Did Google Lose This Battle?

Unless you've been living under a rock in the desert for the past month (or you just don't read any blogs), you have no doubt heard about the latest Google PR update and the affect it had on the PR of blogs selling text links. In case you didn't hear, they have now started lowering the page rank of blogs that make money by selling text links.

A lot of very well known, high PR blogs were affected by this latest update. My blog was lowered from a PR4 to a PR3 but many were hit even harder than that. For instance, one of the top "Make Money Online" blogs - JohnChow.com - dropped from a PR6 to a PR4.

Ok that's all the deeper I am going to get into the details of what happened in the latest update. It has already been blogged to death by countless people. I have a different point I am trying to make here.

Without further ado, let’s get on to the real reason for this post...

I'm seeing Google as being the biggest loser in this update. Not because they lost any PR or anything like that, but it looks like they have started a revolution or a lash back of sorts.

Since the update more and more blogs seem to be selling text links now and very few have stopped selling them, even those that were hit with the PR drop.

I don't know if there were a lot of bloggers who simply didn't know they could make money selling text links until it was brought to their attention with this latest update. Or if there are just more bloggers selling them now as a way to show Google that they do NOT own the internet. I personally think it's a combination of both.

Another thing that Google is trying to push on bloggers is putting the "nofollow" tags in links so they are not followed by robots and no PR is passed. Well, there has been a huge increase in bloggers saying screw the nofollow rule and are now implementing "do follow" so all links are followed by search engines and PR is passed. I've seen an even higher increase in this since the new update than those selling text links.

Not to mention the fact that text link brokers will now just find a new formula for basing prices of text links and this new Google "crack down" will have little to no effect. Instead of selling links based on PR they will just use a new set of factors, such as the blogs Technorati ranking + Alexa ranking + PR, and base prices on a score derived from that combination.

So, as far as I'm concerned, Google has lost this battle! Yes, there will be more. Nobody knows what they will do next but those of us in the blogosphere will band together and fight on!

Of course, these are just my opinions. What do you think?

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Owner of the Biz Tips Blog

P.S. - Want to buy a text link on this blog? See option #5 on my advertising page.

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