[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]
Google's recent Page Rank (PR) updates have left the blogger community gaping. More so for the Personal Finance (PF) bloggers. Most of the famous non PF blogs which suffered a loss of PR have had their PRs restored within a week or so and are back in business. But the PF blogosphere has not been so fortunate.For those of us who are not aware of what PR is and how it helps in bringing in searching engine traffic, here is a great explanation by Ridings & Shishigin. Matt Cutts (of Google fame) had already warned months ago that Google would heavily come down on sites sporting paid links. The simple reason is that these sponsored links decrease the credibility and usefulness of Google's PR algorithm to serve relevant pages to its search engine audience.
As computer scientists, we feel that sponsored links alone are not the cause of the current decrease in PR. It also depends on how we distribute PR within our site and its design especially with respect to outgoing links.
Also, Google's algorithms are intelligent enough to identify links from bad neighborhoods. A simple extension of the same algorithm can probably detect linking among a group of sites (for months) in order to build PR by manipulating Google's algorithm. For those of you who are in blog networks and exchange "link love" every week (a machine identifiable predictable pattern), this might be one of the reasons for a drop in PR. But that is our guess and we could be mightily wrong.
The data below shows that there has been decrease in PR of most sites participating in blog networks. The sites within the network will most probably suffer a decrease in PR. Why? The PR of most of its incoming links (from different nodes of the network) have gone down. Based on definition (in the algorithm above) this will bring the PR down.
Effect of decrease in PR?
SEO Experts have been saying that there would be NO immediate decrease in a site's search engine traffic due to decrease in PR. But in the long run it will go down heavily. The decrease in PR of a site will cause it to appear way down in the list of results of a Google search.Google keeps changing its PR algorithm continously to take care of all the manipulations that people do to beat it. Unless you care for Google's search engine traffic you can well ignore PR.
We gathered data (manually) to see how our Top 100 PF Bloggers by Traffic fared in the PR updates. Unfortunately only a handful of us either gained PR or were not affected by it. But the rest incurred serious decreases in PR including most of the blogs in the top ten PF traffic pullers. Here is the data for your perusal.
- The list is sorted alphabetically and is not ranked by any metric.
- We compared the current PR of a website with its PR in the month of September (we had the data from our rankings of PF blogs for Sep 07).
- New blogs who submitted data to be included in PF rankings based on their traffic in Oct 07 are not included here.
- A comprehensive ranking for Oct 07, which includes new sites who have requested an inclusion, will be published in a few days. That will give us a good idea about the effect of PR on search engine traffic.
| PR Decreased | |
| PR Increased | |
| -- | PR Same |
Last updated on Thu Nov 01 2007 01:01 AM EDT
| Blog | PR Sep | PR Oct | Change |
| 22Dollars | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| 2millionBlog | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| AccumulatingMoney | 3 | 3 | -- |
| AdventureMoney | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| AdventuresInMoneyMaking | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| AFrugalLivingBlog | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| ALifeAfterCollege | 0 | 0 | -- |
| AllFinancialMaters | 5 | 5 | -- |
| Ardini | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| AroundTheSun | 0 | 3 | +3 |
| ArtOfMoney | 4 | 4 | -- |
| AskDong | 3 | 3 | -- |
| AskMrCreditCardBlog | 4 | 4 | -- |
| AskUncleBill | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| BankBonuses | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| BankDeals | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| Becoming&StayingDebtFree | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| BinaryDollar | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| BloggingAwayDebt | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| BluePrintForFinancialProsperity | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| BostonGal'sOpenWallet | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| Brokeass-Student | 4 | 4 | -- |
| BryanCFleming | 2 | 4 | +2 |
| BudgetingBabe | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| CashMoneyLife | 2 | 3 | +1 |
| CentsToSave | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| CityGirl'sFinancialBlog | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| CleverDude | 3 | 4 | +1 |
| ConsumerismCommentary | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| CreditCave | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| DebtectiveBlog | 3 | 3 | -- |
| DebtHater | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| DebtInSeattle | 3 | 3 | -- |
| DimesToDollars | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| DinksFinance | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| DontMessWithTaxes | 5 | 5 | -- |
| EnglishMajorMoney | 4 | 4 | -- |
| EnoughWealth | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| EverybodyLovesYourMoney | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| FearlessMoney | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| FinanceIsPersonal | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| FinanceWorld | 2 | 4 | +2 |
| FindingFreedom | 0 | 0 | -- |
| FireBy40 | 2 | 0 | -2 |
| FIREFinance | 4 | 4 | -- |
| FiveCentNickel | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| FrankTheFinanciallySavvyAtheist | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| FreeMoneyFinance | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| FrugalForLife | 4 | 4 | -- |
| FrugalLawStudent | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| FrugalUpstate | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| GenerationXFinance | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| GetRichSlowly | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| GettingFinancesDone | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| GradMoneyMatters | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| Hill'sPersonalFinance | 2 | 3 | +1 |
| HowISaveMoney | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| HowToMakeAMillionDollars | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| ItsJustMoney | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| IWillTeachYouToBeRich | 6 | 5 | -1 |
| JustAnotherMoneyBlog | 3 | 3 | -- |
| KirbyOnFinance | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| LazyManAndMoney | 5 | 2 | -3 |
| MadMoneyMachine | 5 | 5 | -- |
| MakeLoveNotDebt | 6 | 5 | -1 |
| Mapgirl’sFiscalChallenge | 0 | 0 | -- |
| MightyBargainHunter | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| MillionDollarCountdown | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| MillionDollarJourney | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| MoneyAndValues | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| MoneyCrashers | 5 | 5 | -- |
| MoneyMatter&MoreMusings | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| MoneyMusings | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| MoneySmartLife | 5 | 2 | -3 |
| MoneySmartzWeBlog | 4 | 4 | -- |
| MoneyTortoise | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| MoneyWalks | 4 | 4 | -- |
| Moolanomy | 0 | 4 | +4 |
| My1stMillionAt33 | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| MyFinancialAwarenessBlog | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| MyFinancialJourney | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| MyMoneyBlog | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| MyMoneyForest | 5 | 2 | -3 |
| MyMoneyPath | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| MyOpenWallet | 2 | 5 | +3 |
| MyPersonalFinanceJourney | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| MyTwoDollars | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| NoCreditNeeded | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| NotMadeOfMoney | 4 | 4 | -- |
| OneFrugalGirl | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| OneMillionAndBeyond | 3 | 3 | -- |
| OSAWatch | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| PaidTwice | 0 | 4 | +4 |
| PennyFoolish | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| Penny-Saved | 2 | 3 | +1 |
| PersonalFinanceAtKmull | 2 | 4 | +2 |
| Plonkee | 0 | 2 | +2 |
| PoorerThanYou | 4 | 4 | -- |
| ProjectStocks | 2 | 3 | +1 |
| PTMoney | 0 | 0 | -- |
| PunnyMoney | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| RetiringEarly | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| RichMinx | 0 | 4 | +4 |
| SavvySaver | 4 | 4 | -- |
| SingleGuyMoney | 0 | 0 | -- |
| StockGumShoe | 0 | 3 | +3 |
| StopBuyingCrap | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| SushiMoney | 2 | 2 | -- |
| TheDigeratiLife | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| TheDoughRoller | 0 | 3 | +3 |
| TheFinanceJourney | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| TheFinancialLadder | 4 | 4 | -- |
| TheFreshTrader | 0 | 4 | +4 |
| TheFrugalDuchess | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| ThePiggyBanker | 3 | 4 | +1 |
| TheSimpleDollar | 5 | 5 | -- |
| TheStubbornCapitalist | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| TheSun'sFinancialDiary | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| TheTexasMooseBlog | 4 | 0 | -4 |
| TheTimeAndMoneyGroupBlog | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| TheWeightOfMoney | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| TightFistedMiser | 3 | 1 | -2 |
| TiredOfBeingBroke | 3 | 3 | -- |
| WealthBuildingLessons | 5 | 3 | -2 |
| WellHeeled | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| WereInDebt | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| YoungAndBroke | 5 | 2 | -3 |
Please let us know your feedback regarding your theories behind the drop of PR and how you plan to combat it. We would love to learn from real life experiences.
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Image Source(s): iStockPhoto
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