A Big Fat Hen
[EDIT - 18 April 2008, 14:42pm - - Comments on this post have been closed. Please read this to find out why if you wished to comment.]
[EDIT 19 April 2008 15:24pm - This post has been edited to be less offensive and more true to the actual intent on the advice of Maria. Comments are still closed, though.]
Something’s been bothering Mari lately…
One, two, buckle your shoe
Three, four, shut the door
Five, six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight, lay them straight
Nine, Ten, a big fat hen.1
Instead of any of those numbers2 , Misstuned has a big fat 0. A goose egg.
And it wasn’t until Mari really thought about it, that Mari realized why Mari has been unceremoniously dropped from Google. Mari links to a so-called3 “bad neighborhood” on the web.
Whyfor you say I fail? 
Now, Mari was thinking, “Why is Misstuned suddenly so bad? I haven’t been very active at all, but my site is genuine4 and it’s a tad better5 than a geocities blog in multicolored neon rainbow fonts with N-zillion flashing .gifs, so there’s some6 merit to Misstuned, right?” Google dropping Mari’s site off the map actually made Mari rethink having a site at all.
Who farted?
Then, Mari realized, it’s possibly in part because Mari has ginormous link karma going to PPP/paid bloggers that have left comments here7.
Insert Shakespearean Cliché Applied to Links
This leaves Mari with a dilemma. Mari feels like her site is getting unfairly demoted, but Mari doesn’t want to stop linking to pages that she likes. Seriously, Google: just ’cause Mari’s top commenters do paid posts, does that mean Mari sucks (even more)? Or that they suck?
Yeah, Mari sucks alright, but as some kind commenters below pointed out, that’s 100% Mari.
PAID POSTING IS TEH SUCK
Mari’s said it before, but it’s worth saying again: paid posting sucks, guys. Mari doesn’t like having to see them at all, but some bloggers make an effort to avoid containing their paid posts in their main section of posts and their feeds.
Google vs. Mari Round Two: Winner- Mari’s Inner Critic; Loser- Misstuned
Mari will probably never get her PR back, and that’s okay. Apparently even reading a blog with paid posts is a Gcrime now, but PR is becoming less and less important.
Ivy and Julie pointed out that PR doesn’t really matter much at all in search results. Mari did not know this.
Has anyone else noticed their PR get unfairly spanked possibly in part to their so-called8 “web neighborhood”?
- What are the other versions of this rhyme? [↩]
- Three is bolded, ’cause that’s what Mari had before Google dropped Misstuned like a hot potato. [↩]
- As Google says in their silly guidelines [↩]
- AKA not spam, advertising 100 million packets of viagra and where to get weird variations of porn. [↩]
- Not much though. On a scale of 1000, if a blog gets one point for being not spam, then the geocities site would get 1/1000, and Mt would get 2/1000. [↩]
- However little. [↩]
- Thanks to the Dofollow plugin. [↩]
- Google, again [↩]
Blogging, Opinion, Question for You 
14 April 2008, 18:16
gcrime, google pagerank, google spanked, misstuned is nothing to google, paid posting, paid posting sucks, PR 0You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I’ve never tried paid posting, and after reading this I don’t think I will. o.O
Hi Mari! I didn’t realise that google came down so harshly on sites with paid posts! I’m so glad I didn’t go through with signing up for paid posts as I agree with you, they do demean a blog in my eyes.
Hopefully you’ll be able to get your PR back.
@Holly
Please don’t! Your site is so cute, and you have such a nice personal blog. It’d stink if you started to post about “vegas vacations” and stupid junk like that.
Mine lowered 1 point or whatever. I have no clue why, I think none of the site’s I linked to did PPP. Oh well..
Oh, wow, that is really unfortunate. I’m glad I was never interested in PPP, especially since you host me, it seems morally wrong to make money off things like that when one is not paying for hosting themselves (in my case).
@Nel
Hi, Nel! You didn’t know that all paid posters get an instant 0 for PR? And that even if you link to them, your PR gets knocked down to nothing?
Paid posts do just rip the heart and soul of the blog out.
Oh, if only having a PR of anything weren’t just wishful thinking.
Thanks for your comment~!
@Jaclyn
Maybe because Mt is linking to you? Or maybe your search terms were just a little less on fire this last time that Google shuffled PR around? Who knows.
@Tammi
Yeah, and it used to bother Mari when Mari would find her hostees making money off of being free-hosted. Probably because a few of them didn’t ask.
It’s kinda expected that if we have links to and from PPP bloggers, our sites get devalued. After all, PageRank is contingent on links. I try not to let my PageRank get to me. Contrary to popular belief, your pagerank has very little effect your rank on the search engine results. With that said, the meaning behind pagerank seems to have gone down the drain.
If I were you, I wouldn’t worry so much about it. For rankings, I mainly rely on Technorati. Sometimes, I check for me Alexa rankings, but even that’s not very accurate.
@Ivy
Yeah. You’re right. Mari should expect it. Mari tries not to let it get to her, but the thought that random people looking for this stuff might not be finding it was bothering her. Plus, the people Mari hosts are getting devalued too… But, the fact that it doesn’t have too much effect n search results is inspiring! Mari didn’t know that at all!
Technorati is a better source for rankings, true.
Thanks! You brightened Mari’s day with some knowledge.
Well thanks I guess. I feel very loved that you felt the need to basically call me a skank in a post and not even say this to me. Instead I have to be told about this from someone else. I could go on and on about how the quality of your blog has also dropped, but I won’t bother. If you think that every post is a paid post on my blog, then yeah, you clearly haven’t been reading it. That’s fine though, I’ll be happy to remove you from my blogroll so you won’t be getting any bad karma from a bad neighborhood.
For someone who is either stupid enough or conceded enough to speak about themselves in the third person (BTW that’s annoying and childish borderlineing ghetto) shouldn’t be pointing fingers at other people. Your blog sucks mmkay, this is the first time that I’ve ever visited this site and I find it lacking in authentic material, boring to read, and the color scheme reminds me of something I did when I very first started making web pages back in 2002 (I was 16 then)
When I read this it kind of reminds me of Jar Jar Binks from star wars. Really cute and fluffy, but not very bright.
Google PR means nothing these days. It’s just a stupid Google-based popularity contest. So you have to decide, are you going to be a “B” and drop your friends and follow the evil trail of doom that Google PR started, or are you going to be a good person and say screw you I’m not ditching my friends. It’s that simple. And if you want to read Maria’s good deep and meaningful blogs, you can just subscribe to her feed by email. You wouldn’t get emails for the paid ads, only the actual posts she feels are worth reading. And I guess since I do paid ads to you’re going to drop me, so see you later.
That was low Mari and actually quite hurtful. I can understand your need to rant about how Google dropped your PR, but having to single Joana and me out like that? That was really low.
Julie’s right, if you had been looking around a little deeper on my site, you wouldn’t have known that my feeds are NEVER linked to any paid posts and they never show up on the front page unless you click on their titles. You’d also notice that the “better” quality posts are the only ones that are on the front page, so my Blog365 ones aren’t even there. You also know why there aren’t any posts lately either, so it’s not the fact that I’m neglecting my website; I need the time.
I hate having to defend myself to you Mari; I thought you were really better than this and I’m truly disappointed in your behavior to all of this.
So, I’m guessing in high school you were one of those annoying girls who cared more about how many people were looking at her that standing by her friends? What you did here was childish, immature, and very unappealing. Do you honestly think that you won’t lose readers the second they read this post? All it does is show how much of a braintrust you are. Especially with the third person bull. At least it does show exactly how you feel about Joanna and Maria, so they can at least get away from you now.
@Joana
*first person due to severity of comment*
Oh, my, here we go…Apparently I can’t give an opinion on anything, ’cause no matter how neutral I try to be, everyone decides to take their favorite negative words from the entire post and put them together in a sentence
I did not call “basically call you a ’skank’”. If I had, I would say it in a single sentence, in consecutive words, example: “So-and-so is a skank.” If I wanted to call names, I would, but I don’t want to call names and did not call names. I used a simile to describe how I feel about people putting ads and paid things on their websites.
I posted about how your blog has (very unfortunately) garnered less and less attention from me due to ads and paid postings. I did not say that you were personally anything, other than a human being who writes a blog. For your information: I don’t really know anything about you, so I wouldn’t say anything about you.
Now that we’re done explaining that, why I removed you from my blogroll: I don’t read your blog daily anymore. It’s as simple as that. It’s not saying something childish like “OMG U SUCK”. It’s saying “I am no longer absolutely head over heels in love with your blog.” It’s not like I’m picketing your blog in protest. I simply don’t read it that often. I do however, take a look at the feed maybe once a week (or two) to see if you’re posting anything interesting.
But I guess if you’re going to type with a tone like I murdered your grandmother just because I had an opinion about the 25% paid posting content on your blog, maybe I shouldn’t read it at all. I understand that when people have emotional reactions to things on the Internet, they can be pretty strong and instantaneous, but perhaps you didn’t understand the full intent of this post? Then again, that’s probably my fault, because I didn’t explain it fully. For that, I’m sorry.
And one more thing: Yeah, the quality of my blog has dropped through the floor from any tiny iota of quality it ever had. It’s not like I claim to be anything other than teh suck, but I’d like to imagine it’s just 1 point better than a 1/1000 scoring blog on geocities. I’m simply trying my best (which is again, teh suck) to have a silly little website.
@Karyn
*first person again*
Yeah, I’m stupid and childish. So? I have fun doing it. And that’s the point of the Internet, anyway: to get away from real life for a minute or two, and you can be as stupid as you like.
Well, yes, the design is pretty crappy, borderline godawful. I don’t claim to be that good at design. I just claim to have fun doing it.
And yeah, I guess when my content is mostly from news feeds and stuff, it’s not that original, because an actual journalist wrote it. And my original content sucks, too. Is anything really original, though? Being that there are 6 billion plus people on the planet, I have a hard time believing anyone can think they’re original.
And that’s okay that it reminds you of something cute and stupid. That’s basically the intent.
The only reason I’m keeping this comment is that you did make a few good points, which I happen to know are true myself. Other than that, I don’t appreciate the fact that you only had about 5 words about the actual post.
Thanks. Maybe I can improve my site now.
@Julie
*first person, again*
Ivy made that point too. And I honestly didn’t know that it didn’t count that much in searches. I’ve begun to consider it lower than Alexa rankings.
Julie, I didn’t read your blog that much anyway. Your posts were always so grown up and mature, about things that I don’t really have a clue about. When I did read your blog every day, I’d always hope that maybe I could gain some insight into how to act when I’m older, but instead of growing up, I’m starting to fit in more with the people in my “stupid teen” demographic.
I guess you won’t be wanting me to comment or read your non-paid posts anymore either (I only read your blog about once a month, though, since I never really fit into your age group). That’s okay, though. People can get really…well, emotional where emotions are concerned.
@Maria
*first person again*
I’m very sorry it hurt your feelings, Maria. That was absolutely the last thing I intended to do.
I only singled you two out because you two were the best blogs that I absolutely loved that I had to see just fall off my radar like that. It really bothered me to see myself swear I wouldn’t lose interest, but end up barely reading some of my dailies at all.
I do know, and I have since you started doing paid posts, that they’re never on the front page or in your feed. I guess I should just read your blog from a feed then. But, judging from how you’ve not only removed all my comments, but my link in your blogroll too, I’d say you don’t want me to. That’s okay. Would you like me to remove your links from my site too?
I didn’t say you were neglecting it. I now understand about this “having a life outside the Internet” thing.
And I hate having to explain my mindset to you guys on this, while trying to remain perfectly calm as people basically attack my website on someone’s (I don’t know who, and I won’t presume to guess) rather unneccessary orders. Or you all could just have really good fans/Internet friends. I dunno.
And I’m also disappointed that you guys all took this in a more negative direction than intended. I’m not talking about you yourselves. I’m talking about blogs: things containing writings on a system that goes away every time you turn the power off. Kind of silly to get personally hurt when someone talks about the Internet, I’d say…
And by the way, I would have kept linking to you until you came back and wrote more, to see if you were still going to have those awesome posts (which of course you would). I would have still linked, knowing that PR doesn’t matter as much to me as Alexa rankings (which I have only checked 2 times total), or the blogs that I like.
@Laura
*first person again*
And you would be wrong. In high school, I was the complete and total loser that everyone asked why she even bothered showing up to school at all. Thanks for guessing, though.
Did I think I wouldn’t lose readers? Everything you do, every single post loses and gains readers. Yes, I know that anything specifically dealing with controversial content at all loses readers, but it also gains some, because there are always some who agree and some who disagree, and some who don’t really care.
As for how stupid I am, yes, I am pretty stupid and childish. So?
How I really feel about Joana and Maria?… I don’t really feel anything about them. I’m talking about their blogs here, not them. I’ve never MET them, so I really don’t know enough to say anything other than the fact that they’re people.
I guess if they want to get away from my blog, that’s okay. Then we won’t have to have any more of this “e-drama” based on what I feel about one particular detail of their blogs.