That’s what I thought would happen to my PR4 site that has lots of links from directories. But to the contrary, it rose to PR5, probably because I also have lots of non-directory links as well.
Eventhough there are some high profile directories that got hit it really is a very tiny percentage of the directories out there, I am guessing just a few dozen out of 10 thousand. With such a small amount being affected the 'ripple effect' would be minimal unless you were counting on only those high rank directories for your PR. But if Google decides to roll this out wider it as stated above it would affect many more sites.
I have no clue who this Matt Cutts really is , but he always confirms facts and things after ... even my dead cat known about them ... If he is such a good SEO Helper, employed at google, why he don't tell us things before they happen?! not things well known by seo people for such a long time?!
I wish that Google wasn't so secretive about PageRank or we wouldn't have this issue of information being confirmed by Google or Matt Cutts way after everyone else has been able to figure that it is true.
Ahem...well...he does kinda give superb advice for NOT what to do to avoid being penalized. Go through his blog. You will surely find a TON of it.
I just find my PRs have been changed, for new site, it goes to PR3. And there is no changes to many old web site and still be kept at PR3 and PR4. Not too bad, but looks like it's quite hard to get a PR 5 web site right now.
Actually, Matt Cutts has been talking about paid links for a while. But for some of these big directories to undo thousands of paid links.... Well, it would take a while. I have a problem with the paid links situation... First, I have two sites started on the same day. Look at the info below: Site 1: Went PR NR to PR 3, 400 free directory backlinks and that's it. Site 2: Went PR NR to PR 3, same 400 free directory backlinks, plus 6400 others. Now what the heck is that all about? The last time I checked, two directories gave me sitewide links. Were they paid for? no. Were they given permission to do so? no. They naturally linked to me. So that brings me to this point. If someone wants to knock out the competition, would it not be easy to just give them a few sitewide links? Or better yet, create a column with a header called paid links and just load it up with the competition's URL's. Trying to find and penalize Websites because of "paid links" is flat out wrong. Discount those paid links to no value, certainly. But to blatently penalize sites for something they have no control of is asinine.
Correct, but what a pickle you got me into this time olley. From what i can see it is refering to selling PR not selling links. but it seems the G wants to be judge and jury and is in one big mess, its fine to have ad words which is a paid link no matter how you look at it, people pay for that link to appear on a site. So if you by virtue you have ad words you have paid links and will be penalised by the people who gave you the link in the first place. round n round we go So a paid link in my view can not be penalised, but promting the sale of a link based on PR could be as PR is the system in place by G and your using their rating system to promote and sell the link and that is where i see the problem. Many are deleting any reference to PR and this should sort most problems, but putting up things like buy a link in my PR XYZ site, will cop a smack.
I would like to hear Google's answer to why it is so serious to influence the SERP with paid links but it is ok to pay Google via adwords to show up first in the search results? So they don't mind showing 'illegitimate' or 'tainted' results as long as you paid them for it?
If they will penalize all the sites on earth.. You will see "No results found" on google search for every term searched
Well, yesterday I removed all of my sites from paid link directories because all of my sites that were in there saw a drop while my newer ones that weren't listed saw an increase. Do you think Google is scanning TLA and LinkWorth's listings and penalizing everything, even those with 0 links bought? Yikes.
There's no need to remove links, its not a penalty against you for being linked to that made your PR go down, its the fact the PR dropped for the sites that link to you that meant they pass less PR to you so your sites PR dropped. If Google penalised sites that were linked to from a site Google doesn't like, it would just open up a barrage people linking to their competitors from suspect sites to ruin them, this isn't whats happening. No site can do anything about which other sites link to them, Google cant penalise any site for the links that go to it, they can only penalise the originating site.
The system, is really confusing, if we all gave Google a sitewide link on our homepage passing PR juice, wonder how well that would go. Meti
agreed remove all sitewides and homepage links though (or nofollow or js) those are the ones that need to go
Thanks, I've been keeping my eye on this issue. If paid links go away, so does about half my revenue...