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Awhile back, maybe five or six months ago, I was riding the sweet gravy train of reviewing and making some pretty sweet pocket change. Pocket change that came in very handy to help pay bills, buy beer, and buy neat toys like a Playstation 3.

Then there was a point in time when Google decided that blogs that were making money from advertisers and not through them, that they would punish the fine folks that were using this awesome way to earn some extra cash to help make life easier by stripping their page ranks away. A bit harsh and unfair in my opinion, but the deed was done, and thousands were effected by the Internet bully.

After the Page Rank Spank, bloggers like myself, didn’t have anybody coming to them for Ads anymore. Their PR really seems to matter to the advertisers. Even though the whole PR thing can be manipulated by Google resulting in misdirected understandings as far as web site popularity goes, advertisers still believe that PR is the only thing that makes a web site popular. SO VERY WRONG!

Page rank, as we have seen, can be manipulated by Google. Who’s to say that Google doesn’t get pay offs to rank sites that pay them? We will never know, and that’s one reason not to rely on PR alone.

So what does one do to gage their site popularity and show off just how popular their site really is by not using Page Rank? The answer to that is REAL RANK!. (AKA RR)

Izea has created a service called SocialSpark and it brings both Bloggers and Advertisers together through the art of communication.

Advertisers can interact with bloggers and vice versa, bloggers can post about other bloggers and link swap, bloggers can vote on top opportunities, and the list goes on and on.

I am actually a member, and have been since they invited me into their BETA group, and I have been enjoying the service since day one.

Although it is a service that is geared to allow advertisers to purchase advertising on users blogs, it is also a community. Everybody, advertisers and bloggers alike can become friends and share interests amongst their groups.

By the way, if you eventually sign up on SocialSpark please add me to your friends list, the more the merrier! You can see my profile and add yourself to it.

The really neat thing besides being able to make some extra cash from the site is that the stats you get from their tracking service is really kewel too!

The account information that you get from their own analytics is so awesomely useful, it’s worth having a membership alone! Not only can you see where your visitors are coming from, but you can see where they came from and where they went!

According to the results, my site is solely American.. LOL :-” Thanks to that Great Canadian law that lets us have our privacy, the dots don’t really show up a whole lot, but we still register!

The one thing I really like about their tracking service is the fact that I can see what my viewers click on my site. It allows me to see what links are the most popular. That lets me know, what my viewers are most interested in.

When you get an account you will also see the gender of other SocialSpark members letting you know who is more interested in your stuff. You’ll see what they are more interested in.

There are so many features to this service that a post alone cannot describe just how awesome it is. You really need to set up an account to see the results for yourself. If you don’t want to do paid postings you can still blog about other bloggers, and gain a community of friends. The options are there for you, and you have the option to do what you want.

A social network that is headed in the right direction, we need to show the PR Giants that PR is just a manipulated number, and Real Rank is a Real number!

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I have removed the Dofollow plug-in. Sorry, but don’t blame me, blame the bastards over at Google.

Even though PR is meaningless since it can be manipulated by Google as a lot of us have witnessed I still need to try and get it back up for both my traffic and reviews.

It sucks, I know. But that’s what happens when good services turn evil.

UPDATE: I’ve re-considered. I got to thinking (yes I can actually do that, believe it or not.) and realized the whole Google thing was pertaining to wanting nofollow in links that are within the posts. Why punish the commenters? I’m not going to.

So the Dofollow plug-in is back in place, and your links will follow to your site.

Sorry for the scare.

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I have been reading a lot of other posts from other bloggers about their PR dropping to zero and what their take on the whole thing is. As I assumed, they are just about as pissed off as I am about the whole Google PR Slapping just because we’re making money through another service and not them.

David Utter makes a point about how this will actually effect your traffic, just as I have experienced, since your PR won’t get the placing it once did on the Search Rankings. Whoever says that the PR raping wont effect your page rank, then you might want to read my other post on how my traffic dropped the day I got raped by Google. Coincidence? I think not.

As proof that Google is sore about the whole deal that bloggers are making money by reviewing things and not through their services, Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea, points out that Google in fact has gone after Pay Per Post bloggers;

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.

Murphy also goes as far as saying Google is displaying just how they are defending their monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertising through their censorship. One of his employees has never posted a paid link in his blog, but because he blogs about his everyday work day, Google stripped him of his page rank, simply because he mentions Pay Per Post, and he’s just talking about his workday at Pay Per Post. Yup, in my opinion, Google is using Censorship, wouldn’t you agree? They’re PR Raping a guy for saying Pay Per Post.

Hopefully Izea’s RealRank service will help me out in getting back on my gravy train. I have already lost a butt load of money since the PR Raping.

The extra cash I was making from the paid reviews was helping me out a lot and allowing me to do my own freelance work since I didn’t have to spend a lot of time on my full time job (When they had the schedule done up properly that is.) So if RealRank works as good as I think it will, I’ll be back in full swing, and Google can go fuck themselves.

I may even go as far as getting rid of them entirely. I read a blog the other day (should have noted the URL) that wrote about all the different alternatives that you can use instead of Google. For example they mentioned that you can use Dogpile search instead of Google. It uses all the main search engines, including Google results, but using Dogpile search wont give Google the hit. So they loose revenue since the advertiser linkage won’t be displayed. TAKE THAT GOOGLE!

There were other suggestions for RSS Readers, mail, and many other alternatives to Google. I’m sure you can find them if you really would like to boycott Google.  They need a real Kick in the pants in my opinion, and you’re entitled to it.

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Google has bent me over and fucked me up once again!

My Page Rank has now gone. Gone all together. It is now 0. Yup it went from 5 all the way down to 0.

You know what I don’t care. PR is going to mean nothing in the coming months when Google has their precious site ranking service challenged with a much better service in my opinion called RealRank. Finally, something that going to be a lot more accurate when it comes to actual page rank and tells the truth on actual link ins and traffic.

There are others like Andy Beard that have similar issues with the whole thing. There are a huge amount of bloggers that have been struck with this whole PR thing, but  Andy Beard has some interesting reads on the topic that you might want to check out.

On that note, I am still confused on the traffic reports Analytics is reporting.

Ever since the PR ass kicking, my traffic reports have changed dramatically, as seen in the chart below.

Notice on the 25th the traffic drops a huge amount. We’re talking from approximately 600 per day down to the mid hundreds or below a day.

Has anybody else noticed a drop in traffic since the PR ass kinging spree Google went on?

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You know that ever since my Google PR went down to 3 this month, which I don’t really car about that much, my traffic has suffered a huge hit also!

I don’t know if it’s Google’s sly big bully way to screw around with the results of the Analytics on this site but the results they are showing from the stats are very concerning to me.

Take a look at the following graph. It speaks louder than words.

That pretty much sums things up doesn’t it? It’s not like I have changed my crapload of opinionated shit or anything, is it?

It’s clear that I have ended up in the ARCHIVED/DELETED section of Google!

You know what? Google can suck my balls!

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