Pay Per Post Warning

I have learned something about Pay Per Post and can't in good conscience promote it without mentioning it here. It seems that Google has taken exception with what Pay Per Post does. I am still reading up on it, but since November 2007, Google has been actively trying to detect Pay Per Post (and other similar programs) posts on people's blogs. When they do detect this, they end up reducing the Google Page Rank of the blog. There seems to be two sides of the debate. The pro-Google people are saying that these paid posts are messing up the search engines because, they are trying to sort based on relevance, which has to do with how many and more importantly WHO is linking to you. If you have a high Google page rank and you are paid to link to someone who is essentially "irrelevant" (ie. low page rank), then their page rank will increase artificially. If enough people with high page ranks point to this site, then it will rise in the search engine rankings and they will have essentially paid thier way in, as opposed to 'earned' it normally with people linking to them because they have important and relevant information. It does make sense to protect their main product - a good search engine. The other side of the argument has people saying that Google is simply trying to kill the competition, calling them hypocrites because they, themselves sell ads on their site. I have checked my own Google Page Rank on the Double Challenge and indeed it has gone from 2 to a big fat, 0! This is not good. My new site, Money 2 A Million (also Page Rank 0) has never had a sponsored post, but apparently Google has even been just LOOKING for certain phrases on people's blogs like "Pay Per Post', which I did mention on the other site. I've edited my posts on that site to take these off, but I have no idea if the Google Page Rank of 0 over there is because it is a new site, or if it is because of mentioning Pay Per Post. I have no idea what to do now. Part of me wants to start the new blog AGAIN, but maybe I'm just being paranoid. Anyway, you have been warned about using Pay Per Post - it's too bad - I personally think their a great way to make a few bucks, but if you care about your Page Rank, you might want to stay away.

Flip