Turns out the deal killer was Google.  The search giant offered to sell ads for Yahoo, giving them the bulk of the revenues - and Yahoo plans to use the money to develop their own search – to rival Google.

Does that even make any sense? Sure it does.

Google’s founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) and Yahoo’s founders (Jerry Yang and David Filo) all hail from Stanford.  Yahoo gave Google its first break, hiring Google to power Yahoo search back when Google was the new kid on the block. It appears Google is returning the favor. (more on this at the NYT blog)

So, Google preserves their number one spot (meep, meep!), Yahoo remains free to order up the next search anvil from Acme Corporation, and Ballmer Fudd is left scratching his head and muttering about “those cwazy wobots!”  

What’s the takeaway lesson here? Google is still the place to rank. And if you play your cards right, your closest competition could be your saving grace when you need it most. After all, if you don’t have the customer, odds are – they do.

Some interesting things to note;

• Actual sales, calculated post-holiday, have actually been higher than the predictions for the past few years
• Last year was the first year that ’small businesses’ met Goliath Corporations head to head and took home almost half the online holiday sales

If you’re a small business, you know where holiday consumers find you, right?

Yes. In Google.

There was an article in the New York Times last January in which a business stats company said “Google has given small business owners equal opportunity”

Do you have any idea how much 31 billion is?

This post from Digital Inspiration talks about the Stanford University website, which was once a PR 9, dropping to a PR7 because they sold text ads.  It’s since dropped to PR5. 

But here’s the shocker.  The prominent writers at Pay Per Post have been hit… hard.  Most of them have dropped 2 PR points. Ouch.

Prominent blogger Andy Beard, also hit with a huge page rank penalty, says;  “If you mention PageRank as an indication of how “pretty” you are to advertisers, you are going to be treated like a prostitute.”  Read Andy’s post here…

I understand Andy’s position. There’s a lot of folks out there offering ”high PR links for sale.”  I’ve been offered a stupidly high price for a link on some of my high PR pages by people that buy and sell links for page rank purposes. (I declined the offer)  

A blogger who reviews sites with full disclosure is not the same. Not even close.

 This is an inherant problem with robots and algorithms.  I do understand Google not wanting people to sell page rank. Selling page rank has no good result. All that would happen is that searchers at Google wouldn’t find anything AT Google except the people that can afford to buy most page rank.

But they need to make their algorithms and robots smarter.  Because a blogger working hard to earn ranking and working hard to feed their family from the revenue earned at their blog or site is not the same as someone with a questionable quality site that bought page rank from a link broker.

For now, the only solution seems to be using the “no follow” tag in paid ads.  But it’s a flawed solution at best. 

Not much different than flagging all email as spam if it uses the word “buy” just because spammers use that word.

Take the phrase “weight loss program,” for example. With 296,691 searches/mo (est) in the top 3 engines, you’d expect to need a lot of incoming links to rank anywhere near the top.

And competition? With 23.5 MILLION competing sites, you’d think it would take serious link juice to get to spot #1. Amazingly, the #1 site has … drumroll…. 128 incoming links. The #2 site? 62.

Of course, if one doesn’t check the competition, it’s easy to believe all the folks insisting that the yellow brick road is made of inbound links.

But then, you know the saying…. advice is worth at least what you pay for it. Sometimes less.

1.8 million competing sites and the #1 site has a PageRank of 3?

And again… top slot goes to a site with PageRank of only 3…

Over 32 MILLION competitors and a PR4 site scoops spot #2?

How can that be?

Page rank is a measure of the importance of your website as pertains to the web as a whole. If you read the technical description of Page Rank – from back in ‘98 or so - it says something to the effect that if a surfer started following links at random, the odds of eventually finding your site is roughly equivalent to your page rank.

How you rank, on the other hand, is a measure of the value of your site compared to other sites in the same market category.

So… the “little pampered pets” site might only have a web-wide value of 3 out of 10. (page rank) But compared to other pampered pets sites…? Tops in their category.

Sure PageRank is a factor in how you rank. But it’s only “a” factor, not “the” factor. PageRank is one of hundreds of variables Google looks at when indexing your site. Dupe content will get your pages dumped into the supplemental loo faster than low PageRank will.

The moral of the story is this; don’t lose brain cells over page rank. Instead, put them to work figuring out how to stand out in your market category.