There’s this gigantic Internet entity, let’s call them “Oogle”. They have the largest search engine, the biggest RSS feed reader, a very popular email service. And a formula. A magic, secret formula that is used to calculate a magic number that we will call “RageCrank”. Almost everyone who has a website or blog is assigned a “RageCrank” based on a mysterious algorithm calculated from traffic and inbound links.

Or at least, they used to have one. Do me a favor-if you don’t already have it, install the Firefox Search Status Extension. It just takes a minute, and it puts two small bars on the bottom of your screen. One that will show you your “RageCrank”, and the other that will show you your Alexa score (another website that gives out rankings based on traffic).

Now, open a new tab, and click on your blog or website. What happens? Does any part of the “RageCrank” bar turn green? If so, hold your mouse over it to see what “Oogle” considers your “RageCrank” to be. You know what I see when I look at this blog and at MomReviews? NOTHING.

That’s right! “Oogle” has taken away my “RageCrank”, and that of many, many, many other people. The boards at that big paying-me-to-blog company (that I don’t want to mention by name because I have read that “Oogle” might decide to penalize me even further for even having the words in a post) are exploding with posts about the dropping of “RageCrank”, and I understand that the AOL boards are doing the same thing. This is affecting a LOT of bloggers and website owners.

But here’s the thing, and I’m sorry if it’s naive, but it’s the way I feel-”Oogle”, I hate to tell them this, but they do not OWN THE INTERNET. The Internet was invented as a way to share information, plain and simple. “Oogle” might have it’s fingers in a lot of pies, but it is not the only game in town. There are other search engines, other RSS readers, other email systems. And I for one intend to give those other companies more of my business. I have an account with “Oogle Reader”, but I also have Bloglines, so I’ll stick to that for now. I have “OogleMail”, but I also get email from my blog host, and it works just fine for me. It even filters spam messages for me.

And there are plenty of other search engines, like Site.info, Yahoo, Lycos. I’m not saying I’m never using any “Oogle” products again, because I know I probably will. But I refuse to be bullied. It’s MY BLOG, and just because I choose to sell my own text ads rather than use “Radsense”, that should be my choice. And it’s not fair of “Oogle” to arbitrarily decide who can and can’t have “RageCrank”. Unless they are going to take it away from everyone, or make it a service you have to pay for and subscribe to, then there has to be one set of rules that apply to everyone, whether they use “Radsense” or not.

I could go on and on, I am so upset about this. I have companies sending me review assignments assuming that this blog still has it’s old ranking, but it doesn’t! I don’t want to spend valuable time writing reviews that will later get rejected. GAH! ENOUGH! And if you are wondering why I used fake names in this post, it’s because I also read on a certain message board that “Oogle” might also be penalizing people for even mentioning this, since it’s “proprietary information”. Yeah, whatever.

And that’s all I’m going to say about “Oogle”.

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