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We've gone down in page rank down from 4 to 5. We also rank just a bit lower on our big keywords in serps after the last few months, but somehow I think having the large amount of backlinks will help us gain the ground we lost. Anyone else seen this?
And yes, we too, linked all without www, because this is how we want to be in the SERPs. I haven't thought about it yet. I'm not sure if it is related to the loss of links.
Google views widgets.com as a different page than www.widgets.com. You can promote either one (or both) by cross linking. I asked all linkers to use the url without www.
My 8 links left are all linked without www. And if I check links:www.mydomain.com I will find only 1 link. (One person did not do what I asked for and linked with the w's.)
I think that the algo is more strict now and a lot of sites lost PR. Due to this loss of PR, many backlinks are not showing. Remember that only links from sites with a certain PR are showing in Google.
Also, there is plenty to suggest Google are stopping / holding back on showing backlink info. Why? Because only webmasters give a hoot. And what do they do with the information? Jeez, they will find ever increasing and widely known ways of artificially inflating their SERPs with G, that's why.
Concentrate on getting links from (preferably) quality sites using the search term as the anchor text to your site. Although almost any link is a good link. Forget about monitoring backlinks. Leave that to the crazys and chickens. Take a peek every 4 or 5 days where you are in the SERPs. Spend the rest of the time scouring the planet for the world's best beer.
[edited by: Marcia at 8:36 am (utc) on Sep. 2, 2003]
I have researched and what I see is that if you use href=/widgets/ links in our side menu, google will not count it as a backlink, but if you use the full url i.e. href=http://www.widgets.com/widgets/ google will add to backlink tally.
It's always adviced to give absolute paths rather than relative paths.
It's always adviced to give absolute paths rather than relative paths.
Doesn't make one bit of difference either way, never has. Once the robot is on your site, it's pulling all the files from your domain.
Dayo_UK gives a pretty good account of why your backlinks count may have dropped, but as GrinninGordon so diplomatically put it "So what?" In other words, Google does what Google does. What you can do is build rich, informative webpages that other resources will readily link to :)
Lots of sites have lost a PR point, and the resulting implications of that, in the past few months because of poor crawling. And of course the study of backlinks reveals this, and would show that the drop in serps and PR has nothing to do with content or anything else under your control.
Your situation could be different, and trying to figure it out will keep you from being clueless.
You mentioned PR droping from 4 to 5. I guess you meant from 5 to 4. with your home page having 4 it is most probable that your internal pages now rank at 3 and thus don't show anymore, while you had them all show when your PR was 5 as they then qualified with PR 4 to be shown in the backlink report of google.
"so what" is a good approach to take once you have come to grips with what it takes to get to the top, you will notice many established webmasters with established sites take the so what approach. but trust me, when they first joined WW they panicked just like everybody else when they saw something they did not understand.
More closely on your PR dropping, this might have to do with recalculating PR, google seems to be doing it on a regular/irregular basis. incoming links from other websites count greatly for that matter. I have noticed that internal links are worth jack by now. they help if you maximise the anchor text, and also help when making sure some pages have more PR than others in your site, but they do not help boost the PR of your homepage, as they get their PR from that exact source.
So if you want to see those 1000 pages turn up again you need to get some more good links, PR4 or higher (6 links is a bit low to justify a pr of 5) and wait until your homepage has PR5 again.
Keep posting your questions! the answers might vary greatly, but that is the great thing about WW. you get so see all angles.
What happened to the person (GoogleGuy) supposedly from Google who used to offer comments on subjects such as these?
Have not seen in quite a while. Or is GoogleGuy only participating in the Private Forum For Webmaster Supporters?
Googleguy posts more outside the Supporters Forum than in that forum. I rarely see a post from him in the Supporters Forum.
