martinibuster - 5:41 pm on Nov 20, 2012 (gmt 0)

Mine never changed through Panda...

No, no, no. You are misunderstanding me. You are referencing Toolbar PR. That is not what I am discussing. PageRank and Toolbar PR are two different things. The toolbar is something used by Google in a punitive manner to manipulate web publisher behavior. The Google toolbar can be thought of as the belt that's rattled at the dinner table to get the kids to settle down. PageRank, sometimes referred to by Googlers as Internal PageRank, is something more nuanced and is not reflected in what you see in the toolbar. Your actual PageRank can change and it won't necessarily be reflected in the toolbar.

With that in mind, reconsider the statement:

You can think of it this way, that when a site is hit with Panda, it's PageRank, the web page's standing in the algo, is diminished. With the diminution comes it's inability to rank for phrases. If a site is unable to rank for phrases, it follows that other pages will come in to take it's place. Naturally, it would be preferable for Google to suppress pages that are duplicates/stolen.