Why don't my third level pages have any PageRank?

[glennmatherly]

I have a six month old retail site with several hundred pages. Most pages doing well in the serps and most of those pages have a page rank of 2 or 3. My problem is several pages that are two levels below my home page in navigation have a "unranked" for page rank. They have been crawled as recently as three days ago, other pages on the same level of navigation have a page rank of 1 and 2. Secondly when doing a Google search for the keywords on the unranked pages my homepage ranks #1 but the specific page doesn't appear anywhere. The homepage doesn't have a single relative keyword on it!

[wolfadeus]

PageRank is always delayed - you actually see an old one on the bar. I think if you know that you get crawled and the SERPs are good, there is no need to worry. PR will come with time.

[glennmatherly]

What really concerns me is the fact that a search for "widgets" will bring up in a number one ranking position www.example.com/ with no content or keywords rather than the www.example.com/widgets/ page. Also the fact that out of almost 400 pages there are only a dozen that have a "No page rank information available" in the page rank bar. That includes the page I'm talking about above.

[edited by: tedster at 8:38 am (utc) on Dec. 18, 2007]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[phranque]

page rank flows with inbound links.
have you checked your backlinks for those pages?
are they nofollowed?

[glennmatherly]

I'm not sure what you mean. I can check back links for the specific page I'm talking about and it shows none. There are other pages that have page rank of 0, 1 and 2 that don't have any back links either.

[HarryM]

Try doing a search for a specific phrase which only occurs on a page without PR (as you said you did before). If the page isn't found, try again with the phrase in quotes. If the page then shows up it could be in the supplemental index.

[limoshawn]

glennmatherly, we've been going through the same thing lately. it's very frustrating to get a good ranking for the wrong page!

However, it appears to eventually work itself out after a series of shuffling. Our pages seem to be settling with the domain first and then the keyword relevant page indented below. looks to take about 2 - 3 weeks.

[pageoneresults]

I have a six month old retail site with several hundred pages.

So, it's still a fairly new site in Google's eyes.

Most pages doing well in the serps and most of those pages have a page rank of 2 or 3.

That would be expected based on the explanation above. You're just going through the typical "seating" process.

My problem is several pages that are two levels below my home page in navigation have a "unranked" for page rank.

It doesn't matter. PageRank is innaccurate at the Toolbar level. You may see 0 in the TB, but it is possible that page is in the process of being calculated and does have PR assigned, you just won't see it.

They have been crawled as recently as three days ago, other pages on the same level of navigation have a page rank of 1 and 2.

Are the pages without PR newer pages? If so, then what you are seeing is normal.

Click path is what determines how PR is distributed throughout your site. You may need to provide more access points closer to the top of the click path to get PR to flow through to those lower level pages.

Secondly when doing a Google search for the keywords on the unranked pages my homepage ranks #1 but the specific page doesn't appear anywhere. The homepage doesn't have a single relative keyword on it!

Clustering? Google knows about those pages, they just don't have enough juice yet to pull their own weight. It sounds like you are right in that period where the pages are "proving themselves".

[glennmatherly]

The pages in question without pagerank were created at the same time as the pages with pagerank.

After reading the post here I believe my concern may be premature. I will give it another 60 days to settle out and then reevaluate the situation.

I thank you all for your input. Very much appreciated.

[The_Hat]

Something I have noticed and think that may be real (opposed to something I am imagining).. when a site is new and has very few backlinks it seems to me that the page rank that penetrates a site is relative to the number of backlinks that exist.. for instance I have a site that has '1' backlink.. the link is from a pr5 site.. my home page has a pr4 and all deeper pages have no pr.. it's been that way for a very long time.. and I have seen simular effects on other sites with very few backlinks.. maybe I am imagining it..

[phantombookman]

The recent PR update has seen a lot of pages go grey bar.
It's very annoying as Google are stopping you distributing your own page rank thoughout the site.

My established sites would pretty much follow a pattern say...
Index PR5 the next level PR4, 3rd level PR3 etc.
Not any more

My blog, for example, has seen all it's 2nd, 3rd pages of categories and second level pages of monthly archives all go grey bar as well.

When this happens it effectively removes all the PR from the pages coming off these navigational pages if they are the only links.

The whole PR thing is getting to be a PITA, you have Matt Cutts saying one day don't worry about PR it's not important then somebody says why can't I find a page in Google, answer: it's gone supplemental.
Why's it supplemental Matt
"not enough pagerank" comes the reply!

[tedster]

There is "real" PageRank and there is what the toolbar shows. Real PageRank is continually updated and calculated out to many decimal places. And it does matter, both for ranking and for staying out of the Supplemental Index - although there are quite a few other factors involved as well.

Although toolbar PageRank is a somewhat rough indicator of real Page Rank, it also can be quite strange, sometimes buggy, and always out of date. It's not worth nearly the amount of focus that people sometimes give it.

Search traffic matters. Rankings produce that traffic, so ranking matters. If pages are ranking and producing good traffic for a website, then it really doesn't matter what the toolbar shows. If there is a ranking or traffic problem, then toolbar PR might give you some clues as to what is going on. Or it might not - as I said, it's sometimes buggy and only a historical picture at best.