is there such thing as PR penalty?

My PR went down from PR3 to PR2 and today PR1?

My site obviously has more backlinks now than 6 months ago so what could be causing it to drop?

If Google's giving my site a penalty where can I find out about it?

btw, I haven't done anything illegal, never bought/sold links.

 

You have been gathering links but have you been updating the content?

Backlinks help but im pretty sure that there are a few other factors also
to be considered including updating your content frequently.

thx
malcolm

 

yes, my site gets updated everyday.

Google just doesn't like my site?

 

Yes there is and I think it usually makes the site a PR0 but it does not usually effect the SERPs

 

PR goes up and down all the time, especially if your site is new. In order to get a stable PR, you will need to get some solid backlinks. Like: backlinks from trusted sites or from pages that themselves have high PR.

 

thanks for the advice
but my site isn't new at all and has many pretty decent PR2~4 backlinks and yet it went down to PR1.

My site has previously been updated PR1->PR3->PR2->PR1 despite increased backlinks with higher PR's.

Am I being penalized by Google for something that I'm not aware of?

 

Are those relevant to yours? You should build links dynamically & naturally, not looks like manipulation.

 

do u have bad back link or less pr link, relevancy also required for pr

 

PageRank is all about backlinks, nothing to do with how often you update your site. PR is a mathematical calculation and represents popularity on the web. So if there were only 100 websites on the internet and 50 of these websites link to you, then you will have a PR5 (obviously, i'm assuming all backlinks carry the same weightage is is not true for all websites).

Therefore there are 3 possible reasons for the lower PR of your site:

1) The amount of links you have accumulated is not proportionate to the amount of new websites created.
2) The backlinks that you have don't carry the same weightage they used to (some websites where you have backlinks may have lower PR now)
3) You've got a PR drop due to a penalty - now this is very rare and will be applied only if you have been going seriously against google TOS

 

Thanks for great info and advice.

Most of my backlinks are relevant to its niche so that's probably not it..

I don't quite understand what this means:
"1) The amount of links you have accumulated is not proportionate to the amount of new websites created."

Then.. (# of backlinks added) < (# of new sites appearing)
Something like this could also cause my PR to drop?

wow, this is a news to me. maybe that's why!

Thanks!

 

I agree with malcolm1

Try changing your content, etc.. Remember to make it original

 

if links seem unnatural then the PR can get affected.

 

Content has nothing to do with PR, it's only about backlinks (although good content will attract backlinks but that's a different story).

See the max PR of any given website is 10 and PR is a measure of popularity. For each new website that is discovered, google assigns a constant PR which is a decimal less than 1. So even if you see that a webpage is PR0, it does have a little PR (maybe PR0.1 or something). Now if the number of website on the Internet increased from 100 to 200, then you will need double the number of backlinks you used to have to maintain your PR (this is just an illustration as link weightage can be strong/weak on different websites). The conclusion is that thousands of new website are discovered daily and they form part of the PR calculation so that the max PR remains at 10.

 

but fluid,
I have another puzzling question.

I see some other sites in my niche with much less # of traffic and backlinks than mine with lower PR backlinks,
which were able to sustain higher PR than mine.

how could this be possible? does this mean I have gotten PR penalty?

This just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

I mostly do just reciprocal link exchanges
and nothing strange other than occasional submit to directories and article sites.

so if my link building appeared little manipulated, then Google gives me a penalty?

I haven't changed anything much in terms of link building,

what's causing my PR to drop again while other very same niche sites sustain the same PRs?

 

That is not a penalty if it goes down for 1PR. I got a penalty for selling links and my blog went from PR5 to PR0 in first update.

 

Google will start to ignore reciprocal links if they get too common. A few are natural, but after a while it starts looking like intentional manipulation. Its not really a penalty, they just stop counting links that don't look natural.

 

I would focus your website's positions in the SERPs, not toolbar PR.

 

Yeh do not focas too hard at PR, really its just a number, you are better off ranking high in the SERPS. You should strive for positioning over anything else, if you are on the first page, you are most likely to get hits and people will talk about you.

 

You can have a high PR backlink but it could be that it's not giving you enough PR juice to boost your overall PR because there are too many outgoing links on that page. See, if a webpage has PR5 and 20 outgoing links, then the PR5 will be divided among those 20 outgoing links and give you less PR juice than another PR5 page with just 5 links.

Don't worry too much about PR, it's just really important for number of times google will visit your site and index your inner pages if you have loads. For SERPs, it's just a small factor.