I have a few general pagerank questions that I'm hoping someone can answer: 1. If sites are hosted together on the same server, are they generally updated together, or can their update times vary? I ask because the all but one of my sites haven't seen any update (new and old alike), while one blog had the PR wiped to 0 for apparently no reason (even though a 50% increase in decent backlinks). I'm wondering if that might be a fluke that's going to correct itself (I've talked to a few other people who had similar things happen). 2. If that is likely a fluke, how long on average would it take to correct itself? I've heard people mention 2 weeks when similar things happen in the SERPS. Is it similar from your experience? 3. Are there ever "partial" updates, where Google simply doesn't update everything? Thanks. Jenn
Hi Jenn 1) I think it is full update. If any of your site has not updated by now, than the site is not going to receive PR this time. You will have to wait for the next. Don't worry about PR, its the traffic and SERPs that matters. 2) But Google has been randomly adjusting PR of sites regularly over the past few months. Some call it partial update, some call adjustment. So there is still ray-of-hope. Hope it helps.
Personally I don't worry much about Pagerank, and don't change how I run my business / advertising / etc. because of it. But an advertiser mentioned it the other day just to see if I'd noticed, so I figured I'd ask the larger community. I'd heard privately that people were still seeing changes, so I wasn't sure. Why they'd drop a site to PR0 with a 50% increase in backlinks (all natural, and not losing any good links) is what kind of baffled me. I do hope they get things straightened out though. My only concern is that I spend a lot of time building a reputation in my niches to build trust in what I write about. The last thing I need is for naive visitors seeing an empty bar in their Google toolbar, giving it any weight on the trust side of things. Unfortunately, out of the webmaster community, that's the kind of reputation the little green bar can have, and that can be a little bit frustrating.
Classically, PR has been about links pointing in. But in the past two google actions beginning end-2007, there is clear evidence that links pointing out also have a significant weightage. If Google reckons that you are selling links (based on the link buying behavior of sites you have linked to), then you will lose PR dramatically. A PR0 is quite common (even for PR5+ sites) for sites that have sold a lot of links to sites that have been link buyers at the most notorious of places (e.g. TLA, PPP) Ajeet
consider the following 1, Google is probably constantly upgrading PR constantly, this is invisible, not exported to toolbar 2, Google toolbar exports used to take weeks, now its over within hours, they've obviously been working on it 3, The blog that went to zero, has it lost traffic ? have you ever linked to someone who paid for the priviledge, as opposed to spontaneous recommendation? have you advertised blog related services on DP Do you accept that SE's have the resources to monitor every thread in this forum, 24/7 ? I can't given you answers, but answering those questions might help
If you worked on getting more inbound links and such for your web-site and the effects regarding PageRank were of opposite nature, then my blunt guess is that Google has punished you for doing something wrong, you may question all the steps you took. Any other explanation I could find is that it was a mistake as some had adviced you, I'm not sure myself if such mistakes are possible but if others say they are then they are.
Yes, I do sell links, and have no intention not to just because Google doesn't like it (and I'm not selling those links based on PR value, and bring in plenty of revenue). They knocked me to a PR3 in the last update (from 6) because of it, and that didn't really bother me. I don't really care from an advertising perspective if there's PR or not. I was just curious as to whether or not it's over, because it wouldn't really make sense to knock a site down to PR0 for selling a few text links (unless they do it for every site selling links, which they haven't). What bothers me is the false impression they give people, and their half-assed approach to updates. I know they don't mean much as far as relevance goes, but unfortunately readers in some of my niches don't get that, so an update is better than no update when it can determine if people think the site's been around long enough, or is otherwise trustworthy. And no... traffic hasn't really been affected overall, which is why I'm not too worried just in relation to that one site. I'm more just interested in why some sites are being updated and others are being completely ignored, which I haven't seen happen to any of my sites in the past. @Ajeet - Thanks. It's good to hear others had similar things happen so at least I'm not going to waste time monitoring it for fluctuations.
Jenn, Really need to look into more detail to see if it was a fluke. Stuff like how long it has been a PR3 - If its been stable a while then its probably a fluke Number of approxbacklinks its got - Maybe its PR3 last upgrade was based on a social network high PR link which has dropped off recently, etc.
I somehow have a feeling that Google seems to be constantly updating PageRank based on certain other parameters...There has been a patent filed which would look to factor in human behaviour such as time spent on a certain URL along with the positioning of the link and other factors as well....This post I believe explains it in very simple terms..take a look...http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/why-pagerank-is-broken-and-how-its-being-fixed/
xenyo... the PR3 was stable since the previous update, and I didn't lose any of my decent backlinks (and in the recent backlink update, I actually had about a 50% increase - all natural links).
In PR update link is not one of the reason. There are several reason getting PR by Google. If you have created much link within few months that would be also unethical. If your content is duplicate while you are updating your content every day your PR will be gone down. If site not optimized well then it can be one of the reason. All the matter depend on this.
shan... I didn't get any quick links through any way that wasn't natural (I didn't do heavy blog commenting, didn't even have it in my forum sig here for most of that period (re-included it after the update actually I believe), didn't go around adding it to directories, didn't go nuts on social bookmarking sites, etc.). My new links to that site generally come from people who simply found the content and considered it worth linking to. Nothing unethical there. I also write unique content for all of my sites. As for it being optimized, that would affect SERPS, but not PR. I haven't updated it terribly much (not at all yet this month actually), but that certainly doesn't seem to be affecting other sites (and a blog I'm posting to multiple times per day didn't have any PR update at all).
Yup I agree...considering the fact that most penalties are manual on Google....if one was selling links I believe it would be detectable
I'm not that worried. I was just hoping it was a temporary fluke, and that Google hasn't really gotten so self-indulgent that they'd declare sites to be essentially worthless in their little public displays, just because they don't agree with the advertising model. Silly me.