Google's Last Pagerank Update...Slow Like Molasses

I'm sure anyone who was anticipating Google's pagerank update may as well have hibernated like a bear because it took 6 months this last time around. October 26th is when I noticed page rank changes on my sites as the previous update was back in April. What a snooze.... I don't know if that's been the longest time for a pagerank update since I haven't been monitoring as carefully as this time around. Usually it's been quarterly, every 3 months.

It put a real damper on my web directories as I took on more than I could handle. They were all growing quickly like an octopus, in every direction, while I anxiously awaited the update hoping to flip them at a higher price with increased page ranks. Well it turned out google was penalizing pagerank on some directories for paid links, which didn't apply to mine since they were all free. But one went down in page rank while the others increased. I don't understand why but I think I must have got carried away with the link building strategy that it saturated to the point where instead of increasing PR, it decreased. And one of my Whpark sites fared the best with a 4 notch increase with only a few backlinks. So I've come to the conclusion when link building to concentrate on the quality of the links rather than quantity.

If Google goes back to it's quarterly update then the next one should be near end of January and hopefully not another 6 month wait like this last one. I'm not as anxious this time around since I sold most of my directories for a tidy profit and I'm on to new ventures.

Explosive Web Directory Sale Boosts Online Business

Internet News reported that R.H. Donnelley, a telephone directory company, just clinched a major deal to purchase Business.com, a web-based marketing directory, at a hefty price of $345 million. I'd say that's quite a sweet deal even if you take into consideration the value of the domain name which they bought back in 1999 at $7.5 million. Their current cash flow is $15 million and they are expecting revenue over $50 million for 2007. Not sure what the up-to-date value of the domain name is now but if just going by revenue then that's almost 7 times the yearly revenue. Donnelley obviously are seeing some significant potential and that is an explosion both to the domain name and web directory businesses.

Not that this will repeat again anytime soon or can compare to it, but certainly gives a boost to the web directory business. It's easy to start one up with either a free or paid directory script, a domain name and hosting. It by any means does not require a significant initial investment, just time and effort like in most things. A couple of popular sources for directory scripts are phplinkdirectory and esyndicat. Some of the benefits of a web directory is that it indexes easily with the search engines and can immediately gain traffic just through posting in forums alone since many websites use web directories to get backlinks. Of course the promotion part is necessary but once it's on track you don't need to spend more than an hour a day updating it.... unless you grow so big you have to hire employees.

I have a few web directories, two I started over a month ago and another one a few days ago. I am awating the next google pagerank update, which is around the corner, as expect the PR to increase on two of them and if they do then that would be one of the quickest ways in a short time to get a higher PR. I promote them in a couple of forums with posts & signature links and obtain free links from higher PR & traffic websites. And this alone is enough to get a good start and keep you busy. Right now they are all free directories so I don't charge for links and consider this the best way to go until you build it up and then can make it a paid directory or combination of both.

And make sure if you do start one to submit your links to other web directories too as you do want to get more backlinks, which also can mean potential higher PR and traffic. You are welcome to submit to mine:

Links Daily Web Directory
So Red Hot Web Directory
QLink Web Directory

Reciprocal links are not required though appreciated.

Also place your link for free on this PR6 Website . They do require a reciprocal but the added benefit is that it is also a contest where they are trying to achieve a PR10 and once they do will award the winner the site. Since your directory will be full of links anyway, no big deal to add another one in.

Who knows maybe someone will knock on your door one day offering big bucks for your directory.

Google Pagerank Update Around The Corner

It's almost that time for another pagerank update by Google...possibly around the end of this month or early August. And you will notice alot of movement now as webmasters scramble to get their websites in check with link building strategies going into overdrive...and the reason...to achieve a higher pagerank number. The pagerank numbering system can be confusing for a beginner. In the real world everyone would achieve to be #1 but in the google algorithm world it's the elusive #10 which is almost impossible achieve...far into the horizon even to see...and yet so valued and desired. And of course it's no surprise Google itself has already achieved it. And there is www.pagerank10.co.uk that is trying to achieve it in their 2 year experiment with less than a year to go. Right now they are at PR6 and not sure if this update will increase them to a PR7 or not but one thing for sure it isn't easy when getting into the higher numbers because Google doesn't reveal the secrets of their algorithm system.

You may be asking what would be a last-minute link building strategy that can help to increase pagerank....submitting to directories. Why? Because web directories easily get indexed and therefore can quickly help to build backlinks. A great place to find free web directories to submit to is at Digital Point Forums...so start cracking as a pagerank update is around the corner.

In an upcoming post, I will be discussing more about web directories as I also have an experiment going on and will see how well it does in this coming page rank update.

Ebay Makes Changes To Their Affiliate Program

Effective midnight June 1st Ebay is changing their program terms:

$25.00-$35.00 per Active Registration (Previous $12 to $22)
A registration is active when the user places a bid on eBay within 30 days of their initial registration.

Between 50% and 75% of eBay's revenue on all Winning Bids (Previous 40% to 65%) The eBay program pays on ALL Winning Bids or Buy It Nows (BINs) within 7 days of an affiliate action.

New Paid Search Terms and Conditions:
The eBay US Affiliate Program will no longer allow paid search traffic from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds to be linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains.

So seems ebay is giving an increased incentive to send traffic that away but at the same time is saying don't send paid direct traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN or their content networks. I interpret this to mean if you get paid traffic from these ad networks you need it to go to landing pages on your own websites first and from their visitors can click if they wish to go to ebay.

An increase in commission gives an added bonus to join the ebay affiliate program. And if you haven't already joined.... click here to find out more. To use a few of the tools you also need to be a member of ebay... click here to register.