Is Google going to do something drastic? No PR updates in months!

[keywordguru]

I was wondering what everyone thought about Google with the PR situation.

From my observations, I have not seen the usual PR updates that usually occur. Only Pr's going from PR5, PR6, and PR7's to Zero's. Some coming back and some staying there.

Mind that I am tracking domains that I work with, as well as very popular domains.

I have a domain that had over 11,000 backlinks and a PR8, and the links have dropped to under 1,000 and the PR still remains an 8. It was previously a PR6 before that backlink campaign.

So this leads me to think that something drastic is going to happen and when it hits, it will hit hard on many different sites.

There are already many out there with PR0's and no real answer to why. Usually when you got a PR0, you knew why and it was usually related to spammy, cloaky reasoning. This time around, the question is BIG, and people aren't sure.

Some are relating it to too many backlinks from specific directories saying they may now be categorized as link farms, and then others are simply lost.

I would be interested to hear other people's theory on what is up with the Google PR and what you think may happen in the very near future.

With minimal PR updates for about 3 full months, and many backlink updates, something is bound to happen soon.

Let me know your thoughts
Thanks
KG

[bears5122]

I just think they are trying to stop all the buying/selling of links for PR. More or less have PR as a fun tool, but not have people going crazy over it. I don't think they realized the consequences of making the little green bar visible.

[keywordguru]

Well I have to agree. Who would have ever thought a simple anchor text link would rise up in the thousands?
Insane I tell ya!
KG

[Livenomadic]

I agree, in fact I believe in the next google bar version the PR will not be visible at all.

Anyone who plays computer games can tell you that when a gamemaker makes stats (damage for example) visible to the player, within 2 weeks the best gun will be calculated and within 2 months ever single person will be using that gun.

Same is true for PR. When people have a content status report on their sites, they find it easy to figure out what tricks they can pull to raise it. By now showing PR google is encouraging people to stop aggressive SEO because it is so much more difficult to judge your websites overall performance by SERPs (because you site is in competation with hundreds of other evolving sites)

[Vadim]

First, PR is updated continuously. I observe it in my own site. It restored its PR after redesign less than month ago and it took about 2 moths to restore.

There is however delay or sandbox and I believe the commercial sites are more affected.

I believe that Google tries to differentiate between the commercial and noncommercial sites. It also seems differentiate between beginners (starting companies that have no money to advertise) and well establishes business.

It seems that their approach is that well establishes business should pay for AddWords but they have option for starters to grow up.

My own experience seems confirms this. The new part of my site quickly got PR4. Week after the time when I began to use AddWords PR dropped to zero. I redesigned my site.

*Two weeks* later just one seemingly not commercial page with outbound links only got PR2. Other pages had PR0 *2 month* (sandbox for commercial pages?).

But I had little money, my keywords are competitive so actually I stopped adwords company (paid too low for PPC). 2 month later PR returned to my site. It was a couple weeks ago.

Of course it is not pure experiment because I redesigned my site after PR0. However, it would be interesting to know whether somebody saw similar correlation between AddWards and PR as well as commercial sites and sandbox effect.

You may try to use more good *outbound* links.

Vadim.

[keywordguru]

Hey Vadim,
That is definitely a very rare occurence and I would be intersted to know if anyone else has ever seen anything like this.

I too once thought that my PR had been fluctuating around using adwords but it could have been coincidence.

Overall I have not seen many PR updates lately and tracking many popular domains of others, I only see extreme and drastic updates.

I would be intersted to hear if anyone else has seen updates and odd changes.

[Powdork]

Is google going to do something drastic?

I think so.

No PR updates in months!

Pay no attention to the man behind the green curtain.

[BillyS]

I don't believe that an Adwords account has anything at all to do with PR.

I've run several websites and used Adwords extensively to gain traffic in their infancy. At natural SER began to increase traffic, I reduced the use of Adwords.

I never saw a spike in PR, just the normal progression you'd expect. As I added incoming links and content, PR increased.

[Vadim]

I am glad that it is seems there are no correlations between AdWords and PR and that my case is pure coincidence.

However I am still curious, is there a correlation between the speed of the PR update and the type of the site (commercial, informational)? I mean, is there evidence that the sandbox is mainly for commercial sites?

Vadim.

[dvduval]

However I am still curious, is there a correlation between the speed of the PR update and the type of the site (commercial, informational)? I mean, is there evidence that the sandbox is mainly for commercial sites?

No, it seems the sandbox affects all sites equally. It started in March of this year. While it is possible to rank for non-competitive keywords fairly easily, it is virtually impossible to rank for competitive keywords on a new site.

The correlation between the sandbox and Adwords is that Google is making more money off Adwords because new businesses have to pay to get listed (or so say many).

[Aaz7]

i'm disagree with the definition of _March_ filter.
some of my sites were affected by sandbox at the end of july, some at the beginning of august, and the rest (hehe :) ) at the end of august.

[dvduval]

I have sites that were indexed in February and March that have a good PageRank (5 or 6) but are not ranked in the top 5 even though they are #1 for inurl, inanchor, intitle and intext. This is why I say there is a filter since March. I know this problem is not exclusive to me. This is the same behavior I have seen for sites that are even newer and being filtered, except these sites also do not have PageRank, while the filtered sites from earlier this year do.

[bears5122]

The March filter just makes new sites hard to rank. This makes Google results old and stale. I'll stick to a search engine that gives me the best results, not the best results from 6 months ago.

[MetropolisRobot]

bears5122. I'd rethink if I were you. No matter how many times we as engineers may report Google as being out of date, truth is, the public love it and use it.

Just because web engineers and SEOs may not like the results does not mean they are irrelevant. What's relevant is the public perception of Google because that will determine how many hits your site gets and how much business you receive.

On topic: Yes I think we're due for a big one. I am sure a new wrinkle will be introduced and there will be more hand wringing and gnashing of teeth. Batten down the hatches, tie down loose objects and move to the most internal room of the house. Google has IPO-ed and now they can do what they've been wanting to do since January (when they entered a time of quiet reflection ahead of the IPO).

[decaff]

My response to the insane buying and selling of links in volume to "increase" PR to "game" Google's SERPs...is that Google has done a major data crunch recently and identified within the most competitive sectors (and then down the line)..what would be an expected level of inbound links that are organically acquired overtime...
...if the average is say 1500 inbounds and then they see a site listing well that has 11,000 inbounds...they are going to say, "hold on...this doesn't look right...why would this site have nearly 10 times the inbounds then this sector's average?"...

Google then says, "let's make an adjustment here...
and since we are seeing in "our(google's)" logs that people are using the link: command in volume (and there's only one group of people who would be compelled to do this ... webmasters and SEO'ers...that's one of the reasons we made this command available to track this group of individuals and there behaviors...then let's now show a lesser set of inbounds so people can't figure out too easily who is linking to whom.." or something along these lines..

Also I think the PR tool is effectively a thing of the past...since Google really only shows a "representation"
of a particular page's PR ... this tool would not be (and has not been for sometime) a good measuring stick..

[valeyard]

Is google going to do something drastic?

I think so

Me too.

It's not just the lack of toolbar PR update, everything seems to be treading water. Things just don't seem to be getting updated as quickly as normal. That's not only new sites and the sandbox effect, it's also true of some established sites.

The impression I get is that Google is reducing the updates of the main system to a minimum so that they can parallel run a big update behind the scenes.

Pure idle speculation, of course, but my spider sense is definitely tingling...

[jnmconsulting]

This is my first post Greetz everyone.

Well after about 5 weeks my sites are finally being spidered by google. My sites usually get hit daily. So let the games begin.

[dvduval]

This is my first post Greetz everyone.
Well after about 5 weeks my sites are finally being spidered by google. My sites usually get hit daily. So let the games begin.

Welcome to Webmaster World, jnmconsulting!
Congratulations on your sites getting indexed. I hope this is the start of a long and profitable endeaver for you.

[steveb]

"Pure idle speculation"

Piling on, some significant changes in the serps in my niche the past several hours. Quite a bit of a correction on the abysmal turn they took for the past couple months.

Although, knocking wood, the last two times I posted something like this, a collapse occured and the results fell significantly worse than previously. Still no meaningful lag time let up tho.

Idle speculation, this is the update that presages the PR update this weekend.

[dvduval]

steveb, there are several reasons to believe you are write
1) It has been 3 months since the last PR update and GoogleGuy himself mentioned this as a possibility
2) There has been some interesting spidering activity, yet not a lot of pages being added
3) We have seen incidences of old cache pages coming up over the last week, a sign that google may be doing some work at some of the datacenters.

I think it's coming too. I just can't fathom how they could go much longer without making a change without long term (negative) ramifications.

[cabbie]

Significant changes in my serps too with the 22nd tags.

[Freedom]

A big jump for a site I've been working on for the last 4 months.

Finally.

I hope it sticks instead of yo-yoing up and down.

[walkman]

question to who remembers Florida:

did Google give a hint before it updated or was it a sudden change? Like, did some sites drop a few months before it or not?

Many people have lost 80% of their traffic last month...and I wondering if it (the august update) was a taste of what to come or just something to be undone by the next update, which I believe will be major. Maybe google was testing it's algo on a few sectors...

[quotations]

A SERP for a huge traffic volume two word phrase which is so stable that there has been no change in the top 20 for more than six months just changed radically in the past 8 hours.

For example, #12 in that result just moved to #4, #9 moved to #2 and #2 moved to #23.

#1 is till the same old Cr%p, of course.

[Lothar]

I'm seeing some strange changes here and there also in some of our competitive areas. Don't know what to make of these SERP changes yet though...

[rfgdxm1]

I'm seeing almost no changes on a set of SERPs that are very uncompetitive. Pretty much all the top listed pages rarely change content, and I wouldn't expect the backlinks to change all that much in a short time. This leads me to suspect the changes you are seeing is new data (new pages, new backlinks, etc.) folded into the same old Google algo. Any broad algo changes would be expected to effect SERPs across the board.

[LogicMan]

I'm seeing big changes for all the keyword searches I track. Fortunately for me every one is an improvement. Some big, ie #50 to #2. Wish I could say I did something, learned the Google algo, etc. but I haven't figured out why the big change. I'm guess it was an algo change - just glad Google likes the site better today than in the past.

[george123]

today many will cry and many will celebrate the tornado update is here.

[hdpt00]

Woohoo, 2 months in the sandbox ("march filter" or "penalty effect") have yielded the fruit of my labor. I am now coming in at #308, up from #358 3 days ago!

#1 allinnchor, woohoo!

[BayAreaGuy]

Is anyone seeeing PR update?