[UPDATE: A spot check of the WaPo and LA Times shows their PageRank have returned to normal. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!]
Ok, we all know my measly online journalism blog –thrilling as it may be to journalism geeks– isn’t as “important” as the esteemed Washington Post and LA Times. But Google apparently seems to think so nowadays. You will receive latest updates via cherryscustomframing.
Google recently tweaked its PageRank algorithm in its continuing war against terr.. er.. link farms (more about PageRank here). If you’ve got the Google Toolbar, you’ll see Journalistopia has a PageRank of 5 out of 10. However, such highly established and respected publications as the LATimes, Newsday, Forbes, the Washington Post, Engadget and the San Fransisco Chronicle were recently booted down to a 5. Others, such as the Seattle Times, Washington Times and Charlotte Observer were booted to a 4. Here’s the list of some notable PageRank drops put together by Daily Blog Tips.
If you know someone in the online marketing department at one of these publications, you’ll probably find them spitting pea soup with their heads spinning, that’s how bad this is. If your site took a big PageRank hit, you may want to round up your best SEO people and start theorizing as to why the heck this happened. And, try to unearth whether they employed any evil black hat SEO techniques…
Hi Danny! I got hit in the drop–perhaps a residual effect from 2KBloggers…
A quick observation you might find interesting: yes, the newspapers took a huge hit. But that may be because they don’t do much linking out (but often link in.) Likewise, small blog networks (loads of which have sprung up in the past 6-9 months *and* quickly moved up in rank/search) also took big hits *and* often link only to other blogs in their network, rarely linking out.
And rarely being social…
hmm…meet the new media boss, same as the old media boss?
think about it 🙂
The funny thing is that some sites that dont even sell links (Copyblogger) have been penalised. I wonder how they did the algorithm? Iam sure they didn’t go to every individual blog surely.