Google hits Statcounter

Just noticed this morning that StatCounter has added nofollow to their links on the sidebar -- and that their PR has dropped from - I think it was formerly PR9 to now PR6 for their home page. Damn big G sure is playing hardball nowadays....

 

Hmm, now that is interesting. So those millions of paying customers (and their links to StatCounter) don't impress Google as valuable "votes" for StatCounter? Wow! Only PR6? — The link system is haywire.

 

It was formerly PR9, you're right. But before that it was PR10. Talk about being penalised.

 

Fascinating that even little old Statcounter is being chased down. Its a great web analytics tool. Not everybody pays for Statcounter so Google are going beyond the original brief of eliminating paid links.

 

I am one of those who uses the free service for now and I too find Statcounter to be an extremely valuable tool - it's the only stat service I refer to many, many times a day. It's a more reliable indication of actual visitors than my server logs by far and has much better features.

 

what a great way for google to boost analytics users

 

Well, if that is not a cause for a legitimate backlink then what is? Statcounter gets penalized for allowing people to use something for free. hmmmm.....

 

I think statcounter don't mind if they drop there PR because traffic is much important to them.

 

I think that statcounter got hit with both ends of the penalty/filter. They got their incoming links filtered for being next to worthless due to their often invisible position UNDER the footer and then for selling text links on their pages IMO. That's why they now have nofollow on their paid external links

Jez.

I think they do! They would not have caved and added nofollow to external links if they didn't care.

 

thanks for the read I use Google Analytics I think it is great. Staut counter is a bit different but very effective " your right G is playing games with many of their followers.

 

Nope. Google isn't penalizing or diminishing PR for that. I see -lots- of sites who get links primarily through counter spam on the top of the listings. If they are going after statcounter specifically; that's one thing. But they certainly are not going after the millions of other counter sites out there.

 

Possibly they are going after statcounter. High profile, high PR, what better vessel to fire a shot across the bows of?

We might expect to see more of the same in the future but filtering down to less popular sites.

 

But why? It's a great site that provides a great service. And the payment we paid customers provide is clearly for their services, not for PR. I cannot imagine why Google would even think of targeting StatCounter (if indeed they even have).

 

Well I dunno if StatCounter is being "made an example of" but Gooooogle sure as heck has dropped their pagerank dramatically.

 

This does not seem to be fair...

 

I do not use StatCounter before..

 

It's not the service. It's that they are selling links, I think.

I've seen sites that were not even selling links get hit with a PR drop (from 6 to 3, 5 to 2 etc). So clearly, whatever google did, they really turned the dial too far.

 

I think many things Google does is decided by financial gains. It would be kind of naive to think that this whole penalize the paid links thing doesn't play a roll in promoting AdWords. You shouldn't buy text links unless it's to gain visitors....oh, and we sell text links that don't hurt your PR by the way.

 

I agree, I'm a paid service member with StatCounter but I remove their footer links. You can't when you are free user.

 

i use statcounter and is a very nice and helpfull tool that comes for FREE.
GOOGLE R U Listening to me?????