No PR in Google Directory

Toolbar dropped from 8 to 7 with last update

[digitalv]

Anyone have any ideas on this? My site has been a PR8 since 2004, with this last Google update it dropped to a 7 ... but in the Google Directory there is nothing. When you view the category there are 5 or 6 sites in the category with PR and then everyone else is below it with none.

[Vimes]

Hi,
that doesn't sound good, i suggest you look around at other sites and see if its a major glitch or maybe look at this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

But in the passed the directory when "Viewing in Google PageRank order" has been pretty accurate for me if it updates it generally reflects in the next toolbar update.

Vimes.
(added another link)

just come across this from adam

[webmasterworld.com...]
hope it helps.

[edited by: Vimes at 6:32 am (utc) on Oct. 10, 2007]

[digitalv]

Seems to only be the directory. I'm still #1, #3, and #6 for my top keywords in the search results and haven't seen any decrease in traffic since the PR update. In the category my site is in, there are only a handful of sites showing PR and the rest are all blank now.

[typicallyspanish]

You have been hit by this

[webmasterworld.com...]

Our site has the same symptoms - page rank down by one to five - , but when we went to the Google Directory (thankfully hard to find these days) we were with zero page rank.

It seems that those sites who have had their PR reduced in this new Google move end up with zero in the directory

[digitalv]

So how does one go about undoing this? I've updated all of my outbound links with the nofollow code. Any chance of getting my PR and directory position back?

[Alex70]

<< I've updated all of my outbound links with the nofollow code >>
that was a rash choice...I would have rather waited a bit longer

[digitalv]

Why rash? I wasn't in the business of selling PR to begin with, just advertisements on a site that gets about 300,000 visitors a month. I speculate that there are people who bought an ad specifically for PR purposes, because some of the ads have nothing to do with the site content, but that's not really my fault. I'm selling exposure, not a link, so I don't really care if PR is passed or not, and it has never been a topic whenever someone contacted me about buying an ad.

I think it's pretty crappy of Google to knock my site down in the directory (used to be #1). They could have just as easily de-valued the outbound links and that would have been fine with me since that's not what I'm selling. I didn't know about the "nofollow" tag or how important it was before I started reading this anyway - I've been selling ads on that site since 2004 and never had a problem before now.

I think PR means something different to webmasters and non-webmasters. To an ad buyer who is not a webmaster, a high PR is somewhat representative of an "authority" site and that makes people more willing to buy an ad with you, even if link building is the furthest thing from their mind. I know it's probably difficult for webmasters on this forum who follow Google's every move to think outside of linking and ranking and all of that, but the majority of us honestly don't give it that much thought. I have never "optimized a site" for a search engine, I simply put up my content and if it gets a lot of traffic then it gets a lot of traffic and that's the way it is.

Now that my PR and directory position are lower, I wonder if it will affect my ad sales. If the people who were only buying because they wanted a link from a PR8 site cancel then that's fine, but I would hate for others to see my now non-existent directory position and lower PR and think less of my site as an authority than they would have previously.

So yeah, de-value my outbound links, I don't care, but give me my rankings back.

[martinibuster]

>>>but I would hate for others to see my now non-existent directory position

You probably know it, but it's not the Google directory. It's a clone of DMOZ. Were you booted out of DMOZ, or is Google's DMOZ clone ordering you by PR and dropped you in the order?

[SEOMike]

It's a clone of DMOZ.

Yes. Have you checked the DMOZ listing that corresponds to your Google directory listing? Maybe there was a big change there.

[digitalv]

Still in DMOZ (sorted alphabetically there, I'm #5).

For Google directory I used to be #1 when sorted by pagerank but now I'm the very last link at the bottom, with no PR bar next to it. Even though the toolbar still shows PR for the site, just one less than it used to be.

[tedster]

I'm seeing other domains in the Google Directory where the PR is not the same as the TBPR. Not sure what to make of it. Is this a buggy build of the directory, or is it a preview of future TBPR? Maybe it tapped PR data from some time in between that last long ago TB update and now?

[indias next no1]

tedster :
i already started a thread in this problem. and you have also answered it. there is no PR rank for my web site in the google directory.

our portal dealing with movie industry and we are not selling any links to others ( even adv ), members are allowed to register and to have a profile page about them.

i can't understand why the problem is, whehter the preview of future TBPR? oh god! Whether we have to face problem for following the google guidelines?

[tedster]

india - there's no reason for absence of PR in the directory to affect your search rankings at all. None of the visible PageRank signs - directory or toolbar - are directly connected to the SERPs.

It's important to stay focused on rankings - and really on Google traffic, since rankings can look different to different users and even on different computers.