26 Jan 2008

Google PR updates are still on

Just a few days back, I noticed that the Page Rank on my both my ah ok lah blog as well as this blog was down to 0. I didn't think much about it as it had happened before - where my blog' PR had gone to 0 and back up again.

Apparently, this is not some short term thing as my blogs are still showing a big 0 PR. It's clear that the Google updates are not over and in fact may signify that it's an ongoing process unlike in the past where they updated the PR and we had to wait a few more months until the next.

In case you are wondering about my reaction... I have to say initially I was really really upset. I seriously considered boycotting them. Moving all my blogs to my own host, removing Google as the default search engine on my browser, removing adsense ads from all my blogs - I earn peanuts from it anyway and discouraging everyone I know from using their products.

Why do I feel like this?

Mainly because I feel betrayed. Like how can they do this to me? Unlike some bloggers I know (online), I don't earn thousand of dollars from my blogs. Then there is the fact that I have always been a Goggle supporter, this was even before I started blogging (in 2003) and I have introduced hundreds of my students if not thousands, to the search engine (when it was still a search engine) and their email service. Talking about their email service - it was what actually makes it quite hard to boycott them. I love Gmail and sacrificing my email account might be an extreme move and to my great disadvantage.

It was my wife who brought me down to Earth, like she does most of the time. She asked me why I was so worked up about, "it's only PR".

One thing she said really made me think: "Do you blog because you love blogging or because of the stupid PR?"

To think about it, I never really cared about PR. I simply blog because I love blogging - sharing my ideas and thoughts. I became obsessed with PR only after I started blogging commercially in December 2006.

I am still pissed off but I am not boycotting Google.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adam

I am in the same boat. I don't blog to make money, I don't even have ads on my blogs. I am a Realtor and blog for SEO, however, my blogs are informative and relevant. I still haven't figured out why I dropped in the rankings, although there is no change in PR and only one blog is penalized.

Anonymous said...

I have actually heard that in reality a PR changes everyday. This change is not reflected in your toolbar, but it is occuring. I had to wonder if we were all losing a pr point at certain intervals over the course of a month, and to us it looked like a total smack at once.
Personally I am just upset that the internet which is supposed to be free thinking and open is so reliant on one company to decide who is important or not. Maybe we all should change our browser settings!

David said...

Hi Adam, I know that i havn't been around your blogs but for sure that I will never forget such enjoyable blogs they provided when I do visited them! Seriously, I totally agree with your wife that Google PR is just a number for advertisers and the help that people get when they visit your blog. For as long as your blogs provide valuable and entertained quality, visitors will appreciate and unconciously, PR will rise! Don't get so work up by it, work on continue to blog, cause they provided values for me as well as many others!
Take care...