Did you get slapped by the recent Google Smackdown? And if so, how hard?

Did you feel the most recent PageRank update by Google?

I think everyone got affected — and we’ll discuss later on the biggest players who got affected by this recent Google Smackdown.

I heard from a number of people in my circle of influence telling me how this one site got dropped a good couple of PageRank notches from where it used to be and then this other site — and another one and so on.

But what the ultimate affects of this most recent PageRank update remains to be seen. And the only true indicators of how this affected you can be understood by taking a look at your web traffic stats and comparing them to last month’s statistics and the month before.

Did you lose any rankings? Did your traffic take a dip?

In the most likely event, nothing much happened.

Unfortunately, I heard a lot of dismay from this recent Google PageRank update from people and, personally, I pay it NO mind.

A common mistake a lot of people just starting off tend to make is putting a bit to much faith in the Google PageRank system. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bad mouthing the system at all).

Firstly, your site’s PageRank (or “PR”) should not be a mood level indicator.

Some people base their whole entire outlook on their website as to the PageRank level that Google assigns their website at each and every update — as if it’s some sort of acceptance that your site is progressing.

I’ve been through this rollercoaster many of times, and, again, I pay it NO mind.

If you’re just starting out and a complete newbie to the search engine game, then you may be wondering what the hell is this PageRank stuff anyways.

Simply, it’s a formula that Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) came up with to rank websites according to popularity. The popularity is judged by a number of factors, but moreso, it is based upon the number and quality of inbound links that point at your site. This is also known as Link Popularity.

Sad thing is too many webmasters and online business owners place all their belief in this PageRank system and I’ve personally heard from people that rely on this so much to the point where it seems people are walking on eggshells, or even worse, fearing to step on a landmine that might contain an explosive reaction that blows their website out of Google’s index.

I have received many messages from people so frustrated in not knowing what Google’s criteria and what they wanted and how they wanted it, that they give up their entire website promotion strategy based on this PR rollercoast.

That’s just basically absurd!

Fact is, no one on the outside walls of Google will ever know what the largest, most dominant search engine on this earth REALLY wants. But we do know that it’s somewhat about fresh, unique content and an assortment of good quality (mixed with some low quality) inbound links pointing at our sites. Search engines seems to love blogs, forums and web 2.0 sites that are driven by human-generated content by its own users such as blog comments and forums.

But the truth is — if you do something deceitful and slightly black hat in the Search Engine Optimization world, they (Google and others) are bound to tag you, flag you, and push the red button. And zap — you’re gone.

But time and time again – after all the different updates – PageRank goes haywire all the time and you should not hinge upon the next update, but stay steady and fast on your mission. Stay committed is what I’m saying.

Too often, I see people stop mid-stream after months of promotion because an update plummeted their PageRank from a 5 to a zero.

It happened to me and it’s happened NicheBOT as well. NicheBOT has gone from a PR0 to PR5, back down to PR0 and then up to a PR6, then back down to a PR4, then up to a PR10 (and boy, people were blowing a stink about that), then back to a PR6, and now down to a PR5. Yet, I will tell you time and time again, this does NOT affect my mood.

One update ago, I just visually saw EzineArticles.com (a very popular article directory) go from a PR7 to a PR0 and then back up to a PR6 in the span of a couple of months back earlier this year. Did people stop submitting articles to them? Absolutely not! This is a great place to get traffic nearly 24-48 hours after your article gets approved.

To make a judgment and then a business decision based on a PageRank update is much like stopping short of hitting gold. I almost did this once before myself.

And the real truth is — you may somehow set off some trigger or flag system that had nothing to do with anything you did. You just need to carry on and keep doing what it is you were doing, unless it is something black hat.

As long as you are adding valuable content to your site that enhances your visitor’s experience, even if you are making 1-5 blog posts and posting 1-5 articles per day on your site, it doesn’t really matter.

As long as you are getting inbound links to your site (not from link farms) and not doing anything too highly automated or black hat, then you should not be at risk at all.

I look at PageRank as a sort of vanity — and that’s it.

So now let’s talk about who this PageRank really affects.

I’m about 99.99% sure that this most recent Google PageRank update had some dismal affects on the those that sell text ad links on sites and/or just sell links to other webmasters on their websites.

If someone was paying $75 or even more a month to have a link back to their site on some PR7 or PR8 web page, and that page fell to a PR4 or lower, then that link is no longer worth as much. It’s sort of like a falling stock price on Wall Street.

The link selling business is a scary market to be in when you have no clue what Google could do next — and why bank on a market like this whose belly could fall out from underneath it. Not that I believe that Google’s PageRank might disappear anytime soon, but I believe this last update was a true indication that text ad brokers have something to worry about when selling links to other website owners.

It’s now common knowledge that Google is going after sites that are attempting to use the PageRank system for monetary gain (by selling links).

Sure, NicheBOT could probably go about selling text ad links in our Resources directory, or anywhere for that matter, but why cheapen things just for a few bucks?! There’s too much quality here and we’re certainly not hard up to lease out space for some people to cram their keyword phrase text links on our precious real estate.

Either way, I hope I’ve made my point that you just can’t rely upon the Google PageRank system to judge how well or bad your site is doing.

Keep building valuable content and adding it to your site and continually strive to get inbound links.

PageRank is just an indicator — and it’s, quite frankly, very easy to pass PageRank from one site to another by having a well established site link to another to transfer what we call “link juice.”

I’m just curious what your impression was about this most recent Google PageRank update and the perception of how you were effected.

Please leave your comment below.

Thanks!

Best wishes for success,

Jim Morris, President/CEO

Full Throttle Enterprises, Inc.

NicheBOT – “Finds exactly what people search for.”