April 12, 2008

TAP PageRank Slashed

I woke up quite early this morning, and instead of going back to sleep, I decided to open my notebook computer, checked email, released comment from Manler, and opened blogger to continue working on an article that I wanted to post this morning.

I had no problem to log in into blogger and could open the article that I wanted to edit. When I hit the link to open TAP (The Aroengbinang Project), however, it failed (back to normal at 7.40 am). I opened Google, typed "proxy" and hit the search button, select and click Proxy.org, and typed my blog URL. It worked, only to find out that the PageRank was slashed from 5 to 3.

PageRank is one of the main factors to determine a blog or website position in the search engine results. The higher the PageRank, and the more relevant the site with the keyword(s) used, the higher the site's position will be in the search engine results. It means that the site has a better chance to be clicked by the searcher. In other words, it brings more traffic to the sites.

As usual, I rely on Google to get some assistance. After a few failed attempts with different key words, I finally typed "how to ask Google reconsider PageRank", click the search button, and landed at Lisa's blog.

Here are things that I did with the hope to get my PageRank back, based on Lisa's recommendations. Whether it works or not, it depends entirely on Google's considerations, and I shall respect it:
  1. Remove Text Link Ad feed widget and the referral link, knowing that Google doesn't like it and also to be fair to Google, since I removed AdSense a few months back already. Anyway, earning money is not my primary reason to do blogging.
  2. Remove few sites in my link-exchange list that might be connected with paid-link exchange that against Google's TOS; if your site was removed but it has no connection at all with paid-link exchange, do let me know and I will restore it.

After cleaning up things, the following steps are needed to send request to Google to get reconsideration:
  1. Visit Google Webmaster Tools here, log in with Google account
  2. Click verify button, select "Add a meta tag" at "Choose verification method...", then copy the meta tag.
  3. Go to blogger dashboard, click Layout, click Edit HTML, back-up your template first, then find </head> and paste the meta tag just before </head> tag, click "Save Template".
  4. Go back to Google Webmaster Tools page, and click "Verify" button.
  5. Still at Google Webmaster Tools page, click dashboard at the upper left
  6. At the lower right, click "Request reconsideration" link, and under "Requesting reconsideration of:" choose your blog, put a check mark below "Reconsideration statement", and follow Lisa's suggestions: "State your case. Don't get emotional or tell them sob story... Just state facts"
After hitting the "Request consideration" button, what we can do is probably just wait, hoping that Google will finally listen. In the mean time just continue doing blogging, as if nothing has happened...
Label: Blog, Blogging
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