Did You Care About Google Page Rank?

I was told and read that Google page rank was very important since it was a mark of approval by Google and kind of a mark of trust and mark of any website’s importance. So I cared very much about my Google page rank. The best page rank I ever achieved was 4, which I thought at the time to be a great achievement. For no apparent reason in time it turned into 3 and eventually into 2.

The first time it went down it was devastating to me. I never figured out the reasons for it. At that time I was posting regularly and I had a significant number of engaged readers. When it went down to Google page rank 2 I kind of stopped caring about it that much but it still was on my mind. No matter what the secret algorithm and the way to arrive to the page rank Google used it was always changing and it never made much sense. When Google got rid of the page rank altogether it kind of confirmed what some people were saying for quite some time and what I began to suspect: Google page rank never made any sense, it was never a true reflection of the importance and trustworthiness of any website and therefore it should have never been created or abolished long time ago.

Good riddance then.
Authored by Vance Sova

Is Google A Bully That You Have To Suck Up To?

Last night I published a review post inside of which I remarked on the fact that Google search results aren’t still showing the most valuable stuff at the top or near the top in spite of all their recent updates. I also mentioned the subject for which posts in languages other than English were higher in search results than some posts in English and that keyword baiting posts were close to the top. I added two more unflattering remarks about Google further down the post which you can read here.

The punishment for doing that was swift. Within a few short hours the PR of my blog was degraded and the search results for my main keywords, like email list building, went down by 4 pages.

I wrote those things because they were true and because it was something that I could plainly see and couldn’t ignore and not because I like Google bashing or hate Google. In fact, if you go back through my blog and read what I wrote about Google, you will find that, with a few exceptions that express my puzzlement about why they do certain things, what I wrote about them is pretty positive.

Update: After a long time the distorted display in Chrome of some pages that I wrote about in one of my previous posts has been finally fixed and Chrome now displays them as well as Firefox. I have noticed it just now at 1:50 p.m PST on Monday, February 04, 2013, although it could have been fixed a few days ago but not much longer than that.

Update 2: 

Since this particular post was published my blog was knocked down by further 6 pages in Google search results. Any comments on that? This update is as of February 06, 2013. Below is the text of the original post.

A few months ago I created a category called “Understanding Google” because I’m not the only one who doesn’t always understand what they are doing and especially the reasons why they do it.

I do not begrudge Google their dominant position and I always wanted to believe that they didn’t abuse it. However, if they do abuse their position I’m not going to turn a blind eye to it.

What do you think is going on? Could it be a pure coincidence that within hours of my post in which I state what I clearly observe about Google, which happens to be unflattering to them, my blog’s PR is degraded and my blog’s placement in search results for my key keyword phrases is knocked down by 3 to 4 pages?

If it’s not a coincidence but a punishment for daring to say what I believe is the truth, then I wonder where we are. That would be a very depressing state of affairs. It would be like living in a communist system during the Cold War where everything is censored, where almost everybody is afraid to speak the truth because they don’t want to go to jail and have the members of their own family and even distant relatives punished for it too.

Today I have also noticed that the blogs whose authors are in a large number of Google+ circles are placed high in Google search results. That could be just a reward for being popular. But the fact that a very few significant online people that I know are very active on Google+ makes me wonder if Google rewards those who are very active there the same way that very active communist party members were rewarded in the Cold War era by the communist monster machine.

Could we be in Orwell’s kind of era with Google lording it over?

I hope not but it sure seems to increasingly look like it.

What do you think, am I stretching this too far or is there something to what I just wrote? Go ahead and make a comment.

Are you going to stay low and like a sheep bleat whatever Google wants to hear or are you going to speak the truth as you see it, no matter how you may be punished for it by the almighty Google?

Tweet the post, like it on Facebook, you can even google+ it and bookmark it so that others can find and read the post and join the conversation.

Authored by Vance Sova

Is Google Chrome Sick or Dying?

I really thought for quite a while that the Google Chrome browser was the best. I was frustrated with seemingly constant Firefox updates at the time when I wrote the post titled Chrome vs Firefox-Internet Marketing Best Browser Blog Discussion. That post turned out to be very popular and it attracted a lot of comments. 219 approved comments to be specific.

Many of the commenters preferred Firefox which at that time surprised me because I could find nothing wrong with Chrome then and plenty with Firefox. You can have a look at the older post by clicking on its title I mention above.

In the last few days, today is November 19, 2012, I have noticed something that I would never have thought possible. Google Chrome messing up the way it displays things and making them crooked and much more. Of course at first I thought that something is wrong with everything else but Chrome. Google would not allow this sort of thing to happen right?

Well it did and it is still going on right now as I write this. All other browsers that I tried display the same page correctly with no distortions whatsoever but Chrome is making it look like it was designed by somebody stoned, drunk or with severely damaged eyesight.

So right now any browser you can think of is working better than the almighty Google Chrome.

I turned off my computer and after turning it back on, the Chrome browser is still displaying old images which have been updated on a page and which show properly in Firefox.

I didn’t have to clear the history or do anything in Firefox. I shouldn’t have to do that in Chrome either.

Recently I found that, apparently, in order to clear history, cookies or whatever in your Chrome browser you have to log in. Give me a break.

Right now Google Chrome is broken. Will they fix it? Eventually, probably. But as far as I’m concerned they really blew it big time. Having to log in to clear your history, cookies or do anything that can be done routinely and with ease on Firefox and other browsers is bad enough to turn off a lot of people.

Add to that the fact that Chrome is obviously capable of distorted display of pages and images and showing old images instead of new ones even after the computer has been turned off and back on.

As if the above wasn’t enough, the speed of Chrome seems to be decreasing lately too. Oh, and I just remembered another thing which happened more than once before and a very short while ago: I put a web address in Chrome and after pressing enter it couldn’t find the page saying there’s no data there or something to that effect. I had to enter the same thing again and all of a sudden the data was there because it worked? I think the data was there all the time but Chrome couldn’t see it.

I am shocked and disappointed. I do hope things will get better soon but I’m not holding my breath.

How about you? Have you also noticed the rapidly decreasing quality of what Chrome does?

How about the necessity to log in, as mentioned above, does that bother you?

Please, leave your comment and google-plus this post, tweet it, like it on Facebook and bookmark it on your favorite bookmarking sites so others can join the discussion.

Do that now.

After having done that you can relax and watch something cute like kittens in the video below.

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Authored by Vance Sova

Understanding Google or at least

Trying to

Google’s newest update that is expected within one to eight days could be earth shattering for many. I’ve learned a lot since my last post where I speculated as to why Google has kicked my blog down a notch when it comes to the PR of it and its pages and why many of the links have vanished. I have never done any artificial link building but that doesn’t seem to matter so much. It’s just that links lost their value in general.

There was an indication of what was coming up with Google in my post about Google going social. But what is really happening and what is going to happen with Google and Google+ is much more revolutionary than I could have ever imagined then.

Google+ is much more than just an attempt to compete with Facebook. It is something almost entirely different. It serves for the preparation of the next generation of search services. Google+ is getting context, the preferences and likes of people. It lets Google aggregate all the information from across of their platforms. Google Now analyzes and anticipates what people will want and what they’ll look for even before they know it themselves. It’s contextually based search anticipating people’s needs.

This is why links in the old sense don’t work and won’t work anymore. Google may even punish you for the links that you have if they were built artificially. If they are legitimate they will just lose any value they may have had.

Based on history, it would seem that Google has come up with huge changes on or close to the last Friday of August. This is why it’s very likely that the big coming Google update may start within one to 8 days from today. It could be as soon as Friday, August 31, 2012.

No matter when it will happen, the date is not that important. The trend has been set and the fact that the coming update will be big has been indicated by Matt Cutts. One of his tweets from yesterday seems to be a warning to sites with Word Press on them. They’ll be scrutinized even more because they are often used by spammers. If you are a legitimate and well behaving WP user, then you should be OK.

The whole internet and online landscape seems to be undergoing a big change and Google is changing with it. They are changing in order to survive and to prosper. The Apple iPhone, its Siri and other smart phones and mobile devices like tablets have shaken Google up. They do have to act and they are acting right now. People use the internet differently than they used to. Roughly 50% of all searches are now done from mobile devices. People want instant and relevant results.

Unless you are a spammer you shouldn’t be afraid of what Google is doing and what it will do in the future. Always work according to their rules and do what they like and you should be fine. The rules will always be changing so the need to adopt them will always be there. But working within the current rules will make any future changes easier.

What’s your take on the changes with Google and the online space? How much internet browsing do you do using a mobile device like a smart phone or a tablet?

Leave your comments and please do Google+ this post and then tweet it, like it on Facebook and bookmark it.

P.S. I have just purchased a course showing how to take advantage of mobile phone, meaning smart phone marketing. Click on the highlighted text: smart phone marketing to watch a video about it.

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Authored by Vance Sova