I was just reading this blog post… “Matt Cutts, Why Am I Still Being Punished?” where Donna asks why her blog, which I presume had its PageRank decreased because it ran ads or paid blog posts without using nofollow, is still being “punished”. She says,
“I dumped text link ads. I nofollowed paid links. I javascripted links that might be mistaken for paid links. I canceled my sponsored review accounts. I switched to a different method of monetization (Scratchback) that serves Google-friendly, nofollowed links. (And btw, Google, that put a huge dent in my revenue, just so you know). Finally, after I cleaned up everything that might possibly make you hate me, I filed a reconsideration request about 5 weeks ago.
And I did all that for…what? Did you give me my PR back? No, you did not. Did you even communicate with me to tell me that you still think I’m naughty for some unknown reason? No, you did not. You simply did nothing.”
Matt Cutts commented on her post and said,
“I’m guessing your disclaimer might have been an issue; you still say “This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation… The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog…—
Whoops!
Matt goes on to say that “I chatted by email with the person who looked at your reconsideration request when you submitted it. They pointed out e.g. *link* where you’re still flowing PageRank in a paid post (you mention in the post that it’s a sponsored post).”
Whoops!
And then, “Before I go back to the person doing the reconsideration request, I also noticed this one: *link*”
Whoops!
Donna made the suggested changes and then, “UPDATE: little green pixels have returned”.
Yay for happy endings. 