Wrong inbound links sends site PR >1 to PR 5

Google's goof makes for great instant link popularity

[Beachboy]

Here is a strange tale. I have an unpopular little site, almost nobody links to it. Its PR is less than 1. However today, it's PR5 with 161 backlinks, according to Google. These backlinks are almost all on completely unrelated topics, from math to horses to "adult" to restaurants to aviation to media to holistic healing and more. Visiting a random sampling of the pages supposedly holding links to my site show no links at all. By contrast, AllTheWeb shows 2 backlinks.

[ciml]

There seem to be two issues here. Firstly PageRank never tried to take account of topic, hence the "Random Surfer Model".

Secondly, I wonder if those pages link to a URL that redirects (or did redirect to) your page; or that has (or had) identical content? Either of those things could credit you with the links.

[rogerd]

That's a pretty diverse set of topics, Beachboy. Maybe you should think about retargeting the site to take advantage of its new found popularity (and link text?).

[takagi]

Hi rogerd, how would you optimize for such different topics on 1 page? That is, I presume the links only go to the home page.

[rogerd]

Tagaki, maybe I should have added a smiley :) or two to my last comment. It was mostly an off-hand remark prompted by the fairly bizarre mix of the link site topics Beachboy reported.

Looking at it more seriously (as difficult as it is for me to be serious ;)), if I were presented with this situation I'd try to evaluate the link text opportunities and focus on one good one to build on. I.e., if I thought I could make money in a horse theme, and if I had some links that read, "horse trading", I might choose to target the site with that as a starting point.

Since this site is currently showing PR5, though, that isn't such a stunningly good PR to justify a major project IMO. A few decent links can get just about any site to PR5. The best idea is probably to keep the site going in its current use and see if the apparent PR boost helps it meet its original objective. This linkage/PR situation could be a transient artifact of the current update process, too, so I'd probably let things settle a bit before I put a bunch of new work into the site.

[takagi]

I was already expecting that you didn't mean it. But thanks for the elaborated reply.

[rogerd]

Well, takagi, if Beachboy had suddenly found his site to be PR7 or PR8, it would be a whole different story... if he wasn't an adult webmaster before, he might have to consider a change. :)

[Beachboy]

I suspect this whole episode is a technical goof over at Google and that it will be corrected soon. The only reason I thought it was noteworthy is that EVERY event pertaining to Google gets published here; it would be a shame to leave it out.

[mil2k]

PR >1 to PR 5

I think that should read PR < 1 to PR 5 :)

Yes i agree must be a bug with google. In feb i had a webasite which had no actual links showing PR 5 with 80 backlinks. The site was put up 4 days before the dance :)

[IITian]

Beachboy,

Thanks for your post. I had lost my links and was wondering. I now realize that you have got them. Now be a nice boy and give me back my links. :)

[Alphawolf]

Wow. Your little site is a freakin' BLACK HOLE!

Become an Affilate for...

...everything...and fast!

AW

LOL- G's up to weird sh*t. :)

[Beachboy]

Mil2k,

<<I think that should read PR < 1 to PR 5>>

You don't want to know what kinds of grades I got in high school algebra.

IITian,

<<Now be a nice boy and give me back my links.>>

Ummmm, no. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

;-)