Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I noticed a general drop in PR of most of my sites by 1, though some are up. The only way I can explain this is that the standards just got made tougher. I'm not complaining, because my flagship site, for its most competitive search term, just jumped from 6th in Google to #2, jumping over some very heavy-duty competition. This is a search term for which people are paying $5-10 per click with adwords, so it is very competitive. And the PR just dropped from 5 to 4. I think Google is placing less emphasis on PR.
It's clearly a major revision in their PR algorithm. I've noticed the heaviest effect on internal pages. I think Google isn't paying much as attention now to links from lower PR pages--those links have been devalued.
[edited by: tedster at 7:32 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2007]
Well done Google! Drive more partners into the camps of your enemies. What goes up will come down ...
i checked webmaster tools and google is requesting i verify my site sections again... in addition, when i go to reverify google says server is down or inactive? When its working find.
PR=0 on pages still, yet traffic and pages are the same...
I have a feeling either Big G is doing another update, or something got screwed up with the linking penalties.
Makes you wonder why google is running to buy up tons of other properties.... I think they understand search will never be mastered.
[edited by: tedster at 3:25 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2007]
[edit reason] fixing a moderation error [/edit]
I see the same thing on one of my websites, but it hasn't affected traffic or anything else. Since I do not sell links there and there has been no server issues that I can remember, it's likely difficult to know the cause of that.
Most people that I have spoken to who have their pagerank downgraded to zero have their traffic unchanged even if they were selling links without nofollow tag. You might want to check for other issues.
I hope they are in the process of updating and this is not permanent
I wonder what the difference is?
ACTION
and
REACTION
Everytime google changes the so called algorythm, and the SERPS get shaken about, the SEO boys react in force, with a wave of cheap and nasty quick fixes.
I am not saying I believe this principle of action and reaction to be true, but it has crossed my mind. I think, for Google, its all about second guessing and if, in their attempts to continue developing the worlds greatest search engine, they can learn more and learn faster about the way holes in there system can be manipulated, then this is what they will do.
So we've got a sucession of ACTIONS and REACTIONS and some fast learning. Very different to the quarterly trance dance, sit and wait, here it comes again, hold onto your hats, we've been living with.
I see different SERP, different PR, different traffic almost every day from the UK. Monday seems to show newer indexed pages, whilst tuesday seems to show older ones.
My advice, DO NOTHING, except make your website better, and have a cup of tea.
My advice, DO NOTHING, except make your website better, and have a cup of tea.Hmmmm... or maybe it's better to do something and have a bottle of champagne?
Seriously, if there is something wrong with your site, then you should definitely correct it.
On 1 September 2005, Matt Cutts wrote in his blog:
Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized – a search for (... - a particular site's url) would still return (... - that site's url). However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).
Isn't it exactly what is happening now?
Sites that had been selling links are seeing their PR devaluated, but their rankings remain the same. A logical course of action, when you think of it: by removing PR, Google effectively prevents them from selling links; yet, if the page has any valuable content besides the links, nothing prevents that content to be found.
Of course, as always, there is lateral damage. Some websites that had links which looked like paid links have been hit too.
Just a theory.
Did sites that used text link brokers get slammed across the board?
And apparently some sites that didn't sell text links at all got hit too.
The well known "free" traffic statistic analyser is back to pr10
I noticed that all links were "no followed" after the recent G pr reduction excercise
Google tries to make people follow their rules as hard as they can, what's the benefit? Do they try to own the world?
[edited by: SEOPTI at 12:36 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2007]
as with other sites pr coming back, now would have to be the worse time for google to try and punish sites selling links, when thy are trying to buy doubleclick....
maybe we will see a backlink update soon.
oh by the way i now have no backlinks either. so maybe it is a major backlink update.
Thanks for the observation, Bewenched. But let's note that the link: operator results update much more frequently than toobar PageRank. This thread should stay focused on the PR Update that we saw earlier this month.
I wasn't using the link: operator. I was looking in webmaster tools.
Once that update went into effect alot of our pages got a boost.
One last note, we actually have links on 2 of google own pages that are PR7's. I just cant see how the site is now sitewide PR0. Has to be an error?
[edited by: PCSceo at 10:44 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2007]
Anyway, I make a good living from AdSense and can't afford to risk further reprisals if I ignore the warnings. Although I dislike the heavy-handed way in which this was done, I can see Google's point: they establish the PR values, and paid text links skewer the results.
I removed all text links, waited a couple of days for the cache to clear, and have just asked for a reinclusion request to lift any penalties.
Has anyone else removed their text links in the hope of regaining the green bar grail, or is it just me?
