Izea, Page Rank and the ongoing slap-down

I’ve already stated that I took a hit to my Google page rank on any blog I host that is running Izea (formerly PayPerPost) sponsored ads.  The big G took this action a step further a few days ago and removed all PR from my primary blog, dropping it from a PR 3 to a PR2, then to a PR0 a few days later.  I had expected to just squeak in to a PR4 on this round of updates based on the number and quality of inbound links, but in Google’s eyes I have apparently violated the sanctity of their algorithm.

Originally I was concerned that Google would banish me from their search results as well, but that has not happened.  Actually, traffic from Google Search results has increased, if anything (something to do with a food blog and the holidays, I’m sure…  It’s my busy season.)

I know I’m not alone in this.  Andy Beard has posted several great articles on the subject, and I’ve been keeping up with what he has to say.  This one in particular is quite informative, and helped to put my mind at ease for getting dropped from the SERPs altogether.  I’m also completely revamping the site that was hit, so I’ll probably file a re inclusion request when done, though the only thing I can think of that I might have done to tick Google off is to have used paid posts, with disclosure and turn on dofollow on my comments. (This was done because I prefer t give a little automatic love to those who take the time to say something.  Unfortunately it has a price…)

If you’re running Izea on your site, you might want to consider this staement from the official PayPerPost blog:

We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.

This is also something I had been doing, labeling sponsored articles as “PPP”.  It made things esy for me, but I’ll be going back through and changing this in the next few days.  One other thing I’m going to try is going back and either deleting any older paid inclusion posts. (posts older than the 30 day minimum) or at least changing all links to a rel=nofollow.  Hopefully this will keep Google a bit happier.

For now, my suggestion is that you subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed, he’s got the most reliable information I’ve found so far.

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