Hello, and welcome to In My Bag! My name is Jenn, and this is my product review blog. 
Google has decided that it can’t take the heat, but doesn’t have the sense to stay out of the kitchen. Instead, it’s bitch slapping everyone else – namely, anyone who uses any type of money paying service that Google feels is somehow a threat. These money paying services include PayPerPost, PayU2Blog, Text Link Ads, and many others, I’m sure.
Over the last few days, thousands of blogs that were previously ranked at 2, 3, 4, even 5 and 6, have been dropped to zero, for no explainable reason, other than Google doesn’t know how to play nice.
For what it’s worth, while right now a huge stink has been kicked up, and bloggers and companies are scrambling to find quick solutions while they work on long term changes, I’m relieved that it’s come to this. I never truly understood why Google should be the end-all be-all decider of what site is worthy and what site isn’t. Google ranks sites in the same way many middle schoolers choose their friends. “Well, you’re friends with A, B and C, so you’re in!” or “Well, you’re friends with those losers X, Y and Z, so you’re out. Here is your zero, or if you’re lucky, a 1, you are the weakest link, goodbye!”
And honestly, I never felt that Google’s assessment of websites was consistent. Take jenn.nu, for example. Despite archives dating back to 2001, blog entries almost every day, commenters, exposure on many websites and message boards, and an average of 1000 unique hits per day, Google decided that it wasn’t worth squat. I have been sporting a big, fat zero for jenn.nu since its registration on January 1st, 2007.
And then there’s kitty.nu. Granted, it is a year older than jenn.nu, but it never had the hits that jenn.nu does (less than half!), nor the exposure, yet, until Google’s latest stunt, it had a page rank of 3.
So, what can you do to help yourself and anyone else who has been hit by Google? First, drop AdSense. Second, quit using their search engine. Third, ditch GMail. Fourth, sell your Google stocks, if you have them. As a matter of fact, stop using ALL of their services! And finally, SPREAD THE WORD.
(In doing my part to SPREAD THE WORD, this post will be cross-posted to all of my blogs.)
I found myself the proud owner of two blogs with big fat zeros last night. I’ve since deleted adsense, removed my blogs from the google tools crap and I’m in the process of trying to get everything converted from my gmail over to my domain email. I’ve started using ask.com as my search engine and quite frankly, I like them better. It’ll be a tough week or so until the paid blogging sites figure out a method to skirting google’s madness but in the end I believe we’ll all come out on top!