Page Rank: Toolbar up and Directory down

On the 22nd our toolbar PR goes up, and Directory PR drops.

[Ben_Graham]

We've been working to get more inbound links, and have finally reaped the benefits of our work. For the last few months we had been listed first in the directory for our category, before competitors that had higher toolbar PR. We felt this indicated that our true PR was higher, and that it was only a matter of time before it showed up.

It seems we were right, as our toolbar PR increased in the April 22, 2005 update. We have now eclipsed the competitors in our space, and are having strong SERP results (and have for the last few months). All is good. Except the directory.

On the same day that our toolbar PR went up, our directory PR seems to have dropped, and we've fallen from first to third in our category, after competitors with lower toolbar PR. Does this make sense? I can understand one being a more recent refresh of "true PR" than the other, but they changed on the same day. How can this be?

[peschli]

The exact thing has happened to our site this month too. Our homepage went from a PR4 to a PR5, and pages that we added about 3 months ago went from a PR0 to PR4's and PR5's.

Now our site is just coming out of a "Sand Box" too, been almost 7 months since we switched domains and have been slowly watching our site come up in the rankings and then on the 12th of April, we went totally missing, but yet our PR on our pages skyrocketed. And of course now I am getting asked for a status report from our CEO.

Now I have seen this before, its almost like they put our site in a holding tank for a week or two, and we'll pop up into the ranks again, but reassurance or any insight would be appreciated.

[Ben_Graham]

Ours is definitely not a new site, we've been around since the 90's, so we're not suffering from sandboxing. Still, I hope that the directory PR update is just a blip in the radar. I sometimes think that Google does this intentionally to make the whole thing seem more mysterious than it truly is.

[steveb]

The April 22 update was based on a March 28 or so cutoff. The Directory is probably more current.