Pay Per Post & Google Page Rank

Pay Per Post is something I just recently read about and began to look into when I read in Google Groups about this individual who got slapped with a page rank zero. The site currently had a page rank 4. So, does this mean this site is sandboxed? Hardly, they are still getting a good amount of traffic to there site and still rank well in the search results. This makes me think about how much importance we place on that little bar at the top of our browser and whether or not it is all that important.

It is highly important due to the fact that all of us who use the internet and understand this little number, immediately check to see if we are at a site Google says is worthy of our time. Anyway, on to the forum post…

Hi. I’m new with all this SEO and pagerank so excuse me if my
questions seem dumb and naive. During the recent pagerank update, my
blog: http://natalie1981.blogspot.com increased from zero to four
which was a bit of a surprise for me since most websites dropped in
ranking due to what they call text link selling and I was a member of
payperpost and had some paid post on my site even before the update.

Just yesterday, I noticed that my pagerank dropped from four to zero.
Now I know that maybe Google has just noticed that I’m a member of
payperpost and they just recently noticed my paid posts and decided to
slap me with a penalty but I’m thinking of submitting my website for
reconsideration so I was wondering if I really need to remove the paid
posts or is it okay to just put the rel=nofollow tag? I don’t want to
remove my paid posts since some of them brings traffic to my blog and
I’ve read that it’s okay to have paid links just as long as it has the
nofollow tag, so is this true?

I also need help as to what other guidelines my blog may have violated
and how to fix this before I resubmit for reconsideration. I’ve read
the guidelines but I need some specifics so if anyone could help me I
would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Like many who commented on the forum about this particular post, I to say she should take all her pay per post and add the pay per post disclaimer. Its only right she do this as this is policy for for sites like pay per post dot com. It states on the home page “Disclaimer Required”. Google also says you need to inform your readers of what there actually reading. If your paid, then say so. It doesn’t make the reader offended, in fact, if it was me, I’d feel a little more comfortable in what the writer is writing.

Back to the comments within this particular post… Admin to the forum posted a comment that makes total sense to me. Just create a category stating all post within this particular category are paid reviews. End of troubles!

What should happen next? Well, nothing really. Google hasn’t place the site in the sandbox. The site still has traffic. In the post, she asks if she should go ahead and ask for reconsideration. If she places all her paid post in one category and mark it as paid reviews, then she should go ahead and ask for reconsideration. When Google finally gets around to it, her site will be once again listed with page rank.

As I learn more about Pay Per Post, I’ll write more about it. Oh, I almost forgot to mention what Google had to say about this to Natalie. Here is there quote:

Hi natalie1981,

As I’m sure you saw in our Webmaster Guidelines, we specifically warn
against participating in link schemes designed to increase your site’s
ranking or PageRank:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

For more specific details regarding paid links, check out this
article:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

As Admin Aaron suggests, one good way to handle sponsored links is to
disclose them to your visitors by adding a “sponsored” label, and to
search engines using the rel=”nofollow” attribute. It looks like
you’ve already implemented this with your “blatant advertising
(sponsored reviews)” label and the nofollowed links, so good work!

As always, like JLH mentioned, if your site has previously violated
our Webmaster Guidelines and and you’ve made changes to it so that it
now meets our guidelines, feel free to file a reconsideration request
in Webmaster Tools.

- Wysz

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