Google’s PageRank smackdown has left a lot of bloggers bemoaning the loss of traffic and prestige their blogs recieve, but does having your Google PR wiped out or lowered really affect how many visitors you will get on a daily basis?

From my experience, the answer is a resounding “NO”.

The first of my blogs to get slapped for selling paid advertising was my food and recipe blog, Cooking… by the seat of my Pants! One day I had a Google PageRank of 3, with the hopes of easily making a 4 or a 5 on the next update. The next day I sat at a PR of 1, the following day I had a firm PR of Zero and it has sat at this level for over 3 months now. In that time my traffic has tripled and I have seen no loss of referrals from Google itself.

As a concrete example, on October 7th last year, when I still had a PR of 3, I received 17 referrals from Google searches.  On March 6th 2008 and with a PR 0, I got 84 visits from Goolge search referrals.  I’d call that a marked increase, wouldn’t you?

In the end, the loss of toolbar PageRank hasn’t cost me much of anything in the way of traffic or exposure. What the lack of measurable PageRank has affected is my ability to sell advertising. Since most companies that use the Internet as a marketing tool still use PageRank as their benchmark for ad pricing and availability, it has become difficult to sell any of the higher profile advertising that I was able to use in the past. I have hopes that advertisers will begin to look at Izea’s new RealRank as  aviable number in the future, but until then I am working on a few concepts that may get my PageRank reinstated without precluding selling a few advertisements here and there in the process.

That, however is another entry.

If you’re using PayPerPost to monetize your blog you probably noticed at least a slight drop in your page rank in the last Google update.  Both of the blogs that I run PPP sponsored posts on lost at least 1 point in the last update, even though the number of inbound links had nearly doubled.

Even though page rank isn’t  my primary concern, it’s enough to make me want to pull the PayPerPost badge and disclaimer notice off of my main blog, CbsoP.  First of all, I rarely take advantage of PayPerPost on that blog, as there are rarely opportunities in the PPP marketplace for a food blog anyway.   At any rate, I have two other blogs, this one and a blog I own on the subject of ADHD, that will be eligible for PayPerPost in the near future, and the rank on either of those blogs is not nearly as important to me.

I’ll post more on this later, when I’ve collected some more concrete data.

A lot of people obsess over Google page rank.  While I don’t believe that page rank has any bearing whatsoever on the quality of a blog or website, it is the measure by which advertisers judge how much to pay you, and in the case of payed blog services like Pay Per Post, it’s the measure of how much money you’re able to earn per assignment.

While researching my series on increasing traffic, I’ve come across a slew of blog posts and other information on improving your Google page rank.  the best of these so far has been this post by CallCenterVet on BlogCatalog.  The information is solid and, if you’re just itching to increase your PR, it’s worth it to take it to heart.