PR Update - April 2007

[sandpetra]

Looks like it's on....

Seeing movement on a couple of sites

[Oliver Henniges]

Yes, for the first time in the past 15 months or so, the toolbar-pageranks of my pages have become consistent again, with the homepage covering the highest pagerank and all other pages -1, -2, -3 ,-4 according to their distance from the homepage in the links graph (which I know is not accurate but the best thumb rule).

The reported drops in PR indicate, that the damping factor has been strengthened, which I would support from my frog-perspective. For ranking questions this is completely irrelevant, since this drop seems to affect all sites across the board.

My webmaster central console still reports a huge number of pages with "pagerank not yet assigned", which definitely isn't the case now any more. I'd expect the data to be corrected there in the next few days.

Then I'd regard Big-Daddy-Infrastructure to be finally fully implemented. In my opinion, this is the first accurate TBPR-calculation for almost two years.

[walkman]

well, I am happy. For the past 2 updates I was stuck at 0 and that might have made some people wonder why, and probably even lost a link or two. A PR 5 is respectable in my field and enough for google to get 35-50% of the pages daily.

[glengara]

Don't know why anyone cares anymore, PR only goes up these days, it has become meaningless other than to link sellers .....and buyers.

[zoltan]

Statcounter is dropping from 10 to 9.

[BillyS]

I guess I should feel good that my PR isn't moving... Not that the change will do anything for traffic.

[BillyS]

I'm seeing a link: update too.

[walkman]

I smell an update coming too--just a hunch. Google has downloaded every sinlge file from my site today. IIRC, they do a small update after the PR and link updates.

[Haecceity]

I'm seeing google switching between two radically different (and new) sets of results. What I'm seeing is not the usual daily reshuffle but something much more. The set of results I'm seeing 95% of the time is good news for my site, but the other set is a wipe-out.

[reseller]

Strange.. this PR update hasn't been confirmed yet, niether by Matt Cutts nor by Adam Lasnik!

[reseller]

zoltan

Statcounter is dropping from 10 to 9.

Exactly. Wonder why ;-)

[netmeg]

I haven't seen any changes in traffic or tbpr across 70 sites, so far.

[mattg3]

Strange.. this PR update hasn't been confirmed yet, niether by Matt Cutts nor by Adam Lasnik!

Not that this has happened before ... Wasn't it around the urn of the year that a massive change was on and MC insisted nothing was happening..

Maybe Big Daddy finally became puff daddy. Gone up in smoke.. We are back to 2006 as far as I can see from incoming keywords.

[JackR]

I'm seeing google switching between two radically different (and new) sets of results.

I'm also seeing two radically different sets of results here in the UK. However, the SERPs are always different here at the weekend. It looks to me like the Big G has turned off the filters for the PR and Link: update.

Why else would there be so many poor sites on page #1?

[soapystar]

i would think sooner or later that top figure of 10 needs to be raised to allow for greater differential (in terms of whats viewable via the toolbar) between sites below that. As the net grows and each sites share of that in terms of pr becomes less, in the end you will end up with the vast majority of sites being on the low end of the rung. So there would seem little point in a toolbar that shows basically every site with the same score.

[reseller]

Hi Folks!

This one might interest you, hopefully ;-)

I have been watching the PR of 18 sites (not mine), when this PR update arrived.

Here is my observation as to the number of sites affected by the PR update:

17% of the sites had boost in PR

site - 1: PR0 boost to PR6

site - 2: PR0 boost to PR5

site - 3: PR7 boost to PR8

22% of the sites had drop in PR

site - 4: PR5 dropped to PR4

site - 5: PR5 dropped to PR4

site - 6: PR5 dropped to PR0

site - 7: PR7 dropped to PR5

61% of the sites have no change in PR

site - 8: PR4

site - 9: PR6

site - 10: PR6

site - 11: PR6

site - 12: PR6

site - 13: PR8

site - 14: PR7

site - 15: PR7

site - 16: PR6

site - 17: PR6

site - 18: PR6

Of course other friends here might have noticed different effects in changes in PR of the sites they watch.

[pbaddock]

I've seen about 4 DC's update my site's homepage PR (4 --> 6 - whoo hoo!) but then it seems to have stalled....I guess these things take time to propagate out.

Also, there's a bunch of commentary on here about the published PR just being TB related and not affecting the SERP's (which supposedly have been relying on unpublished PR for some time) which directly contradicts my experience after the Jan07 PR update when my SERP ranks leapt immediately after the PR update propagated - anyone have any thoughts / comments? I'd love to think it was just co-incidence that my rankings all leapt after the update but doesn't seem to ring true with my observations.

[leadegroot]

The people commenting here aren't really a big enough sample to draw any conclusions, but I see a number of people commenting they have dropping one level.
I do wonder if this isn't the ripple on from wikipedia not passing PR anymore?
The delay in timing seems about right.

[tedster]

there's a bunch of commentary on here about the published PR just being TB related and not affecting the SERP's

Those comments orignate directly from Matt Cutts [mattcutts.com], and he's repeated it many times. For several years now, Google has been continually updating PR for use in ranking and then they export it to the toolbar from time to time.

I'd say what you noticed was definitely coincidence. There are many members in this thread reporting PR changes - and none of them is reporting a parallel traffic or ranking change. Google is in continuous flux today and it's not easy to pin down any one factor. Add to that the natural human tendency to generate patterns where none exist, and you have a real challenge. I'd say this PR Update area is one place you can rule out of your thinking.

[pbaddock]

Tks for the feedback Tedset - I appreciate it. I'll post in follow up if I notice anything significant in rank terms after this update.

[matrix_neo]

At least 50% of the sites gone down and 30% remained same 20% gained more PR inspite of decent effort on link building.

[walkman]

there's is definitely a change going on. Looking at accross DC (how about a new DC watching thread tedster? ;)), the new PR is being propagated, and I noticed a serious change for some terms.

While Goog may have this PR already "priced in" in the serps, at times they choose to tweak the algo at the same time.

[cleanup]

matrix_neo
My sites all lost PR in this update in spite of steady link building.

As a privateer I am resigned now to a slow death on Google.

As far a losing PR is concerned, I think that this is to be expected. As I understand it PR is divided between all the site/pages on the web so everything else being equal the PR awarded to each site must reduce as the web grows, thats just simple logic.

The only way you can combat this is collect links at a faster pace than the web itself is growing.

My own sites were PR6 (year 1999) then PR5 and now PR4. My own link building efforts (daily/quality/by hand) can not seem to keep pace with the pace of expansion of the web. Result, PR reduces over time.

As others have pointed out here it has not yet had a negative impact on my traffic/placements etc, it does however make it even more difficult to keep up in the damned link race.

[scotland]

My sites have dropped as mentioned earlier - some sub-domains to 3, and yet are still first in Google for the main keywords. These sub-domains have a number of inbound links, yet I have other sites where I have done no SEO and they have a higher page rank.

Maybe Google has changed the way it measures Page Rank and is actively penalising sites where it knows SEO has taken place - or is this just a stupid idea?

[Bewenched]

I'm not seeing a pr change on ours and traffic appears to be about the same as last month so far.

[KenB]

Of the pages I have checked old pages (existed since before the last PR update) are not seeing any PR change across a range data centers. New pages (created since the last PR update) are seeing a PR jump from zero to what I would have expected from a PR update on some data centers.

[reseller]

So it looks like we might be having a "partial" TBPR update!

Or something entirely different than the TBPR updates we are used to?

Time to start guessing :-)

[mirrornl]

3 sites dropped from 4 --> zero on most dc's also on the one i use automaticly
same(bad)results in the serps (no changes)

[walkman]

my head hurts, so even if I could do this, right now it's not a good time: does it become harder to get PR as the web grows larger? I guess they are more sites to link to so PR gets diluted but...where does the original /seed PR come from? Does that increase proportionally as well?

[reseller]

mirrornl

3 sites dropped from 4 --> zero on most dc's

When did that happen?

[selomelo]

My 2c speculation is about "downweighing" of recips and director listings. But this needs confirmation.

My two sites, with some links from directories lost 1 point (one 6 to 5, and the other 5 to 4). On the other hand, another site of mine with no recips or directory links, retained previous PR. It gained some "natural" links mostly from blogs, forums, and other kinds of sites.

This last site (that retained its PR) also comes at #1 for a couple of target keyphrases with an "extended description" in Google serps.