Decoding Google’s toolbar broadcast:
Does Google use toolbar PR as a "change your stuff or find yourself kicked out soon" message?
Deducting toolbar PR lowers the prices, will less toolbar PR lower the amount of link purchases?
Toolbar PR deductions without significant effects on traffic aren’t penalties, so why does Google manipulate this meaningless but closely monitored thingy?
12 Comments
Does Google use toolbar PR as a "change your stuff or find yourself kicked out soon" message?
Deducting toolbar PR lowers the prices, will less toolbar PR lower the amount of link purchases?
Toolbar PR deductions without significant effects on traffic aren’t penalties, so why does Google manipulate this meaningless but closely monitored thingy?
12 Comments
Comments
It is interesting there’s so much buzz about this considering most SEOs know the data is allegedly 2-3 months out of date....What I’d like to know is if anyone is seeing a major downturn in search referred traffic. The unobsesed, that’s more important than Page Rank anyway.
Exactly. But it’s interesting to figure out Google’s intent. I mean they don’t play with their green pixels without a reason. Since my stuff isn’t affectd, I can’t say whether they send less SERP referrers or not, but I didn’t hear of such effects yet.
Traffic on my knitting blog is up 20% over the past month. What does this mean? It’s October; knitters are picking up their needles.My PR drop from 4 to 2 yesterday. What does this mean for traffic? Beats me!
Lee when I got hit the first time I mentioned a few ratings that dropped, and a possible decrease in my ability to pass pagerank.The test search I was using was "Dofollow"At one time I ranked 3rd for a number of months, then I was dropped totally for that page and replaced by a syndicated copy on WPN.Eventually Google fixed the attribution at least partially and I was back in around 5th.But the page concerned has a mass of external links (200+) and 600 tags at the bottom in a cloud, so it loses the topic a fair amount.But was concerned me the most is the drop in ranking of the community on BumpzeeI have no financial interest in the term other than it gets me a few links, it is more a pride thing, being a catalyst of a movement and not seeing the recognition, or the focal point being recognised.My ability to rank in many ways means less to me, but in other SERPs I am gaining, which is why I don’t worry about my own "dofollow" SERP, but I like to feel that my vote for a site has more meaning than the traffic I send it.
"What I’d like to know is if anyone is seeing a major downturn in search referred traffic."I doubt people are concerned about losing traffic - most people don’t believe TBPR is related to traffic or rankings on Google. My guess is many are worried over their link prices plummeting.
Lucia, most probably the toolbar PR change will not affect your SE traffic. But *if* that deduction is a warning and you don’t castrate your paid links now, chances are that Google’s next action is, hmmm. more brutal.
Halfdeck, good point.
Now would be an excellent time to focus on building sites for humans and linking as a way of sharing the wealth of information and buyers from one excellent site to another. Focus on what is important and the rest will take care of itself.
Agreed. Matt Cutts and others have been making that point for more than two years.It seems that many people either weren’t listening, or didn’t want to believe it.
Unfortunately, making sites for users nowadays includes applying nofollow for engines to ads, cross links and whatnot. If all Webmasters were Google experts, that wouldn’t be a problem. In reality, the majority of all publishers, Webmasters, mom and pop site owners ... do not know how to handle links with commercial intent.
Matt Cutts has now confirmed that the toolbar PR downgrades were caused by paid links and uncondimized ads:http://sphinn.com/story.php?id=11472
Doh! Buried one darn sphinn before it went hot. :(Note2self: submit earlier. Sigh.