PR dropped from PR7 to PR1 changed two words

[interbuy]

Hi,

I have a site that I had not changed for over a year it had a Google PR7. On thursday I changed two words on the index.html and today my PR has dropped to PR1

I noticed that the new cache date is yesterday.

The old page was also cahed.

I checked and all 1750 back links are still there.

What happened?

Thanks

[sem4u]

The toolbar is probably up the creek. Tried a different computer?

[interbuy]

Thanks but I also tried my work computer and found the same thing PR1.

[interbuy]

I have had other people try it to day and same thing.

Depending on the time of day you get either PR1 or PR7

Nine times out of ten you see PR7

Would they relly downgrade you from 7 to 1 for adding just one link?

Thanks

[joeking]

Depends who you're linking to :-)

I know one of our blogs lost all of its PR overnight (PR5 to PR0) because spam casinos posted their links in the comments. We deleted them as soon as we discovered them, but within that short time frame Google had cached the page and whammo.

I wouldn't panic too much though if you are still seeing PR7 most of the time.

Incidentally our PR returned (in steps) once we had removed those links to PR4 which is probably about right.

[interbuy]

The link was to a PR5 site with no recip link back.

The PR1 must come from somewhere.

That is my concern, I would remove the link but the page is already cached.

Thanks

[wellzy]

Is the traffic still coming at the same rate? Just curious.

wellzy

[seoArt]

It sounds like some wierd glitch. I wouldn't worry about it, it will probably correct itself. That's been my experience with stuff like that.

[JudgeJeffries]

I went from PR5 to PR0 and back again to PR5 over a period of a month or so only a few weeks ago. Its a common story that may be nothing whatsoever to do with your changes. It freaked me out too but all came right in the end. Just sweat it out and it will probably be OK.

[buckworks]

Just a thought: Are you checking exactly the same version of the URL? Sometimes you'll see PR differences when you view "www.example.com" compared to just "example.com" or variants like "example.com/index.html" and I'm wondering if that's a factor here.

[interbuy]

buckworks you are right. If I go to //mysite.com
it has PR7. If I go to //www.mysite.com it has a PR1.

But all the searches for PR I did before where through Google by asking for my page then checking PR.

Do you think they could go to the different variations of the URL at different times or at different datacenters?

Thanks All for your comments they are appreciated, it really sent me for a loop.

[edited by: interbuy at 1:02 am (utc) on Dec. 14, 2004]

[interbuy]

edited typo above.

[walkman]

so false alarm?

:)

[larryhatch]

A false alarm in one sense, I suppose, yes.

He still has to deal with his split PR somehow. I presume most everyone
wants their PR concentrated on one domain, usually _with_ the www.

I just did a 301 redirect in .htaccess from mysite.net PR=2 to www.mysite.net PR=6.

Now I wonder how much good that might do in terms of fractional PR,
the non-integer part we can't see, and whether that might help SERPS

.. and of course when. I'm not in any sandbox - Larry

[buckworks]

I'd say that PR7 vs PR1 means he's done a pretty good job of focusing his link popularity on one variant of his URL.

[Stefan]

Interbuy, maybe best to do some work in the htaccess to steer everything to the preferred URL. There's no need for two versions floating around.

[interbuy]

Is there any danger in forwarding the low www to the PR7 / or will this cause a reduction the PR of the higher address.

Also this still leaves the question why G search would bring up randomly one or the other variants of my domain.

I still feel something is off. If I go to G right now and search for my name by keyword I am forwarded to the PR1 listing. Yet earlier I was sent to the PR7 listing.

Strange - Thanks for the feedback.

[Stefan]

Is there any danger in forwarding the low www to the PR7 / or will this cause a reduction the PR of the higher address.

Shouldn't be a problem.

Also this still leaves the question why G search would bring up randomly one or the other variants of my domain.

You probably have incoming links with both versions, with and without www. G comes in on one or the other and sees things as separate URL's. Eventually, G will follow internal links, coming in on both versions, and have duplicate versions of all your pages. This isn't a disaster, because it still lists the highest PR pages, but it seems to cause problems nonetheless.

By steering everything to one version, with the htaccess, you might save yourself headaches down the road.

The apache forum, forum92, is great for getting help on that stuff... it worked for me.

[interbuy]

Thanks Stefan and all.

interbuy