Calling all PR conspiracy theorists!

[libertines]

i have been actively obtaining links for one of my websites - from .gov and .ac.uk sites aswell as the normal directories and article techniques. my page rank has gone down from 4 to 3!! I was expecting to jump to 5 definately but alaas no - damn google!

i have still maintained my 1st and 2nd postion in serps for my keywords which is good but i was wondering how could this happen??!

[jimkarter]

Would you mind telling the url so we can just see through?
Is it flyingchef?

[libertines]

yeah it is - you uessed using my sig - u are a detective!

[angelos]

Just getting more backlinks is not everything. They are to be quality ones from related sites and those having good PR.

[mad4]

Google is only showing you with 22 backlinks.

Without looking to see what the links are I would think PR3 would be about right.

Some PR4 sites I have are at over 500 links.

[libertines]

i have been actively obtaining links for one of my websites - from .gov and .ac.uk sites aswell as the normal directories and article techniques. my page rank has gone down from 4 to 3!! I was expecting to jump to 5 definately but alaas no - damn google!

i have still maintained my 1st and 2nd postion in serps for my keywords which is good but i was wondering how could this happen??!

like i said i have obtained one link from a .gov site pr6 and three from .ac.uk PR5 as well as good value directories etc..

Google is only showing you with 22 backlinks.

Without looking to see what the links are I would think PR3 would be about right.

Some PR4 sites I have are at over 500 links.

How can that be! I was on pr 4 and since then i have got around 60 links - stressing the pr 6/5 .gov and .ac.uk links!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Moncal]

Google is only showing you with 22 backlinks.

Without looking to see what the links are I would think PR3 would be about right.

Some PR4 sites I have are at over 500 links.
Google doesn't show anywhere near all of your backlinks. One of my sites shows two in Google and over a 1000 in MSN and Yahoo.

And I'll join the conspiracy theorists. My directory should have gone to a 5 and stayed at 3.

[libertines]

here here moncal! really hope this update has not finished. any ideas??

by the way i have submitted my sites to your directory - i like it! :D

[mad4]

You are right in saying google does not show up many of your backlinks - they only show a small proportion.

This site has 250 mentions (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22www.flyingchef.co.uk%22&meta=) listed in google which is still not a lot and probably about right for PR3 with 22 links listed.

The only thing to do is keep link building. All the links you have built will be helping but are just not showing in google yet.

[libertines]

sorry to maybe sound arrogant but i do not understand how my PR could drop from 4 to 3 with me link building? I understand google penalises sites through it serps but does it effect the given pr?

like i said i have got good links so i am still in shock that it has gone down i suppose.

Do you know whether the update is final or is it still going?

[mdvaldosta]

You ain't the only one confused... I had a partuclar DMOZ listed site that got PR4 and had no other link building. After realizing it got listed in the DMOZ then, and only then, did I start building links for it. I submitted it to around 500 directories and did some other promotion. It's still PR4. Doh!

Another site of mine was a PR3 after the last toolbar export. Submitted that one to about 300 more directories, bought about $500 in links and paid directories, AND it got listed in the DMOZ. Expected PR6... it got a PR4.

Ironically, two other sites of mine that I didn't even build but a couple pages of content for - and gets no traffic, and hasn't been promoted or had links built for... both got PR4.

Crazy.

[libertines]

yeah i am baffled :confused:

i literally made a blog around 2 months ago and didnt do any link building for it and it also has a pr3!! same as my site that i submitted to around 200-300 directories and obtained good quality links to, and now it went down froma pr4 to 3! :eek:

Is this update over or is it continuing? Also this will not effect my serps will it? i am 1st and 2nd and am still there at the mo but am a litlle worried....

[Peter_Rosado]

You ain't the only one confused... I had a partuclar DMOZ listed site that got PR4 and had no other link building. After realizing it got listed in the DMOZ then, and only then, did I start building links for it. I submitted it to around 500 directories and did some other promotion. It's still PR4. Doh!

Another site of mine was a PR3 after the last toolbar export. Submitted that one to about 300 more directories, bought about $500 in links and paid directories, AND it got listed in the DMOZ. Expected PR6... it got a PR4.

Ironically, two other sites of mine that I didn't even build but a couple pages of content for - and gets no traffic, and hasn't been promoted or had links built for... both got PR4.

Crazy.

Same thing, I expected PR 5- 6 on all my new sites (about 7) all got PR4. :(

[NetMidWest]

Here's some good reading for you:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=655672&postcount=553
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=656422&postcount=577
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=651527&postcount=203
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=656891&postcount=597
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=662539&postcount=739

And just for you, mdvaldosta:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=662989&postcount=749

[mad4]

I would wait at least a week before you start to worry about this.

On one site I have had 770 backlinks for a while. The site dropped to 180 links the other day and today is going from 180 to 1800 depending on the datacenter you use.

Nothing is clear until the update is completed really.

[libertines]

so i have to worry for atleast another week! yay!! well atleast my serps poosition has stayed the same -gulp!

[LaCabra]

Getting laid is like PR check this out:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=663332&postcount=138

[Immorta]

I have a PR3 with 8800 links, the PR tool is complete garbage and dont trust or use it its irrelevant.

[LaCabra]

I have a PR3 with 8800 links, the PR tool is complete garbage and dont trust or use it its irrelevant.
I agree :) ... yet another example why PR is not the end all be all ....

[Googles76]

Funny, I've also got PR3 on a website that I expected at least PR5. 3 seems to be the magic number this update..:confused:

[LaCabra]

Funny, I've also got PR3 on a website that I expected at least PR5. 3 seems to be the magic number this update..:confused:
PR is not magical, its not wizardry ... its wellllll .... check post from immorta!

[Phynder]

bought about $500 in links

Bingo - you are lucky you were not deleted from the Google index, like phynder.com was - for buying links...

[ly2]

i have been actively obtaining links for one of my websites - from .gov and .ac.uk sites aswell as the normal directories and article techniques. my page rank has gone down from 4 to 3!! I was expecting to jump to 5 definately but alaas no - damn google!

i have still maintained my 1st and 2nd postion in serps for my keywords which is good but i was wondering how could this happen??!

Dude who cares? You said youre in 1st and 2nd in the serps right? Be happy for that.

PR<SERPS
=]

[NetMidWest]

I would wait at least a week before you start to worry about this.

On one site I have had 770 backlinks for a while. The site dropped to 180 links the other day and today is going from 180 to 1800 depending on the datacenter you use.

Nothing is clear until the update is completed really.
I am not seeing this effect in this update. PR for my site is going from 5 > 6.
But I have yet to see new PR in the toolbar.
During jagger, I saw my links go from 1700 > 511. This update the backlinks went to 509, despite having some new ones. (I expected a small increase, and yes, I know the backlink count is not accurate.)
I think we are seeing some jagger type movements. My theory on this is here:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=662539&postcount=739

[libertines]

Dude who cares? You said youre in 1st and 2nd in the serps right? Be happy for that.

PR<SERPS
=]

:D true - spose it is just a dent to the male ego!

Having a low PR will not affect my serps will it?

[mad4]

Having a low PR will not affect my serps will it?

Probably not - having fewer links might though and PR is an indicator of links. :rolleyes:

[MattL]

I believe Google has been cracking down on sites that are known to sell links and reducing or eliminating their ability to pass PR (an "educated" theory).

[NetMidWest]

I believe Google has been cracking down on sites that are known to sell links and reducing or eliminating their ability to pass PR (an "educated" theory).
What is that based on?

[E13 9AZ]

Bingo - you are lucky you were not deleted from the Google index, like phynder.com was - for buying links...

How do you know it was for buying links?

[mad4]

Googles stance on buying & selling links (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/)

[Phynder]

How do you know it was for buying links?

That is the only "frowned upon" activity that I was involved in - that I am aware of.

Your point is well taken - there is no way to know why Google has dropped a site from the index. All I can do is look at the sequence of events and make a judgement. Jan, Feb and Mar I was buying links like a madman for Phynder.com, which was a PR5 site. At the next update, Phynder.com went to PR0 and nothing in the index. Any other ideas?

[MattL]

What is that based on?

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/

[E13 9AZ]

That is the only "frowned upon" activity that I was involved in - that I am aware of.

You have a vaild point, however would you not say your ban was manual and not algo related, for example someone reported your site?

If buying links can get you banned (and if I could afford to) I could buy a ton of links for my competitors and get them banned am I wrong?

[NetMidWest]

Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines...

I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future...

Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)...
If Phynder.com had pagerank before, and links other than paid, it would not explain the PR0.

I have bought links, but not for the PR or even the rankings, but to ensure I got good indexing, that Google would not rank a 302 redirect (http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm) pointed at my site ahead of me, and to insure that sites such as belahost (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=655695&postcount=10) and a bevy of proxy cache sites (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=372735&postcount=157) that got crawled about the same time as Matt's post would be recognized as the duplicate, not mine.

The flaw in the logic here is that Matt and Google assume that everyone who buys links is out to get higher PR and rankings. There are plenty of other reasons, especially with the bugs Google has suffered from over the last several years to purchase links for the traffic, both human and robotic. Until they eliminate those reasons, or find a way of divining the intent, downgrading the links is not the answer.

The links I purchased are one set of site-wide links, as opposed to many from different pages and sites. The anchor text is suffering more than it would if simply disallowed. It seems to be penalized. However, I renewed it with the same anchor text recently until I can check this out further, to see if it will bounce back to a level similar to that I would expect without the paid links.

[MattL]

The flaw in the logic here is that Matt and Google assume that everyone who buys links is out to get higher PR and rankings. There are plenty of other reasons, especially with the bugs Google has suffered from over the last several years to purchase links for the traffic, both human and robotic. Until they eliminate those reasons, or find a way of divining the intent, downgrading the links is not the answer.


Did you read the last paragraph?

"What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine."

[NetMidWest]

Did you read the last paragraph?

"What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine."
Did you read my last post?
The flaw in the logic here is that Matt and Google assume that everyone who buys links is out to get higher PR and rankings. There are plenty of other reasons, especially with the bugs Google has suffered from over the last several years to purchase links for the traffic, both human and robotic. Until they eliminate those reasons, or find a way of divining the intent, downgrading the links is not the answer.

rel="nofollow" means nothing to humans. To robots, it means do not follow the link, which means that the robot will not visit the destination. If Google is dumping the wrong sites for duplicate content, which I feel had happened to me when the proxy trash was really heavy, and I know happened during the 302 redirect problems I had, the only solution is to ensure that Googlebot hits my site more often, with more recent cache dates, etc.

It is my philosophy of late to treat the search engine robots the same as my human visitors. If you will think about something as simple as hidden text, you will see that it does the human visitor no good, therefore you should not let a robot run into the same thing. A rel="nofollow" means nothing to a human visitor, so why feed that to a robot?

[MattL]

Did you read my last post?


rel="nofollow" means nothing to humans. To robots, it means do not follow the link, which means that the robot will not visit the destination. If Google is dumping the wrong sites for duplicate content, which I feel had happened to me when the proxy trash was really heavy, and I know happened during the 302 redirect problems I had, the only solution is to ensure that Googlebot hits my site more often, with more recent cache dates, etc.

It is my philosophy of late to treat the search engine robots the same as my human visitors. If you will think about something as simple as hidden text, you will see that it does the human visitor no good, therefore you should not let a robot run into the same thing. A rel="nofollow" means nothing to a human visitor, so why feed that to a robot?


Not sure what to tell you about your redirect problems, but I would hope you don't rely on paid links to get Googlebot to visit your site more often.

As far as showing a bot something that means nothing to human visitor (rel=nofollow) - There are things that they "ask" for and things that they don't want. You can't really compare legit attributes and black hat techniques.

[HN Will]

First of all - Sayles - Regarding the link you posted - you think about PR too much.

Second, regarding nofollow, I find that G follows them anyway, even put a couple in their index with no cache or description.

[MattL]

Second, regarding nofollow, I find that G follows them anyway, even put a couple in their index with no cache or description.

I was wondering that myself...if the bot follows the link but it is simply ignored from a PR perspective.

[NetMidWest]

Not sure what to tell you about your redirect problems, but I would hope you don't rely on paid links to get Googlebot to visit your site more often.
Really just an insurance policy - I was out of it by the time I bought the links. But it helped in the decision, there were few cases of high traffic, high PR sites getting hijacked. This is good reading:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=16232
But it was really about having 10 copies of my pages from proxies crawled and included by Google, without much other content... and watching my rankings plummet because of them. When I had a particularly bad one shut down after contacting the host, they began to climb back. Adding the links took care of the rest, and they recovered.

As far as showing a bot something that means nothing to human visitor (rel=nofollow) - There are things that they "ask" for and things that they don't want. You can't really compare legit attributes and black hat techniques.
rel="nofollow" s a decision by the webmaster of the site the link is on. If Google does not want to score a link, or follow a link, or even include a site, they do not have to. And rel="nofollow" has started popping up without a webmaster letting people know about it - paid links, exchanges, etc. including links that should be considered an 'editorial vote', such as in forums.

I guess what I am really saying is that if Google wants to sort paid links versus spontaneous links versus exchanged links, they should smarten up the robots and the algos, not go to the webmasters for help and penalize them if they don't.

[Blitz]

Hmm,

Crappy update for me too. Seems 2 of my sites went from PR4 to PR3, and 3 of my sites (which I haven't started advertising at all and have just been indexed) are all PR2.

Weird.

[tesla]

i have been actively obtaining links for one of my websites - from .gov and .ac.uk sites aswell as the normal directories and article techniques. my page rank has gone down from 4 to 3!! I was expecting to jump to 5 definately but alaas no - damn google!

i have still maintained my 1st and 2nd postion in serps for my keywords which is good but i was wondering how could this happen??!

I agree. Google is doing something wrong. I've checked all 7 of my sites and so far NONE of them has gained any page rank, despite weeks of getting quality links.

Since the update before this one, I've got numerous PR 5, 6, and 7 links and I find it absolutely preposterous that Google hasn't given me an increase on a single site!

Something is seriously wrong. I'd like some answers myself. The fact that this update is WAY past overdue is a cause for concern.

Google is really pissing me off. I've read something in the news today about them restricting access to something involving China, and then my adsense earnings have plummeted. Now I can't even get any damn PR for my sites!? What next?

This is what happens when you rely on a transnational corporation to get stuff done...............they don't! :(

[NetMidWest]

If it's any comfort, Tesla, I have yet to see new PR on the toolbar...
but I can see it on the McDar Datacenter Quick Check Tool (http://www.mcdar.net/Q-check/datatool.asp).