My De Riguer Nod to Google
Did I spell that right? My spell checker dislikes foreign phrases, go figure. Anyway, I guess if you aren’t living under a rock, you know by know that Google has been dropping the PR of bloggers for the past 20 or so hours. I’m basically writing this post just in case someone expects me to say something about it, and then it will be done, and I will have spoken, and you can all sleep easy tonight.
I run more blogs than I have fingers. Some of them are pretty darn good and some of them are merely so-so. A couple are more aggravation than they were worth from the get. All of them now have a page rank of 0, including the one that was a 5 a year ago. Ha! I had a PR of 5 and did not even know what it was. When I first saw what was happening last night, I did feel like puking. One of my blogs has 183 back links, and dropped from 3 to 0 like a stone. But just like I said a couple weeks ago when Google started the foreplay that led to this rough-em-up, my blog is more than a number. My value is more than my page rank. My visits are up, up, up. My SERPs for my keywords are better than they have ever been, and I plan to just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. When I woke up this morning, I was ready to write, and the first thing I did was to twitter “I blog because I can’t not blog. I blog because I can’t not blog. I blog because I can’t not blog.” That is absolutely true for me, and if I never get paid another penny for blogging, still I will blog. I blogged before paid blogging, and I will blog right on, because that’s what I do.
Even as I was working on the post about Vegas today, Ted posted on the Izea blog for us to avoid mentioning PPP in our blog posts if we wanted to protect ourselves. Google is looking for the word PayPerPost, the phrase Pay Per Post (yeah, that’s wrong, I know) and any of it’s derivatives, and also for the names of any competing services. (Did you get that I am not following Ted’s advice?) Love you Ted, k, thanks, but no. I did not allow PPP itself to tell me how to blog, when they tried. I am certainly not going to let Google dictate my editorial policy. They’ve only managed to give me pennies to the thousands of dollars I have made with various sponsored posts, and haven’t even paid out on that because I’ve yet to reach the magic $100. In 18 month of adsense use. Whatever. And just so you know…all these posts I am writing about PPP, Izea and SocialSpark lately? For free, because I could. Because they are doing important, industry changing things. And also, because the people who work there are FUN. And Clever. And Witty. And My Friends. Not write about my friends? No.
Now, one more thing, and this little tidbit is in defense of the internet giant, whose name Trevor has just asked us all not to speak for the rest of the day. They said PR was an internal mechanism. They informed us it was proprietary information. They warned advertisers and consumers not to rely on it for decision making purposes. They have only changed what was theirs to change. They haven’t taken anything from anyone, because it never belonged to any of us anyway. It was always theirs and frankly, they can have it back. And also shove it. Hope those Raymond Weil watches don’t get caught on anything.
Technorati Tags: Google, page rank, foreplay, PayPerPost, Pay Per Post, sponsored posts, adsense, PPP, Izea, SocialSpark, My Friends
Love the post cass! This is why I LOVE reading your blogs. Cause, you say what I’m feeling. I can also sum up my thoughts into that one phrase “I blog because I can’t not blog.” I really don’t care now what google does, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and let the chips fall where they may!
Marry me, dear Cass, and let us blog away into the sunset.
Ha! The skrrt thing was in the pre-filled-in box and I forgot to check before I commented again. It’s fixed now, but too late for the previous comment,gaaaaaaah!
Hi Cass,
Coming here from the boards at PPP.
Just wanted to say thank you and that you brightened my day with your words of wisdom.
I love, love, love the “keep on swimming” metaphor.
I am a water baby and totally know the feeling of needing to keep swimming despite [insert current crisis here] difficult times.
Again, thanks!
Cyn
(Caprica at PPP)
You just said what I tried to blog earlier today; I’d be blogging anyway, why shouldn’t I get some pin money coming in to help defray the rest of life’s expenses? If I start blogging just to earn the money and nothing but, the quality of the words goes away.
Also, I feel you’re one of the “sane, moderate” posters on the PPP boards that I like to read. The world needs more of your kind.
Thank you Kim. I appreciate you coming by!
Now, we tried to plan this once before, and could not iron out the details. Are we starting over? And are the Petes part of the adventure again?
Thank you so much for coming by. I appreciate your king words.
Thank you so much, Mary. I am happy you visited today!
So now Google wants to penalize me for using the words PayPerPost on my blog? Are you freaking fracking KIDDING ME? Since when does Google own the Internet? I don’t care how big they are, how many search engines and RSS readers and email services they provide, they do not own the Internet! If I have to go back to the days when I didn’t know what Page Rank even was, that is fine with me. I’ve got advertisers contacting me weekly wanting to pay me large sums of money because I have a good blog with two and a half years of posts on it. What has Google ever given me? NADA. GAH! I’m going to be irritated all day, I just know it.
I officially love you now. I mean, I did before, but now it’s official.
Nah, just shake it off.
Do I have to lick your head for this? Be careful, now. My mother reads this blog.
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