From PR 4 down to PR1?

Sudden PR Drop

[merlin23]

Suddenly, in the past few hours my site main page has dropped from PR4 to PR1 - Of course, I am hoping it's a glitch, but the other pages on the site has lost PR too - Mainly from 3 to 2...

Why would this happen - are there current probs with the toolbar?

Anyone got any ideas on this?

Thanks.

[merlin23]

I have looked at my Webmaster tools account and there is nothing there which indicates there is anything wrong ...

[pontifex]

There is a PR update going on at the moment... heavy penalties of PR sellers, as far as I can tell!
But let's wait for the dust to settle!

P!

[merlin23]

OK, thanks, wait a day or 2 then...

I don't sell PR or anything - or even link with dodgy sites (god forbid)... As far as I am aware I haven't done anything that I shouldn't have done - in actual fact I am paranoid about doing something wrong - and always err on the side of safety... so it's a mystery....wait a couple days then...

[merlin23]

OK -waited a few days and it's still the same - MAIN PAGE dropped from PR 4 to 1... As you can imagine I am pulling my hair out here, because I don't and haven't done anything wrong (as far as I know)...am very careful with the site...

The only thing I can see in webmaster tools that maybe an issue is Duplicate meta descriptions(23 pages)...

This wouldn't cause the drop of 3 PR would it?

The good news is that I haven't lost organic traffic and still rank number one for my key phrases...

Anybody got any suggestions - Please!

[JS_Harris]

I don't have a large enough sampling of sites to give a report that can be considered accurate but I have noticed a trend that could signify a higher emphasis being placed on trusted incoming links.

One of my best performing sites is in a niche that simply does not have a lot of competition and thus a lot of incoming links aren't possible. The site is still doing/ranking well but PR fell by 2 on index.

In comparison a site I simply use to ramble on and often write things that get talked about on the net and do well in social media circles got a huge boost to both the index and many internal pages.

The main difference, one gets buzz+links+ etc.. the other doesn't.

The lower ranked quality content site is much more important than my ramblings, lol.

[nandalinnaung]

google algorithms have been changed.. so u will see the shifted PR system..

hope that helps