Postcards from the Funny Farm

The expression: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” seems especially appropriate for Google here at the beginning of 2008. I am no seo or blogging mmol genius but I do know a few things about logic and ethics and setting PayPerPost writers’ pagerank to zero is a choice lacking in both.

Under the guise of weeding out vacuous content from searches, they claim all blogs that have PayPerPost articles on them are less helpful than those who don’t and thus set their PageRank to zero. This is an example of a company thinking they will reinvent natural law to suit them because they can, not because they should. It’s going to bite them, the internet did not evolve to this point to be defined by one company.

I recall when I first got into using Google, it seemed like such a cool enterprise. The page was white with no ads and it had applications that were all utility, no fluff (ie; analytics, gmail …). Now, they have decided they know based on one criteria if a blog is helpful to the internet, this is ignorance at its height and I hope Google stops this practice. My how Google’s “feel” has changed for me.

As for me? I will continue to be a postie because it’s something I am good at and it’s something I profit from. That’s why Walt Disney, Rod Serling, Ray Kroc, Richard Carlso... did what they did. Last week I lost my PageRank of 4/10 when it was set to zero. I had a feeling this might happen when I read the news about what Google was doing to posties. But has my readership changed? It has gone up. Has my content changed? It has gotten better. The way I see it is this: Google figured the blogosphere would appreciate it if they targeted posties, and for the most part, they are probably right (check out Duncan Riley’s tone on Tech Crunch). But that doesn’t mean that weeding out all blogs with PayPerPosts on them will increase the value of a search. In fact, in many cases, it will keep good information out of a search. Is the only information we want on the internet that which is written without compensation? You might as well stop watching TV as far back as I Love Lucy.

To quote Michael Stipe: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” Emphasize: I feel fine.

I predict Izea (PayPerPost’s rebranding) and SocialSpark will revolutionize rankings in 3-6 months. You can come and tell me I was wrong if they don’t, but as for now I am making sure I focus 100% on my idea of what a good ranking is:

1. Monthly Traffic Goals
2. Inbound links
3. Comment counts, and
4. Quality content (paid or unpaid)

If I can succeed in these areas (which I can and do already) then I’ll take my PR0 with pride and look to other ranking systems like Izea’s RealRank to determine how I’m doing. To my fans/readers: fear not, I am neither down nor out. I will get better through moving away from Google’s PageRank system, not worse. Whether you like PayPerPost or not, I hope you see how throwing every blog out that uses it is harmful to the blogosphere.

Now, to close, I have a question and I promise not to pigeonhole you or throw YOU out if I don’t like your answer:

What do you think about Google setting blogs to zero for participating in PayPerPost?

My understanding is that Google penalizes pages that have exact duplicates on other sites, when it comes to PageRank. I don’t know how much of a penalty that is. If people duplicate my content (which they already are, even without permission), it’s possible that my PageRank will drop and people will have a harder time finding my content on Google search. If that’s the case, I accept that penalty. I’ve never been one to go for SEO techniques anyway, so this is nothing new to me.
-Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Conte...

I’ve been reading story after story about how Google has eliminated the PageRank ranking for thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of bloggers who have posted for PayPerPost.

At first, I felt worried: “would I lose mine next?” Mine may not be much, but its a 4/10 and it took me many months to work up to that. Then I felt guilty, like I was a spammer or something. After that I felt really pissed off. My wife and I have both worked really hard on our recent posts for PayPerPost and we selected the opportunities because we felt there was something to say about them. Meanwhile, I get trackbacks from junk blogs who have completely plagiarized posts of mine and their Google PageRank is higher than mine. I think villainizing PayPerPost folks, posties as they are called, is the equvalent of what Microsoft tried to do leaving capabilities out in hopes of squashing Netscape … unAmerican,

My Message To Google:

If you really want to eliminate useless blogs in a search, eliminating pagerank for PayPerPost writers is NOT a solution. I’m debating going back to using Yahoo as my search engine, taking adsense ads off my site, and using Sitemeter as my analytics choice. You can’t protect your interest by sabotaging your competition. Something better than PageRank is bound to come soon and I hope you relent this crazy and unfair practice soon before that happens.

Many people are starting to see the writing on the wall that Google is not as “open” and “user centered” as it would have us all believe. As for my work on PayPerPost, you can bet I am sticking with this new company. I’m always for the underdog in a good fight. If my page rank disappears, I wont worry about it. As long as you, the readers, keep reading … that’s what I’ll be ranking myself by.