Google PageRank drops for many sites

[Larwee]

I have never been a PageRank fan. I think too many people pay too much attention to PageRank rather than devoting their full attention to their visitors and trying to do everything possible to give them the very best experience they can. If they do that, everything else will take care of itself.

Too many people spend time thinking about PageRank and sometimes doing sneaky things to try to increase it.

I have long felt that Google should not make the PageRank public. They should have it only for internal use. If people had no idea what the particluar PageRank was they wouldn't be spending time trying to get a higher PageRank, buying or selling links on those that have high PageRank and various other methods to try to see a higher PageRank. People would then spend time doing what they should be doing rather than being so occupied with PageRank. Yes it is PageRank and not Page Rank.

For some reason a lot of people seem to ignore the fact that PageRank is just one of the many factors that Google takes into consideration when determining where they are in the search results.

Some buy advertising based upon PageRank rather than other important consideration that should be made when buying advertising.

A lot have just taken a tumble in their PageRank. I see that at least one has gone from a PageRank of 10 to a PageRank of 6. Several big names that you know have taken a drop.

At the moment there is a lot of speculation as to what the reason is. Some think it has to do with the buying and selling of links for the purpose of increased PageRank, some believe it is because of failure to use a NoFollow attribute. There are thoughts among some of algorithm change. Speculation also involves those who are linking to what Google considers "bad neighborhoods." Some are thinking that Google is trying to send a message.

Google hasn't said anything official about this and there are many people who wish they would say something.

Here are some of the many articles about this:

Google Scares The Search Crowd - Forbes.com

Digg Favorites Slapped By Google | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

Is Google's PageRank algorithm changing? | Geek Gestalt - A blog by Daniel Terdiman - CNET News.com

Google PageRank Penalties For Network Blogs

[jcorkern]

I agree with Larwee that PR is something that is not a main concern, but it is a by-product of proper SEO and tends to give an overall gage of your seo efforts when comparing to your competeing sites for your respective keywords.

There is an additional plus to pr when considering adding new pages. You know that you can default the page in if it is directly linked from an authority page on your site like an index page with a PR 4 ofr better.

The main thing you should be concerned with is building top quality links to your site, and one way links at that.

PR will take care of itself if you build your program properly.

[Larwee]

Over the next few days a lot of people are going to be trying to figure out why they have taken a PageRank dive since many of them will just start becoming aware of it today since this is something that has just happened.

The articles in my first post in this thread gave examples of what some have experienced but obviously didn't cover all of them.

One I've noticed is StatCounter. It has dropped from a PageRank of 10 to a PageRank of 6.

Search Engine Journal went from 7 to 4
Problogger went from 6 to 4
Search Engine Roundtable fell from 7 to 4
Forbes dropped from 7 to 5
Washington Post went from 7 to 5
Andy Beard went from 5 to 3
John Chow fell from 6 to 4

There are many more and more will become known as interested parties look more into this.

Based upon what is being said it looks as if those who have seen these drops don't all have the same thing in common so it doesn't look as if they all saw PageRank drops for the same reason. Some say they have never bought or sold links. Many of the blogs were part of a network that used a cross-linking.

A new theory on this that is starting to get some attention is that this was not a PageRank update but it was either an automatic or manual distribution of penalties.

PageRank fans will continue to follow this situation to try to figure out what has happened and if it might happen to them.

[Larwee]

The situation is starting to become more clear now, but those who were hit still have some questions. One answer is probably contained in this from the Google guidelines:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

It is interesting to note that many were large blog networks in which each one had dozens or even hundreds of outgoing links on each page of the blog to other blogs that are in the network. As a result, in some situations there were more than 100,000 cross links.

[andrewwee]

Tks for the heads-up, Larry.

I wasn't aware of this and checked my sites.
My blog is still PR5 and all my other sites are PR4 (some of them might've been PR3 before...)

I haven't been involved in buying text links, simply because building free, quality links isn't an issue.

In my opinion,buying a link is easy and cheap, and can get a new site spidered and indexed quickly. But once you've built your first PR3 site, you shouldn't have difficulties getting the rest of your network up.

I guess it gives credence to the old adage to build your empire on a foundation of brick, rather than a foundation of sand...

PS: in my opinon, if you're into PR, "Live PR" reported by PR datacenters is a better metric. check your live rankings at: Live PR | Live Pagerank | Check Your PageRank | PageRank Checker

Toolbar PR (reported by the google toolbar) is based on the last PR updates (rather than your live/current PR).

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I did a Live PR search on JohnChow.com and it shows a combinations of PR4s and PR5s. (There're even a couple of PR0's in there...!)

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I've also looked at TrustRank and a couple of other factors and have seen PR0 sites take #1 on google, edging out a PR5 or even PR6 site.

So there's life beyond PR...

[Linda Buquet]

Good to hear your sites are OK Andrew. Good to have you posting again too!

[andrewwee]

Originally Posted by Linda Buquet

Good to hear your sites are OK Andrew. Good to have you posting again too!

Hi Linda,
Thanks for the welcome back. I have Larry to thank for alerting me to this thread.

I've been working on a PPC coaching program with PPC super affiliate Amit Mehta, so that's kinda kept me busy..

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Ok, my pet peeve is seeing forum threads go off-topic, so here's a little more on link building and SEO/PR...


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Despite what many have said, especially my clients... the old "Web 1.0" stuff still works...

Article Submission
Press Releases
Blogging
A Strong/Quality Content site

[So contrary to what some experts might say, linkbuilding extends more than just bashing out a couple of blogger blogs, squidoo lenses, facebook and myspace profiles and jamming your URL in them...]
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As you know, Google extensively monitors users behavior, especially the amount of time spent on a site.

So if a visitor spends 15 mins on my blog, and spend 3 mins on a popular internet marketer's blog who's blogging about...I don't know...what he ate for lunch or some expensive accessory for his cat, then my site will get a higher authority rank compared to the other site.

Compelling content does not equal a keyword-stuff article/blog post either.

I've always adopted a human-friendly approach when it comes to content development, and the benefits have been much more than the one-off affiliate sale...I've been invited to beta test some cool software, got invited into masterminds, and been asked to JV manage new launches... so the benefits go way beyond the "on-site monetization", I think getting an opportunity like being invited to speak at a key event in your industry is the icing on the cake...

[Oops....but merely an illustration on how a high SERP ranking can bring you much more significant benefits than just one-off monetization...]

[Linda Buquet]

Good points all!

You said: "I've always adopted a human-friendly approach when it comes to content development..."

Like Google always says write for your users not for search engines, think about the user experience and add value. Funny that when you stick to the basics and do the right things for the right reasons, things seem to just work out in the long run.

[Linda Buquet]

Sme have had their negative PR reversed and gotten confirmation it was about selling links.

From ProBlogger
"I’ve had confirmation now from two sources at Google that this latest round of updates was ALL about the selling of text links. You can see Jeremy Twittered the same thing here. Some of those who have had their updates reversed today were falsely penalized for selling links (like ProBlogger which used to do it but stopped months back)."

More here:
The Google Page Rank Pendulum Swings…. Again

[andrewwee]

Much Ado about Nothing IMO.

Most of the traffic to John Chow, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Shoemoney, et al is all type in traffic anyway...

If you have 1,000+ backlinks coming in, people will come in via a referral or word of mouth marketing...

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The rise or fall of PageRank doesn't keep me awake at night, except for some small bragging rights at the pub...