PageRank Update July 2008... The green bar is moving!

[Atomic]

I'm seeing new page rank numbers across several sites! So far it looks like I'm gaining PR across the board.

[Thaparian]

PR updated for couple of my sites. Went from 0 to 2

[gunjanp]

I also found Backlinks update in Google.

I found that Backlinks of my sites are increased.

and for PR update again PR down for most of the Websites. Even I found that PR of Matt Cutts blog is also going down (Is Matt Cutts Buying or Selling Links? Hahaha, just kidding.)

[johnnie]

Most of my sites went from 0 to 4 :D

[bts111]

Seeing the green road to cash in Australia.

[newwebster]

"I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites."

I am seeing many sites that cleaned up their act having the -950 penality being lifted and finally ranking after having the penality for 2 years

[angiolo]

I can confirm that there is a toolbar pagerank update in Italy too.

[himalayaswater]

Same here; good stuff went down and fresh site combined

[johnnie]

Many internal pages are also receiving high PR ratings. I was expecting a PR of 2 or maybe 3, but 4 really exceeded my expectations :D

[signor_john]

I'm seeing a green bar one moment (with a +1 improvement on my home page) and a grey bar the next. Presumably everything will settle down in a day or two.

[Badger37]

In the UK...

I'm seeing many of my site's index pages drop by 1.
For example, established sites that have had a PR 4 are now 3.

But I can't see any changes in my site's placings, so it looks like it could be a 'calibration' exercise.

[edited by: Badger37 at 4:53 pm (utc) on July 26, 2008]

[celgins]

I'm seeing a 6-year old site with PR-4 and 5 drop to PR-3

[kneukm03]

I am seeing penalties removed as well, and it's definitely not confined to PageRank penalties. I have several sites that were penalized circa 2006 for using a cooperative link exchange (the digital point co/op) and I removed it in 2006. Multiple requests from the webmaster tools thing couldn't get the penalties removed, but now they are gone on all those sites with big rankings improvements.

[JS_Harris]

Earlier I wrote...

"Minus one accross the board for index pages here too, despite breaking records for traffic month after month.
However... LOADS of internal pages now carry the same weight as the index page.

Several internal pages outrank the index page.

It 'feels' like something has changed, not sure what yet."

In looking over the sites more closely it appears that at some point since the last update the emphasis on home page importance has been reduced and individual articles are weighed more heavily. I can confirm a PR2 site with a handful of PR4 internal pages when before this update those figures were PR3 index, PR2 internal pages. No changes were made to site layout between updates.

I'd wager that the algorithm has changed recently.

edit:A page of mine that had PR4 and drove solid traffic from search stopped sending any traffic two months ago. PR on the page is now grayed out. There is one affiliate link on the page, always has been. The page was manually penalized for its main term apparently. I'd like to hear more from affiliate marketers on how their visible pagerank changed.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 6:07 pm (utc) on July 26, 2008]

[tedster]

I'd wager that the algorithm has changed recently.

Yes, the PageRank algorithm itself was changed earlier this year. I'd love to have some discussion about it in this dedicated thread:
So Google Changed their PageRank Algo - How? [webmasterworld.com]

[alika]

Nine year old site went down from 6 to 5, and all pages across the board getting -1.

Google Webmaster tool showed a significant jump in duplicate titles, duplicate and short metadescriptions that we are still working to rectify.

[CainIV]

A bunch of changes on the buddy bar, but traffic is of course the same as are rankings. Back to work!

[TonyMc]

I've seen my 5 year old site go from pr4 to a pr3 in the last update and now to a pr2 with this update. Could this be a penalty of some kind?

[Pico_Train]

Toolbar hasn't changed but a penalties has definetely been removed or my changes to dup titles and descriptions as per webmaster tools notifications has helped immensely. From page 12 to page 2 and other great improvements.

[santapaws]

whats the difference between a penalty that has to be manually expired and a ban?

[kidder]

Most of my sites went down - no impact on traffic so far so who cares right? My sites are for the users.....

[m0thman]

My PR5 of the last few years has now gone to PR4, haven't checked all the internal pages yet, but traffic is still solid. Maybe time to disable PR on the toobar so we don't spend all our time checking it!

[drall]

Couple 7 year old sites went down, couple 9 year old sites stayed the same, no changes in traffic what so ever as usual.

My data points to this pr being calced in March lol.

[jcmiras]

Mine goes from 5 to 4 because of hackers/spammers.

[Kristos]

We had one site (dot org non profit charity) get slapped down hard in august 2005, all white hat legit seo, lots of inbound links.
got the plus 950 penalty or whatever you wish to call it.
we completely redesigned from the ground up, no help.
absolutely dead for traffic in G all this time though msn and yahoo always and still do rank it high for it's terms.
now it is back on front page for very competitive term!

[tedster]

Mine goes from 5 to 4 because of hackers/spammers.

In what way do you feel hackers could have lowered your PageRank?

[Kristos]

one thing about our dot org domain that came back in the last few days.
it was scraped and copied by all kinds of adsense focussed nothing sites

[edited by: Kristos at 1:04 pm (utc) on July 27, 2008]

[Asia_Expat]

I'm seeing no changes here in Thailand/Laos on my website

[Asia_Expat]

... or any others that I monitor

[rehabguy]

Here's how my sites faired:

Blogs +1
Ecommerce Sites 0
Business Directories -1

[newwebster]

whats the difference between a penalty that has to be manually expired and a ban?

A ban removes you from the index, a penality keeps you in the index, but your rankings are removed or downgraded.