Google Restored PageRank for Technology Blog

After over a year of having all PageRank stripped away from my technology blog Google finally responded in a Web Master Tools reconsideration request with the following:

The webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action.

Dragonblogger.com now has an established PageRank score again though slightly lower than the PR4 it had last year it is now a PR3. 

How Did I Lose PageRank?

Last year in reviewing more online services that paid bloggers, I tested Intellilinks, Teliad and Linkvehicle.  Just to see how much could be made from such services and if it was worth trying to make some money from your site with these services compared to the risks of violating Google Terms of Service.

3 months after testing these services Google sent me a letter in Web Master Tools that they detected links that violate their ToS and were stripping my site of all PageRank.

I waiting until my term for those tests expired and then removed all links for the testing but it took 2 follow up tests 3 months and 9 months later before Google was willing to reconsider, they rejected my request the 1st two times.

Lessons Learned

Do not use any online program like Intellilinks, LinkVehicle, Teliad where you are putting in a "dofollow" link in exchange for compensation.  Even though I had made several hundred dollars during the test, the penalty cost me far more in the end.

-Justin Germino