Since the middle of last week, our rankings have tumbled from Page 1 after years of page 1 rankings. I have tried to look at the latest dance critically and I suspect the change in rankings is due to a massive change in backlinks. Before last week we were running at 2000+ backlinks - currently it is just over 300. Has there been a change to the algorithm? Are Google filtering low Google PR back links? Are we looking at backlinks from some past date? Or is the "dance" just not complete? Any encouraging news or shall I walk the plank?
Try last month. Something is wrong with Google and backlinks, over the last several backlink updates I went from 1702 to 509 to 173, and in the last one, I got exactly 500. While they only show a sample, there were obvious omissions. PR has not updated for older sites in almost a year now as well. A new site I started recently does not show the same patterns in backlinks, getting it's first in the last update. I think Google may be just fine for the first update, and after that something goes awry, but I do not have enough data to draw a conclusion. There is a known problem with the deindexing of sites, and there has to be a correlation to links, and hence a correlation to drops serps and an overall noticeable decrease in quality of Google's results. Chances are it is not your fault, but pirates don't care. Walk the plank, ye scurvy dog!