2 Mar 2008

How should Izea respond to Google

I don't know about other posties out there, but it has been ages since I last took a sponsored opportunity on this blog. I am still being punished by Google and my Page Rank (PR) still shows a big fat "0". It is obvious from the the posts on Izea discussion boards that I am not the only one and there's a lot of anger there. This is not a conspiracy theory and Izea founder and CEO Ted Murphy blogged about it saying "If you have been hit by Google unfortunately there is little we can do". Duncan Riley predicted on TechCruch that there would be "an exodus of bloggers out of PayPerPost".

Izea founder and CEO Ted Murphy says that "the PayPerPost market is not melting down" as reported in a Wired article. However, I do notice that several posties have removed the PayPerPost referral badge and others have even gone to the extent of removing all their sponsored posts from their blogs.

So what should Izea do?

Well it has two options:

1. Bow down to Google
- Have posties add "nofollow" tags to all sponsored links.
- Have all posties put up "sponsored post" badge on all sponsored posts.
- Allow posties to give "free for all" reviews.
- Negotiate with Google.

This should shut off several critics of Izea including long time PayPerPost hater, Michael Arrington. On the other hand, this might lead to an exodus of advertisers who are with Izea for SEO purposes and there are a lot of them.

Then we have the second option,

2. Eliminate Google from the picture altogether

One of the reasons that the PR downgrade hurt a lot of posties was due to the fact that Izea uses Google PR as the main requirement for taking an "opportunity". They have introduced their own ranking system called "RealRank" but many advertisers still prefer to use Google PR for screening Blogs to carry their ads. There is no way Izea is going to win in a fight with Google. David defeating Goliath happens only in stories.

So my suggestion is to get rid of Google PR as a requirement altogether and use only Alexa and RealRank. Izea might also want to get rid of the special tracking codes altogether as they are like beacons in code signalling, "Hey! we are posties. Come bury us".

Would love to hear what other posties and non-posties out there think of my proposal.

11 comments:

macewan said...

Keep your main blog, the one that's important with Google. Create a new blog for pay per networks. That way when Google discovers it as not being creditable (payperpost) it will not be such a huge shock to you.rst

Dilip Mutum said...

Hi Macewan, Thanks for dropping by. I don't think having a blog only for sponsored posts is such a good idea as it would not work out in the long run.

Anonymous said...

I do think with realrank we can stop with google pr. I had enough with google. I think its time to move to other source. Realrank is a good opportunity for us bloggers.

merapuman said...

realrank must be accepted by all if they want to compete with PR, at the moment, not many know about RR

Dilip Mutum said...

mac: I don't think we can run away from Google. However, it would be good for us posties who have PR 0 right now.
merapuman: Totally agree with you on that.

Anonymous said...

Hmm..... I think U are right at the point. Nice thought about the act o "Izea".

Anonymous said...

Google is so famous now, I don't think we can just drop it out of the system..maybe we should consider the alternatives..

Anonymous said...

Hi
excellent info cool idea.
thanks

Anonymous said...

Hi
excellent info cool idea.
thanks

Anonymous said...

I subscribe to IZEA and I don't see how I can benefit from it. I heard there is something called Social Spark.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, google is too big for us to ignore.. but if there is other alternatives certainly can give it a try.. Realrank still need something to make them noticeable