, leadership and style. Advertisers look at the rankings to determine who they should advertise with and what price they should pay. As I tour the blogging community I see a lot of ‘Advertise Here’ banners with prices attached – even I had one for a while. The prices have obviously been set in part by the Page Rank of that site.

With contextual advertising being used, the move to paid posts was a natural progression. Using Page Rank was an obvious way to determine what sort of price should be paid for those posts. The sixty-four dollar question is, why punish bloggers for writing these posts.

The answer stated was ‘because they are selling Page Rank’. This appears to be a weak argument. If Google can identify which bloggers are writing pay per post articles, then given today’s technology, it should be very easy to discount any links in those posts. Furthermore, many pay per post writers are novices with PR scores of zero or one – hardly the selling of Page Rank. Writers do not receive any PR benefit by writing these posts as the links are all outward – not inward.

If Google where being fair, they should also have penalized these companies who are buying the paid posts – after all, if I am selling Page Rank, are they not buying it? The answer here is that Google does not want to alienate current or future advertisers. Not only that, the larger the company the more resources they have to make legal challenges to these actions – something the humble blogger is not in a position to do. A legal loss in this area would force Google into a major re-think of their actions. To add to the dilemma, Google does not appear to punishing those that include banner advertising – even though that is often priced based on PR.

In conclusion, it is hard not to conclude that Google is targeting one form of advertising and possibly one broker of this type of advertising.The blogger has become the proverbial meat in the sandwich.

Footnote: I have not been affected by Google’s actions – my blog is to new to have a PR determined.



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21 comments on “Google’s recent PPP actions questioned”

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  2. The problem is that reviewing bloggers were passing page rank to the reviewee and not the other way around. This is what determined the ‘logic’ of the penalty.

    My thinking is that Google is treading on thin anti-trust ice when they go after competing monetization methods. While their actual motives may be pure, the appearance of anti-competitive behavior could land them in court. As a small time investor in them, I’d rather not see them have to deal with this.

    As for zero PR blogs doing reviews, this actually can work in favor of the advertiser. Reviews rarely stay on the front page of a blog long but go to a backpage with no PR. But, if you buy a review at a discount from an unranked blog there is a very good chance that the review page will get indexed and thus get it’s own page rank when the next PR update happens. The advertiser might get a PR 2-3 or even 4 permenent link for the price of a zero PR link.

  3. I completely agree with your points. I, as most PPP bloggers, lost the rank I worked hard to achieve- I went from a PR5 to a PR3-I’m one of the lucky bloggers who didn’t go down to a 0, mainly because I don’t take every paying opportunity. I would love to see evidence of the page rank before and after an advertiser paid to have bloggers link in a post. Remember- it takes months to build rank and your point about the posts going deep into other pages which potentially have a PR0- makes it interesting. Then factor in posts that were deleted after the 30 day requirement, I do know bloggers who do this and you get an extremely weak argument from Google. It’s all about money that they aren’t generating because small blogs finally found a way to monetize.

  4. **Frank – I agree with the ‘treading on thin ice’ and I think that is one reason Google wont take on the advertisers. They have more clout and more dollars to challenge – thanks for your comments and have a wonderful festive season

    **Beth – Google cant stand competition – they either buy it out or stamp it out. I think at some time Google will enter the PPP arena as well – if you cant beat them – join them and their is money in it for the brokers – some charge as much as 50% – as bloggers we just dont see how much the broker receives. – thanks for comments and to you also a very happy festive season

  7. That is true Beth
    I made a post about it
    If google will only make a PPP
    maybe everybody will be happy.

    Hi sir,
    would you please include my blog
    for your weekly review? Thanks
    this is my blog
    http://stentorized.blogspot.com

    you know what I believe that my PR of 3
    for this blog STENTORIZED is still on but deliberately hidden to the public by google. I drop to PR zero publicly but I saw some of my pages landed in the first pages of the search engines even to those key words with more than a million page results.

    Hope Smorty would realized this. Because among the “get paid to post” that I am in Smorty are the most PR conscious. I no longer received offers from them. :(

  8. **Aaron, Firewalker and stentorized – I can only sympathize at present – it will be interesting to see what happens when the next rankings come out – whether I stay zero, go up, or get greyed out.

    **Stentorized – your added.

    thanks for all your comments.

  9. Les Thanks I like what youve done with the widgets here at myradicalblogs.com great HTMling” im looking for a hot list of Tutorials to build my sites up with ;)

  14. text links thats why’ I herd this on a web master forum last month” so everybody gets blasted for this”" I never used text links but I lost more than 4 ranks for nothing” :(

  15. Do you se any type of paid review serive like PPP? I have read they are hitting people who use them as well. There is an update comming soon and I just started doing them on my blog so time will soonly tell if that is true.

  21. I’m one of the folks who dropped from a PR of 5 to three. Heck of a shock. I stopped doing paid posts for a while – but it has not rebounded.

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