The more time passes the more I realize how worthless the google toolbar PageRank is. The first thing that pissed me off is when I started a website which had a pagerank before any kind of links were built. I did a backlink analysis on Yahoo, because Google’s link: query is completely worthless. The result was no links. Since I was using a virtual host I realized that that page rank must be left over from another website.

Last night PageRank hick up was  ridiculous. I was about to write a great post on Affiliate marketing when I realized that the PR was up to 5 on this site. Of course I went to check my clients websites to see if their page rank has moved. The PR was all over the place. I went to check my own websites and it was a similar story. Within 20 minutes all the PageRanks reverted back to what they were previously.

Was this just an error on Google’s part? Has anyone experienced anything like this before? Is this a sign of something bigger to come?

According to the NYTimes Google reported quarterly profits once again. How is it that the economy is taking a pummeling while this giant continues to make mad money? The housing sector is going to shit, people are getting laid off, and those who stay in the game work less at a lower pay.  The fact that Google was able to make a killing can only mean one of the following three things.

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Today I noticed something searching for “web conferencing.” The Google has decided to move suggestions of other searches before the organic listings even start. I don’t know if this feature will be rolled out permanently, but it will have dire effects for affiliates and SEOs alike.

Screen Shot Below:

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I love when I find hilarious things when searching the Interwebs on the Google. I decided to search for “best search engine” to see does the Google think that it is the best search engine ever. Apparently Google is suffering from a case of low self esteem. Who do you think is better than you Google, is it Yahoo? No, it can’t be aren’t they in some kind of financial crisis, maybe MSN? Nope, they just recently rolled back indexing and algorithm changes because they pissed off so many webmasters. So tell me who is better than you Google? DOGPILE LOL

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Before I kick things off, I want to thank all of you who have been posting your comments. They are great and help me discover new things every day.

Anyway I build websites both for fun and as a way to experiment with SEO. Recently I have been working on monetizing these projects just to see what the “make money online” hoopla is all about. I don’t make enough to retire, but its fun non the less.

One website I threw up had to do with DRM Free Movies. It was one of my early projects and I have not had the time to really build a valuable website. It did receive about 20 to 30 unique visitors, so I decided to throw up some AdSense, Amazon, and AdBrite to the site to see if I can monetize the traffic. I made about 50 cents to a dollar a day which was nice.

A few days ago I checked my analytics, and lo and behold I was receiving 0 traffic. I investigated to see if the site was still ranking for the keywords, and of course it was not. What was interesting is that the “brand name” still ranked the website, but all of the keywords I was targeting do not.

I believe it was due to human review that my site was removed. Thanks to Rose who posted a comment on Google Human Review and sent a link to SPAM Guidelines.

Lets use this opportunity to learn what NOT to do and how to avoid a Google penalty.

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