Is Google Taking A Dive?

With the PageRank fiasco being broadcast from all sides of the blogosphere, you might think that's the only thing about Google that people want to write about. It's not, but it can be hard weeding out the other references from among those many pages.

Looking at a NASDAQ chart for the last week (see below), it appears that GOOG reached a plateau and started taking a dive. With all the recent negative publicity, one has to wonder what this week will have in store for the latest company we love to hate. How many people are dumping Google applications, including the search engine itself, as tools they USED to like? If the 40+ responses (as of right now) to Snoskred's suggestion to say goodbye to Google today are any indicators, it could be a lot more than anyone can anticipate.

After Ted Murphy (IZEA) took at stab at both Google and TechCrunch (Google Goes after the Everyday Blogger), he announced he was making the IZEA RealRank™ application available to the PayPerPost bloggers this week and others (including competitors) in another week. This is sure to give Google a jolt, especially when advertisers other than sponsored post services start using it.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to hang onto Google stock when the shiitake hits the fan.

Update: As Steve of TechVat pointed out, the "G-Phone" debacle probably has more to do with the stock drop than anything. The PageRank fiasco may just be adding fuel to the fire.

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November 19th, 2007 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Marketing | Tags: Google, IZEA, PPP | Full Article Feed | Summary Article Feed | Comments Feed | Full Articles by Email | Respond | Trackback URL

2. Comedy Plus on November 19th, 2007 at 3:47 am (Reply)
   
   

   Wow, doesn't look good does it. Well, not if your a Google stockholder. I don't sell anything on my site, and haven't been affected yet, but you never know what the next set of rules will be. Thanks for the info R.T.

   2. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 1:42 pm (Reply)
      
      

      I had to look around a bit to find the info I was looking for.

3. Steve D on November 19th, 2007 at 5:44 am (Reply)
   
   

   Google is taking a dive because the "G-Phone" turned out to be software to get Google apps on cell phones and not a real phone. Investors were expecting to see Google release a cell phone to take on the iPhone and that is not even close to what was released, hence the stock drop.

   Google's monopolistic tactics have not helped it much either.

   2. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 1:43 pm (Reply)
      
      

      I completely forgot about the "G-Phone".

4. Tim on November 19th, 2007 at 6:36 am (Reply)
   
   

   What goes up, must come down. If you can find any, you should buy stocks in Blue Beaver Beer

   2. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm (Reply)
      
      

      Is that even a real beer company?

5. hari on November 19th, 2007 at 11:19 am (Reply)
   
   

   Although this is a good thing, I find it hard to believe that merely google's reduction of pagerank for a few hundred bloggers had this effect.

   Maybe their overall reputation is taking a hit as well - I'm not surprised. The bigger and fatter you get, the lower your standing gets - as Microsoft knows well. Every action of google is now going to be under the scanner. They are no longer "those good, innovative guys". They're now the big, fat corporate opportunists.

   2. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 1:49 pm (Reply)
      
      

      A few hundred? The numbers are now in the thousands.

      2. hari on November 19th, 2007 at 2:17 pm (Reply)
         
         

         Even a few thousands wouldn't hurt them, actually. Yes, I understand that their overall reputation is taking a hit, but it's not all due to simply their attacking blogs' PageRanks. Most people outside of a section of the blogging community hardly know or care what pagerank is…

      3. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 2:49 pm (Reply)
         
         

         I beg to differ, Hari. Over 70,000 PPP bloggers were hit. That's just bloggers. There are plenty of other website models (forums, etc.) that know exactly what PageRank is and a lot of them have also been affected. Do a search with any search engine for just "Google" and you'll spend days reading about what's happening and they're not all blogs.

         I didn't realize how staggering the numbers were myself until I started reading. It's incredible. If all of the people affected were to stop using Google products, Google would definitely be answering to their stockholders.

6. Ed on November 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Nearly every major tech company has taken a hit recently, not much to do with their business models, just jittery traders. Google may not ne the goody two-shoes of recent times, but they are a juggernaut going places and if business sense says retract the recent PR drops they will, if not, nothing anyone here can say will make a difference. And with so much money on the company, if they are truly a nasty bunch they can quietly pay off the IZEA guys to go away.

   btw I have no paid stuff on my site as yet and took a hit in PR down from 5 to 4. In theory that means the whole paying field has been dropped a level, so relatively speaking, isnt it "as you were", just with lower numbers and a lot of bruised egos?

   2. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 1:53 pm (Reply)
      
      

      Ted Murphy wouldn't be able to get a decent job if IZEA ever sold out. Except from Google I suppose.

      A single -1 or -2 drop wouldn't have people frothing at the mouth, but a lot of people were dropped to a solid ZERO, including myself. 4 to 0 when all the predictions for the last 6 months indicated I had the juice to be at 6. The playing field wasn't dropped evenly whatsoever.

      2. hari on November 19th, 2007 at 2:21 pm (Reply)
         
         

         I didn't realize your PR dropped to 0. Last time I checked, it was at 4. And now I'm getting a 0. How bad has your traffic been hit?

         I wish we could convince the majority of web users not to use google search, but unfortunately I don't see that happening… The one thing we can do is to remould our existing online business practices not to rely on google's estimation of our worth. It's not impossible - the web existed before google and will continue to exist after them.

         2. hari on November 19th, 2007 at 4:02 pm (Reply)
            
            

            Same here. In spite of my Pagerank, I have fewer pages indexed in google than you do, so my traffic from google is even lower than yours..

            As I said, I have nothing to lose in any case, but I feel sorry for people who've (in a sense, misguidedly) put all their eggs in one basket and now find that they're in big trouble because of google's pettiness.

      3. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 2:45 pm (Reply)
         
         

         It didn't really affect my traffic at all since Google only accounts for about 20 percent of my traffic. If anything, I'm getting more traffic than before.

      4. MrCorey on November 20th, 2007 at 12:46 am (Reply)
         
         

         I see that thing about the PR. I'm wondering if the Goog is just repurposing those servers, as they're getting rid of PR.

         On the other hand, if a stock price is changing, up or down, somebody's gonna make money.

         2. RT Cunningham on November 20th, 2007 at 1:06 am (Reply)
            
            

            I read somewhere, and I can't remember where, that PR is going to be done away with completely. I wish I could find the reference.

7. Stevo on November 19th, 2007 at 10:56 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Sucks about your PR, RT. They are bloated, rat bastards. I can't wait to see IZEA. My Alexa numbers keep dropping, because of PPP and SR I'm sure my PR will do the same.

   2. RT Cunningham on November 19th, 2007 at 11:19 pm (Reply)
      
      

      What IZEA brings to the table will wipe PR from most of our minds. Look for it be available very soon. RealRank is one thing, but they also have the Argus analytics package — it may be a complete replacement for Google Analytics.

8. Brown Baron on November 20th, 2007 at 12:23 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Heh they gave me a shiny new 0 too. It's funny because iWebTools predicted me for a 6. As to Izea's RealRank, I agree it's going to be a viable alternative especially with Argus included.

   If it does turn out to be good and a lot of people use it, Google will probably de-index a ton of sites.

   A counter-move could be for the big guns to disallow Googlebot from crawling their site. If you get tens of thousands doing that, with the big boys playing along, the big G would feel the backlash.