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Any thoughts?
Unless Google has really went crazy, they do not show changes in PR or backward links until the monthly update so I am not sure what you guys are referring to.
Oh well, we will see what happens Monday. I lost $1000 in commissions today alone, so I will hope for the best!
It happened to me also on the 12/21 freshbot update with several sites. One had been number one for all the most important phrases in the cat for over 2 years, 12/21 freshbot puts it half way down page 2 for the top 3 terms.
Funny thing is I am also webmaster/seo for most of the sites on page one (8 of the 10)....there is no good reason for the previously number 1 site being dropped to halfway down page 2. It has a higher PR and is equally well optimized. I haven't touched this particular site in 2 months. Nor have I touched any of the others, I have to conclude Google had a hickup or has changed the freshbot ranking algo. I favor the hickup as the algo change should have hurt them all, not just the previous #1 site.
Curious thing is I am still seeing 12/21 fresh dates in Google and it is now 12/23, on the east coast anyway. Shouldn't I be seeing 12/22 or no fresh dates?
Servers have been up 100% for the last 3 months, I'm really scratching my head to find a good answer to this problem. Currently I hope it just goes away in the next day or two ;)
One thing this proves is however much anyone may not like people owning several web sites on page one and reducing "real choice" it is totally necessary so you don't get hurt badly when this type of thing happens!
I have to conclude something went wrong with the 12/21 freshbot update or a Googler was playing with a new thought!
Jim
john
It's almost as though the monthly update has lost much of it's importance. True, they calculate PR, but fresh sites take on an assumed PR, rarely earned and can surpass sites with actual links easily
Today though, google referrals were back to normal, our site was one of the few in the listings that did not have a cache date (and the copy cached is 2 months old, while the pages have been revised majorly twice since then), but our listings went to maybe 120th.
A related thread..
[webmasterworld.com...]
To the best of my knowledge, sites linking to you do not matter. Otherwise, a competitor could put your links on FFAs and get you dropped
If Google does not like your site it will not always completely ban the site or PR0 it, Google will just do
a few hand tweaks and you are no longer on page one you are on page 4,5,6.... with a 60 or 80 percent loss in traffic (and sales).
They must be running some experiments. It's strange because PR does not seem to be playing much of a role. I have a PR 8 site which always ranked top for many terms and it is basically disappeared.
The number of links showing has not changed. If it had, then we would be in the middle of an UPDATE/Dance thread. That is why I did not answer the the question.
Lets suppose you have 100 PR5 sites linking to you and they all get caught being members of a link farm. I would imagine they all lose their page rank and lose their influence on yours at the same time. Only guessing about the timing though.
Anyway, it isn't only my sites, rather a large change in results for many terms
