Okay, so Google doesn’t completely hate me
Dec 2, 2007 Blogging
As most should know by now, Google went on a little spree lately and bitch slapped a whole lot of bloggers by rubbing out their page rank. I was one of their many targets, having my brief PR4 knocked down to PR0. I have to admit I did deserve it, since I was technically in violation of their TOS. I’ve been working to correct that issue though. But anywho, that’s not really what this post is about.
What this post IS about is that it appears Google hasn’t completely disowned me. I’m sure most everyone at some point has performed an “ego search”, the act of searching your name on Google. I hadn’t done it in a while, so yesterday I searched for “Mike” and to my surprise I landed on the first page. The last entry on the first page, but still, THE FIRST PAGE. Just two spots below the Mayor of New York City. Whoa. Considering how many Mikes there are on this planet and the 260,000,000 results on Google for that search term, that has to be considered a pretty dandy accomplishment, no? :mrgreen: Who knows how long I’ll remain on the first page of course, but hey, it’s cool while it lasts!
So, when you search your name on Google, where do you place in the results?
Popularity: 3% [?]
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December 2nd, 2007 at 4:30 am
Mike that is actually pretty cool dude. Have you looked at your traffic analysis reports to see if you are getting traffic from that?
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
I’m prolly no where near the front of the line, but then again I haven’t checked yet. LOL
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Nice, that’s one hell of a nasty keyword you ranked for :D It may have something to do with your title tag containing two “Mike”s.
Oh and by the way, I’ve been to the States twice, both times to Cortland.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
@Garry: I haven’t really checked it out, but then I only just discovered it. When I have more of a free moment, I’ll probably take a peek at the stats =)
@Jenny: Try it! :)
@Tudor: I know, right? I couldn’t possibly have a more common name…lol. And why on earth would you come to Cortland both times when visiting the U.S.? :P Ya have family here?
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
i wish they didn’t seem to hate me…the pulled the pr rug from under my feet across 10 blogs i write for.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Congrats Mike, there’s a whole lot Mike’s in the world so that’s beyond amazing! I still don’t think you deserved a zero at all, no way. You’re too good of a writer.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
@Sirjorge: TEN?!? Good lord. How many if any were paid links being sold on? That’s been the basis of their witch hunt. Of course who knows why blogs that don’t sell links were hit as well.
@Christy: Hehe…well thank you. Of course PR has nothing to do with how well you write though ;P
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Congratulations! :D I’m not even near the first page with my name, but then again I don’t have my name in my domain name ^^
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:16 pm
:)
That is pretty cool. I pull up on the front page of Google for my first name too, Garry.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Very cool. Did you know that if you searched for the word ‘brown’ I’m at the 6th page? For 335 Million results, that’s not bad haha.
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Ha ha!
Thats awesome Baron. Next time I need to be reminded of the color “Brown” I’ll use Google and find your site. Make sure you put a brief description of the color somewhere on you sidebar! :)
December 4th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Hey Mike, what things were you in violation for? I haven’t even begun trying to figure out why mine dropped. Just don’t have the time these days, unfortunately.
December 4th, 2007 at 2:00 am
i’m #1 in “julia aquino”
but in “julia” nah!
December 4th, 2007 at 2:05 am
@Aaron: Hey bud! It was the PayPerPost stuff. Their sponsored links aren’t no-follow. I hadn’t done any opps for them in quite a while (and didn’t have much interest in doing so), so it seemed like a no-brainer to go back and no-follow the links to the very few opps I did. I submitted a reconsideration request three days ago and as of tonight it looks like my PR4 has returned. Hopefully it will stay this time…lol.
@Julia: It’s a start! ;P
December 4th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Oy, for some reason I missed a bunch of comments on this post. I’m slacking…lol.
@Jenny: Your name is about as common as mine, but ya never know..hehe.
@Malin: I bet if ya put your name in your site description though, it might help a bit :)
@Baron: That’s not bad at all, buddy! Hmmm, I wonder what ya could to rank even higher with brown? ;P
@Garry: Sweet! It looks like I’ve been bumped to the top spot of the second page as of tonight, but hey that’s still not too shabby ;P
December 4th, 2007 at 3:56 am
:)
No worries Mike, that is just Google rubbing their boot in your face one last time to make sure you STAY DOWN… see you wrote a post of Google hope and Google signs up for Google Alerts for “Google” and know when people mention they are starting to do better in Google and make yet another adjustment.
Kinda like in the movies when a gangster kills a guy with one shot… but then just because the guy is an ass, he goes ahead and unloads the rest of the clip on the dude even though he is already dead.
That’s how Google can be sometimes. :)
Joking… Google don’t ban me now, Ok?
December 4th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Mine is an easy Speedcat #1 … not much to compete with except a LOT of Puma shoes!
Hey Mike, what does – “violation of their TOS” mean, refering to Google?
December 4th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
back to click notifier…. ooops!
December 5th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I am NOT on the first page by Bush. Dammit. Google REALLY hates me.
December 8th, 2007 at 2:21 am
@Eric: It just means I was doing things that they didn’t particularly like ;P
@Bush: You should sue, dammit ;)
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:52 am
Sorry to hear you got G-slapped because of the PPP thing. IMHO, it was a very nasty trick G! puled considering they reset the PR to all the B5-Media sites (because they have buddies at G!), PR really isn’t as important as SERPS anyway, and I’ve had PR0 sites on first page in Google many times. I think this next update (which I believe will happen before New Years) will see most of the victims restored to their proper PR.
I never did the PPP stuff on any of my blogs, but hey, my friends who did made a heck of a lot more money per month than with Adsense.
I still see you have 430 pages indexed in G! and you’re still topping SERPS (using the site:thingsbymike.com query in Google) for some of your article titles like
“A meme you can sink your teeth into”
“Google doesn’t completely hate me”
If you check your Yahoo backlinks using
linkdomain:thingsbymike.com -site:thingsbymike.com
You are showing 23,400 backlinks. That’s a right PR6 (as if PR really matters anymore). IMHO, Regardless, you have a good attitude, a great blog and I personally think the setback is only momentary. Of course, as wbmasters/bloggers, setbacks are the bread and butter of our business because as Nitzche said “That which does not kill us only makes us stronger”
Maybe this last G! update was like the Black Flag album title “Process of Weeding Out” and it will get rid of a lot of the unnecessary bloggers who were only here to take advantage of getting paid to post.
sidenote -> WTF didnt they grab John Chow, Shoemoney and ProBlogger ? and why is TLA still a PR7, PPP still PR6 – seems to me that the effective way to deal with this G! issue would be to “strike at the heart of the enemy” as Sun Tzu professed, alas, poor Google (and Matt Cutts), they are too busy reading “Stock Market for Dummies” tryng to figure out how to unload their stock options than to understand the real situation, either that or they knew they could get away with slapping individual (non-corporate backed) bloggers and the are too timid to “cut off the head of the snake”.
Still a great blog you got here and you’ve got one more loyal reader. That’s all that matters. Keep your head held high and stick to your guns. As the old saying goes “A defeatist is the first one who will admit defeat”.
Enough of my analogies and quotes. It’s 4am and my insomnia is starting to wane…
Peace Out,
Dave
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:37 am
Now, THAT’s a comment :mrgreen: I appreciate the kind words, Dave. I ultimately did the reconsideration thing and got my PR4 back. I know PR isn’t really a big deal anymore, but it was something I earned and losing it over a measly handful of paid posts I did months ago really bugged me.
There are definitely people making a LOT more money with the posts than they do with adsense. I barely make pennies a day from it myself. The idea of making much more through paid posts seemed pretty neat but ultimately there were so many crap opportunities to write about that I really had no interest in. On top of that most of the advertisers stressed having positive reviews. If I can’t review something honestly, I don’t like the idea of reviewing it at all. Funny thing is all they really care about is getting linked to from high ranking pages, so why does it really matter if something is positive or not? You got your link.
In January SocialSpark.com officially launches and nofollow links will be a requirement. I still may poke my head in there and check it out once it gets going. I’d feel better about linking to advertisers through a system like that which won’t pass pagerank. The extra money to be made from it is certainly tempting since I’m trying to fund and make an independent film.
In regards to the Yahoo links and PR6. I’ve noticed that as well. I checked one of those prediction things a couple times and they predict PR6 as well. Of course I don’t trust those things all that much, however they did ultimately predict a PR4 for this domain and my others during the last update and were right.
Going after big buys like Shoemoney? Imagine that. It’s easier to pick on the little guys ;)
Thanks for the super comment, Dave!
Mike’s last blog post..I am only somewhat legend