competitor goes from from pr3 to pr5

[soapystar]

been using the spam report on google to report my nearest competitor for serious cheating...so now he's gone from pr3 to pr5...whats the point in staying within the rules?..someone explain it to me again!..please!

[WebGuerrilla]

For example in almost all of our keyword areas, some pages with much less Page Rank appear above us, and some pages with higher PageRank appear below us.

chiyo,

Have you seen an increase of those types of SERPs in this latest update?

From where I'm sitting the current algo seems to be factoring PR much less than ever before. For the first time in Google's existantce, I saw a PR7 site that has always held the #1 spot in a keyword space that returns well over 2 milllion pages drop down to #3. The usual #2 site (a PR6) fell to #5.

The sites that are now #1 and #2 are PR5's. There weren't any significant changes in any of the other ranking factors. The PR5 sites just have quit a bit more keyword rich text.

[stever]

Yes, keyword density, title, URL (possibly even meta description) seem to be coming back in strength in the last two months.

[Iguana]

Hi Stever

I agree that there would be a feedback effect if a main PR5 page linked to it's own pages (each with a link back to the main page)- but it would only be the equivalent of 3 PR3 links from external sites

[chiyo]

Web Guerilla, I dont do a lot of SERP analysis but given that, I thought I saw a downgrading of PR influence from the update before last. Definately the TITLE keywords seemed to be given a big boost, and this has carried over to this update. We only check around 50 phrases for 4 sites in niched professional business to business but not e-com areas. Most sites have a PR6 for their listed pages as we do, but there are enough different PR's to come to this observation.

[quiet_man]

WG / Chiyo
I'd also agree that PR seems to have had lesser influence this update. I had a site drop from PR5 to PR3 (lost 200+ links) but still rose in rank across most keywords, including from #4 to #2 for main phrase.

[sparrow]

I'm so confused, one our competitors can't have more than 10 words on his page, mostly images, but they have gone from none existent to #1 in the last 3 months. While we have falled from #1 to number 5. I really don't get it. The serp in google is showing what he has in a couple of his alt tags, that's it.

How can this be?

Also I still see a difference in www, www2 and www3. Is going still dancing?

[soapystar]

i agree with the strange thing where a seemingly almost blank page with few inbound links ranks higher than keyword dense pages with inbound link.Are you people sure that actual clikcs dont have an effect in the google algo.?

[vitaplease]

check the anchor texts of the inbound external links

[soapystar]

now is the anchor text the wording that appears as the title of the link,or is it the description next to it?

[agerhart]

It is the wording of the link.

[digitalghost]

Hello Stever,

You wrote:

Small site, small number of quality links, high PR
Large site, large number of quality links, lesser PR

The two sites in question differ in size by 5 pages and those 5 pages are content light. The two sites sell the same products and target the same keywords. The site that is PR5 is an established site, at least 5 years old but the theme suffers due to some added "human interest" content and anchor text that covers a multitude of topics not relevant to the site. The PR6 site is updated daily, and the PR5 site seems to be updated on a weekly basis, although I've seen them skip a week here and there. KW density is slightly higher on the PR6 site.

DG