Ack! My site, ValueWiki.com, is bouncing around in Google. Last week, our Google traffic quadrupled, this week it has evaporated. These fluctuations have been ongoing for several months. What is going on? We know from Matt Cutt's blog (www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-pagerank/) that pagerank is constantly fluctuating. However, the total number of inlinks to ValueWiki.com is only increasing over time, right? This leads me to theorize that older links are assigned a lower rank?? I've definitely noticed that my most recent blog posts will receive a top SERP, and after several weeks, will no longer make a page 1 SERP. So does Pagerank constantly evaporate over time? Doesn't this contradict the theory that older url's have higher page rank? Confused. Any and all theories welcome. P.S. - The ValueWiki domain was started in August, but I'm pretty sure we're out of the sandbox, fwiw. Google's indexed 168,000 of our pages. So I don't think this pagerank question has to do with the sandbox, fwiw. All theories & ideas welcome.
New posts are new so google likes fresh sites. Now old sites or links should have same rank but do not have the fresh content. All sites bounce around but the higher rank a site is the less it moves.
So new posts receive higher PR? Does that imply that older links degrade over time? Just trying to figure out why Google sent my site 1,000's of visitors last week, and 100's this week.... TIA
Also remember the "bouncing around" might have nothing to do with your site, and everything to do with the other XX million sites for the same keyword.
Yes, it's more likely that other sites are moving ahead of you in PR rather than your links being devalued.
Older sites typically receive higher PR, unless links are removed. This is why some old sites that you wouldn't expect to have super-high PRs receive a PR 8/9 while newer highly linked sites sometimes get a PR 7 or so. Compare slashdot (PR 9, and used to have some internal PR 9 pages as well) to Digg (PR 7). I would have expected the opposite based on the massive # of high PR blogs now linking to Digg, but slashdot has age in its favor.
Older links do not pass less PR. Older sites are more likely to have "trust" - which is different than PR.
Hope you are not saying old backlink lists from directory.google.com dmoz.com dir.yahoo.com are less important for PR?
Okay, this all makes sense, but there are still two mysteries... 1) Why do new blog posts get great Google SERP, and then sink after a few weeks? 2) Why did Google suddenly send ValueWiki 4x our regular traffic last week, before sinking back to normal? Has anyone experienced these hiccups? Any theories on this? (btw, thanks to everyone for this interesting discussion)
I've also faced similar things, older link don't show in back-link of Google. like site: http://www.digitalpoint.com why is it happens?
Sure enough, the Google patent states.... 26...generating a [pagerank] score includes: determining freshness of links associated with the document, assigning weights to the links based on the determined freshness... I blogged the patent and my findings here... http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/04/11/google-pagerank-freshness/ Hope people find this helpful. Technical
Rankings and Toolbar PageRank are not the same thing. A lot of your assumptions are incorrect because of this. Also remember that just because it is a google patent, it does not mean it is being used - in fact, it would be uncommon if various factors are included in the filing as a red herring. Posting that "Slashdot has a higher pagerank than Digg" just because of domain age is absurd.
I think I have a pretty good grasp on the difference between Google floating point PR averages, and the Toolbar exports. There is no ambiguity in what I wrote. So I'm not sure what your point is... As for Digg vs Slashdot, do you have any other explanation why their PR's are different? Technical
Google's PR is only one portion of their SERPS algorithm - in fact, many industry experts like the head of ASK search think google has completely abandoned it for SERPS. Whether they have, or not, it certainly plays a much smaller role in calculating SERPS as it used to. PR is 100% determined by incoming links. The older the link, the more weight is carries with google for SERPS. Slashdot has a higher page rank because it has more quality links pointing to it. 9.5 million total backlinks according to yahoo vs 6.5 million for digg. Domain age is very important for SERPS (not PR), but since both domains are from 1998, the point is moot. You don't even understand what the sandbox is. The sandbox has nothing to do with getting a site indexed or PR. The sandbox refers to google not counting backlinks when calculating SERPS for certain highly competitive terms. Backlinks show, they just are not factored in when calculating SERPS. It doesn't mean a new site can't rank for a highly competitive term, but without backlinks being factored, it can make it almost impossible.
I'm going off Wikipedia's definitions of Sandbox and Pagerank. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank People aren't even sure the Sandbox exists. If you are privy to some special knowledge, maybe cite your source. I think your main point is that the PageRank Algorithm and SERP Algorithm are two different things. I've never heard this, and would be curious to know why you think they are not one and the same? Technical
Read Matt Cutts blog. He confirms that google has an algorithm exists for certain competitive keywords which could be considered the "sandbox" although google doesn't internally call it the sandbox - and he won't say what google calls it. PageRank is, at best, a part of the google algorithm. There are many other factors, such as domain age, relevance of links, site content, keywords, etc. PageRank doesn't factor in any of these when assigning a number to a site - it is 100% determined by incoming links - content, keywords, etc. aren't even factored in. You can have a PageRank of 10 for a site like Adobe, but you won't rank high for keywords related to mortgage. Look at "mortages", you'll find lower PageRank sites above higher PageRank sites because PR is not the end all with google. People who focus on getting PR from non-relevant sites are wasting their time if they are trying to increase their SERPS.