Google Goes After PayPerPost

If trying to beat up Text Link Ads wasn’t enough, Google has got its sights on a new target: PayPerPost. CEO Ted Murphy is claiming that Google is going after bloggers in the PayPerPost network and reducing their PageRank from whatever they previously had to zero. That’s right, zero!

Murphy is of course calling foul for what he see as Google trying to defend their “monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertising.”

It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers. Unlike the Google AdSense black box, we are palms up when it comes to revenue share and give bloggers the lions share of advertising dollars that they deserve.

Murphy also took a shot at TechCrunch, asking how come Google doesn’t de-rank them for making posts that thank their sponsors.

I find it laughable that high profile bloggers like TechCrunch aren’t being penalized in the same way. Perhaps it’s the fact that they use AdSense. Perhaps it’s the fact that they are silicon valley insiders and are invited to special Google events. Either way I don’t see the difference between a sponsored post in our system or this sponsored post. Both are paid for, neither use no-follow.

TechCrunch rebutted Murphy’s statement in this post.

In what looks like an attempt to fight back against the Google machine, PayPerPost’s parent company, IZEA, is working on something call RealRank (code named Project Goo Gone), an alternative to Google PageRank. Hopefully, that works better than the Blogger Choice Awards. Have your PageRank been affected for being a PayPerPost publisher?