after the recent Google update, most of you noticed what happened to the decrease of PR and some keywords not seen on SERP. now I wonder what's happening. I go and search for other forums but they seem to have like "i noticed that too" with out giving nice answers. Now I'm not so sure with the directory submissions because I noticed that those sites that are not submitted to directories doesn't seem to change their PR. I'm not concerned with the "PR" itself but my concern is the update. Some say there's no Google Algo update, but how come there are some unusual changes?? I hope anyone can give a good answer on what's happening with G. So that we can go with flow and do the right thing.
I am sure that there was some Algo update or change in PR policy by Google last month. As Matt Cutts invite webmasters to help them by reporting the website with Paid inbound and outbound links. This PR update looks like horrible, because many majority of websites loosed their PR and might be this is the effect of Paid Linking... As far as directory submission is concern, so I don't think its negative, Google PR structure based on quality link building structure and this is a easy way to increase inbound links and how dare Google neglect it.. Anyways its all my assumptions, if any one has some observations on it please share..
There was a big algo change re the vertical/horizontal search, but none of my sites lost rankings and all gained PR last update. While i do feel Google had big problems with the last PR update, the fact they started the export, a few sites got PR on some datacenters then they stopped it for a week before recommencing the rollout. Also i had sites go PR3 for the main page, yet 30 internal pages went PR4 (even ones with no external backlinks), even the forum calendar got PR3 same as the homepage. So there was problems. My advice is to get backlinks from multiple sources. Example don't rely on just directory submissions, or just social bookmarking, or just press releases etc. Gather backlinks from multiple methods so if Google decides to devalue on source, you have other sources to hold your SERPs and PR. Also don't rely on backlinks to just your homepage, get them to major sub-pages as well.