Google Page Rank 0

Google hates me.

About a week ago I was loading up my site in Firefox and the Google toolbar which shows PageRank started showing a PageRank of 0 for my site, whereas prior to that day it was sitting at PageRank 3.

At first I thought that perhaps it may be a temporary glitch.  No such luck.  A week later it’s still sitting at PageRank 0 level.

Researching into the topic I found nothing but mountains upon mountains of conflicting information.  It seems that the PageRank algorithm itself is somewhat predictable, and there is a lot of good information out there for how to improve your PageRank levels by getting higher level PageRank sites to link to you, but when it comes to why Google Slaps someone with the demoralizing PageRank 0 Google Slap, it’s anybody’s guess.

Theories About Why Google Might Slap You With a Page Rank 0

Why would Google decide to slap a site like InspiredMoneyMaker.com with a Page Rank of 0?

(1) No Valuable Content

Could it be that Google thinks this Blog provides no valuable content?  Nope, that couldn’t be it otherwise it would have never given me a Page Rank of 3 before and it wouldn’t give some of my other sites which have 1/10th the content of this site higher Page Ranks.  It can’t be the content.

(2) Improper Outgoing Links

Google’s Quality guidelines state: “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.  In particualr, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

There is definitely a lot of room for interpretation here.  Does selling links on a service like Text-Link-Ads count in this definition?  What constitutes a “bad neighborhood”?  How do we check whether a site is part of a “bad neighborhood”?

If selling Text-Link-Ads on your site is a crime in Google’s eyes, then why are sites like JohnChow.com or StevePavlina.com selling them and their PageRank isn’t affected?

Since I can’t figure out whether that was the problem, I ditched Text-Link-Ads off my site.  In a way, it wasn’t contributing to the overall quality of my site anyways so it wasn’t a big loss from my point of view so it was kind of a no-brainer.  Do I still sell links?  Yes, you can still purchase a link on my site by going to my advertise page, but all my links have the “rel=’nofollow’” tag so PageRank will not be passed.  So, if you plan on purchasing a link, the reason you’d do it is because you have a site that would be relevant to my visitors and you hope that they click on the links instead of just hoping to get some PageRank passed on.

(3) Affiliate Links

Does Google penalize for having Affiliate links?  Well, I think once again it depends on what you are promoting.  For example, if my site has an affiliate link to a software package that I review that’s relevant to my readers, why would Google have a problem with that?  They shouldn’t.  However, I am not 100% if they still want me to put the “rel=’nofollow’” tag on all my affiliate links as well.

It kind of makes sense to do that as there is no point passing on your PageRank to your affiliate sites if you don’t have to, but I don’t see why Google would penalize me for it even if I left things the way they are.  I don’t link to affiliate programs that I don’t believe to be relevant to my users so it shouldn’t matter.

(4) Automated Queries to Google

I do own a copy of a software called “Rank Tracker” which allows you to track the rank of your site for specific keywords automatically so you know what page of Google your site is on for a specific keyword.  I have used it in the last few months to monitor my site.  Could that be pissing Google off?  Who knows.  Either way, I stopped using it.

However, if that’s what is pissing them off what prevents me from typing in someone else’s site into the software and checking their ranking over and over again and getting them banned by Google?  If Google banned people like that, it would be rather silly…. wouldn’t it?

(5) No Robots.txt

This was rather silly of me, but I didn’t realize that until now I had no Robots.txt file.  I don’t think this would kill my PageRank, but either way I created one and put it up to make Google happy.  I now disallow directories like /category/ and /archives/ which may have been contributing to Google thinking I have duplicate content on my site?

(6) No Sitemap

This can’t be it, because I do have a sitemap for my site.  It’s submitted to Google via their Webmaster tools panel and it registered everything being OK so that can’t be it I don’t think.

(7) Paid Reviews (aka ReviewMe)

Could Google be penalizing me for accepting paid reviews?  It’s a good theory and a lot of people out there have expressed concern about it on the Internet, but there’s no way this is it because I haven’t even DONE a paid review on this site yet!  I have ReviewMe installed on a couple of my older Blogs and I have done paid reviews there and my PageRank is fine on those sites, so how could they penalize me here when I haven’t even done a Paid Review yet?

From my understanding, they don’t penalize you for doing Paid Reviews as long as the review is something related to your topic.

So Really Why Did Google Slap Me?

Honestly I have no idea.  I have tried looking at every inch of my site to see what I could be doing wrong, and I can’t find anything that I could have done that isn’t being done by other Bloggers.  I mean, John Chow does a whole bunch of Paid Reviews via ReviewMe.  His site isn’t ranked PageRank 0.  He also sells links via Text-Link-Ads and they don’t have the “rel=’nofollow’” tag in them since Text-Link-Ads doesn’t put that in their links.

There are a tonne of other Bloggers out there doing the same thing… actually including me on a few other Blogs I used to run that are now orphans but actually have a higher PageRank than this site.

When I was in the Google Webmasters Tools section I went to submit a “Request Reconsideration” ticket to have my site re-assessed after I removed Text-Link-Ads and added some “rel=’nofollow’” tags to some links I had, I did notice one thing though.

Take a look at this:
This got me thinking.  Did someone maybe report me for having Text-Link-Ads on my site?  Even though many other Bloggers have paid links on their site, maybe they haven’t been penalized simply because nobody’s reported them yet?

If I was a Darkworker I’d report one of them to see if their PageRank drops, but that would be too evil.  I don’t want the bad Karma.

So all I can do now is wait for my Request Reconsideration to be processed and hopefully I see the return of my Page Rank.

What Does it All Mean?  Is InspiredMoneyMaker.com Doomed?

Nope.  Here’s why I’m not worried.  From day one I focused on building this site by creating quality content and by promoting it through channels not related to Google Search Traffic.  People find my site by reading the thousands of posts I’ve created out there on forums, comments on other Blogs, social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, and a very big chunk of my traffic comes simply from word of mouth advertising.

In fact, if I add up all the traffic I have gotten from Google from day one of launching this Blog it only ads up to 4.38% of my total traffic.  That’s really not a huge chunk.  Over 95% of my traffic comes from sources other than Google.  Isn’t that crazy?

Now of course this could mean that I still have a lot of optimization to do, and I COULD be leaving a lot of traffic on the table that Google COULD be driving to my site, but I’ve taken the advice of Bloggers like Steve Pavlina and John Chow and I haven’t really focused too much on trying to get Google to like me.  I’ve focused completely on trying to get my readers to like me instead.  I write content for my readers, not for the search engines.  If that means Google hates me…oh well.  I’m here to provide value for my readers, not for Google.

Eventually, if I provide value to my readers, Google has to like me because they are in the business of putting valuable content in front of their users so I’m not worried.

Does Page Rank Even Matter?

This graph shows my traffic from Google Organic Search.  As you can see it’s growing in the last few months.  Since my Page Rank dropped to zero, I haven’t seen any drop in search traffic.  So does it really matter?  I suppose it matters if I am selling advertising space to people who take Page Rank into account, or just because having a Page Rank 0 looks bad for those who look at such things, but what does it really mean?

In reality, having my Page Rank drop to 0 hasn’t changed a thing.  My traffic hasn’t dropped.  My readers haven’t left.  My subscriber list keeps growing.

I’ve done what I can to figure out what Google wants from me and I’ve submitted a request to have my site reconsidered, but at the end of the day if Google doesn’t bump my PageRank back up in a few weeks I think I’ll just get a T-Shirt made that says “Google Hates Me” and underneath there will be a PageRank 0 icon, and I’ll put the picture up on all the social media sites and I’ll probably get WAY more traffic from that to my site than I ever did from Google Search.

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