Google Gave A Little Back Today

Written by: Don Miller

Posted on February 29, 2008 
Filed Under Starting your Online Business

Court wrote an article the other day on his Google Page rank refund and I commented and subscribed to the comments as I wanted to follow this story. As usual comments poured in and as usual I learned some things. Apparently Google has done some reworking of page ranks including, Making Sales Making Money, The truth about Home Based Business Opportunities. The most recent re-rank occurred some weeks back. The morning of the new rankings I was chatting with Vic on Skype and loaded up my page to see that I was dropped from a PR 3 to a PR 2. I had hoped to either stay a 3 or jump to a 4. Since that time I searched for answers as to why. My research only left me with more speculation, but sincerely felt like I needed to do something. My SERP position was page one for a couple of my chosen keywords and phrases. After the re-rank I could not find it.

I have detailed my hosting issues ad nauseam it seems, but felt that was good place to start. After learning my IP address was being shared by some undesirables, I quickly secured a dedicated IP address and looked for new hosting and moved my site to Blue Host. I began deleting anything on my site that looked like it would be an issue. I removed my featured sites until I could add no-follows. I had actually had a Pay Per Post ad on my site for weeks, but had never participated in their program. The same situation existed with Review Me. I had promoted Text Link Ads at one point and all kinds of ideas were running through my head. I continued cleaning up everything I could think of that may have been an issue with Google.

Court’s post detailed how to ask Google for reconsideration, but obviously that was not available to me at the time. He wrote of basically admitting the errors and what you did wrong, what you have done to correct the issues and assurance that it won’t happen again. So I sat down and wrote a humble letter to ask Google for reconsideration and a human review of my site. I had no expectations whatsoever and sent it off several weeks ago. I admitted mistakes I made early on and told them. Here are some excerpts of my letter.

Along the way I have learned important lessons and corrected any inadvertent mistakes that would risk my inclusion from SERP’S. It has evolved into perhaps the biggest mistake in my internet life. I do not sell Text Link ads, promote pay per review. I do sell advertising on my site, but I believe that is allowed without penalty. I am certain you are overwhelmed with requests of this nature and hope that my site could be included in a human review process. Until then I will continue to provide relevant information regarding starting a home based business. Lessons learned.

Today my site is back at a PR 3. Now before you say big deal and who cares. I do. I suppose you could make a case for my pride and ego being damaged I looked at my site today and yes it looks the same, and I’m still un-happy with some of the layout, but I did get some page rank back. I am hoping it stays that way. Was my Site penalized? I suppose I will never know for sure, but I assume to some degree it may have been. Did any of you folks experience something similar? Let me know


Website Magazine

.

Welcome feel free to look around. Subscribing to my Feed or Newsletter guarantees you don't miss any new content, give it two weeks, you will love it RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Hope to see you again soon.

Tags:, , , ,

Related Posts

    Im Thinking Mark Ress Wont Use This Post

    You know using someone’s content is as frequent someone taking a breath. I get that. I understand that. As my home based business grows I get exposed to it more and more everyday. I have another blog that has every

    BANS , Adjusting For Success or Do Nothing And Fail

    As most of you can tell my becoming a full time internet marketer has affected my posting on this site. It is an issue I hope to overcome soon. I currently work... 12-15 hours a day, sometimes more. Before we

    WordPress for Dummies

    If your are like me, this book will be a must have. Pre-order today and save. I have ordered mine. From the Authors blogsite I just heard from my publisher today, and he said… “The first date of availability is

    Unique Article Wizard Case Study

    Recently I wrote a review on Unique Article Wizard where I suggested you try the most effective article-marketing tool I have ever used. Today I want to present a case study that I implemented to see if I could better

    BANS And Being De-Indexed

    A few days ago I was speaking with a friend about BANS. I told her I really needed to work on other sites, because you never know when BANS sites may disappear. Well as of yesterday around mid-day that happened,

    A Blogger In Need And A Friend Indeed

    How many times can lightning strike in the same place? Well when is comes to my hosting of this site apparently over and over. This past Saturday night I was chatting with Monika on Skpe and posting an article about

    BANS Domain Selection, Cheaper Not Always Better

    As everyone knows getting an info domain indexed these days is quite the challenge. I own 40 or so myself and I continue to get links for them. I know one day they will be indexed. There are many people

    Life is a Niche , Pick One !

    I suppose today articles will be posted all over the blogosphere about choosing, determining, and researching the proper niche. While the ambitions of those are similar, results, can be dramatically different. I believe in my heart of hearts many will

Comments

12 Responses to “Google Gave A Little Back Today”

  1. bloggingzoom.com on February 29th, 2008 1:14 am

    Google Gave A Little Back Today…

    I know Im not supposed to care about Page rank, but I do and I did a few weeks back when I lost some. Since then I had been trying to figure out why. I edited I deleted I took thing soff my site that may have been an issue, I changed redirects , I did …

  2. Frank C on February 29th, 2008 12:44 pm

    I think they more than likely fixed some problems with their algorithms that were causing a home page PR reduction glitch with some sites. OpTempo got a PR3 over the last few days and I didn’t change anything on it.

  3. Don on February 29th, 2008 1:26 pm

    Frank , you may be right, Google never really lets you know anything, I was checking out your site this morning and noticed you had a 3 , and thought “good for him “. I realize most don’t care about Page Rank and such, I do and thought this a bit more than coincidental as I have been having a ongoing correspondence, albeit one sided, with the Big G

  4. Don on February 29th, 2008 6:27 pm

    I just checked,kind of amazing from being gone on SERPS to back to page 2

  5. Sol Lederman on March 1st, 2008 1:12 am

    I just got a PR of 4. My ego is happy! Up until this update I had no PR. I’ve worked hard to build a popular site and it’s nice to be recognized by the “Google gods.”

  6. Monika Mundell on March 1st, 2008 10:00 am

    Don,

    My site has gone up to a 4. I also deleted paid posts stuff about 1 month ago but never asked for a re-inclusion.

    Beats me.
    But I’m not complaining

  7. Don on March 1st, 2008 10:49 am

    @Sol, thats great news , not many sites around with your volume of content, good job

    @Monika, nothing wrong with a 4 , it could be Goggle just adjusted something on their end, but like you said I’m not complaining

  8. Evan on March 2nd, 2008 1:46 am

    My page rank has been steady for the last month or so – but it’s only 2 anyway.

  9. Anne-Marie on March 2nd, 2008 3:20 pm

    The Write Spot went down to zero – no surprise as it’s not very active and it seemed more logical than the 4 that it had before. I’m glad to say that http://www.thismamacooks.com went back up to a 4. My other blogs stayed the same.

    I too have taken off all mention of text link advertising off my blogs. I kept getting approached by people who wanted to place text ads (for life!) on certain pages. After negotiating, they’d disappear. I began to wonder if it was Google’s people inquiring, but why should they bother with me? I get good traffic, but not huge after all.

    I finally turned the last guy down, decided the money was NOT worth it, and took the bit about “buy a text link” off my sponsorship pages.

    I still do paid reviews – but work with publicists/marketers/companies directly. I also have a written policy about sponsored reviews on all my blogs (i.e., just because you pay me or give me free stuff doesn’t mean you get a good review). And of course, all sponsored reviews are labeled. I think it helps and I feel less “icky.”

  10. Apollo on March 3rd, 2008 5:26 am

    Just out of curiosity…how long did it take you to get a PR3 rating?

  11. Don on March 3rd, 2008 12:01 pm

    @ Apollo, about 3 months

  12. Gizmo on March 3rd, 2008 8:57 pm

    I wrote to Google many times when one of my blogs which is now about 5 months old still had a zero page rank after two Google updates, while another blog of similar age had been given a 2 a few weeks after it was live and then a 3 in the last update. Finally I just got a rank. Yay! Who knows why it took so long. I don’t think Google writes back very often to people that request reconsideration.

Leave a Reply