Losing PR - what are possible reasons?

[rajraj]

I would like to know the ways one can lose the PR of the site. Its not that as if I m going to try those but just wanna know so I can avoid them.

Thanks for ur replies.

[wheel]

Two ways.
1) lose inbound links
2) wait a while. As there are more sites on the web the overall PR available gets spread thinner This made sense to me when I first read it, but currently I don't recall how to justify that this is the case. In other words, it made sense at the time but don't call me on it if I just spoke like an idiot :).

[rajraj]

1) Loose inbound link.

By this you mean, link from the site which have lower PR than mine?

How will you rate the link which are from site which have higher PR than mine but are unrelated. what would u rate such links as, good or bad for my site?

[tedster]

Even when the linking site has much lower PR than your site, that link still will help your PR. By losing links means that either the link disappears or that Google no longer give your site "credit" for it for some reason.

but are unrelated

PR scoring is not related to content. There are other parts of the Google algorithm that look at content-related issues.

Many links from topically unrelated pages might confuse your site's rankings just a bit, because you can rank for terms simply found on the linking page and not on your page, especially terms in the title element. But that's not a PR issue. As a general rule, a link from a high PR page is good for your site, even if there isn't a strong relationship between the two subjects.

[abates]

- losing a high-value inbound link.
- a high-value link losing PR for some reason.
- a penalty for linking to a bad neighbourhood.
- Some other ban (spamming, hidden keywords, etc)

[doc_z]

- Losing incoming links
- PR not passed any more (penalty or nofollow)
- Pages with incoming links losing PR
- Pages with incoming links changing the number of links on the site (e.g. adding links)
- Changes in the PR algorithm, e.g. the damping factor is changed
(- Changes in the toolbar scale, e.g. changing the log. scale. This doesn't lead to a change in PR, but a change in the toolbar PR)

[Miop]

I lost a point of PR when G started seeing my www and non www as two seperate sites. I did the redirect and waited for the change to be picked up (4 months ago) - only one BD server is showing PR for the non-www site but still waiting for my PR to return to 'normal'..

[Rollo]

You can loose PR just becuase Google changes its algo, this is the most common way. PR (in the toolbar) is worthless anyway. I have 100s of PR 7 pages and they don't necessarily outpreform PR3 pages in the SERPs. I'd happy trade in my high PR for better rankings.

[rajraj]

Gee, thanks for ur replies guys

[Lorel]

Another:

having your content copied on the affected page.

[bobmark]

In addition to the obvious links stuff:
SUPPLEMENTAL PAGES!

If your site hits some Google threshhold of supplementals your PR can plummet as far as 0.

Pages can become supplemental because they are old (and it doesn't matter if they are still 100% valid and you have no reason to revise them - Google sees old as old). They can also suffer if they are stolen, especially by a "page-in-frames" site.

[annej]

Over the last few years I've lost a point (in some cases 2) but my sites are doing better than ever. Search engine results have never been so good.

Look at other sites on your topic, compare yourself to them not to the top sites in the world.

I think there is something to the idea that the more sites on the net the lower the average PR.