I used to have a PR 5 and now I'm a 4 !!! What possible reasons can there be for this to happen? This is a personal website I've had since 1998 (url listed below) Thanks for any input. Sam Personal Website
PageRank is all about links. It's a complex algorithm that google is constantly changing. The number of links required to get a particular PageRank has been increasing with each update. Adding links can also "leak" some of your PR. Have you lost any of your back links? Have you gained any back links? Have you added more links than you have gained? You may have been a PR 5.01 and have dropped to 4.99. This small decrease will show as a drop of one (5 to 4). If you want to get back to a 5, get some more relevant links.
Is the dance over to fret about the PR? I mean, I remember days would go by before PR settled out on some sites. tom
I have had a similar experience, we made a change on our webserver hostname. Our PR went down to 0 for about 2 weeks. Then when google found it again (on their next PR update) we actualy gained one. The different of the subdomain was very subtle and we did not know if Google do indeed take subdomains seriously. It was apa1.pricecomparison.com and we changed it to pricecomparison.com. Just sharing my experiences. Andrew Online Shopping Start Here!
Compar posted an article by Dirk Johnson about outgoing linking. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=800 It gives a very different perspective on outgoing links and in my limited experience, what he says rings very true. I find that relevant outgoing links benefit my websites. If you are reviewing backlinks, check you are not linking to anyone who suddenly has the dreaded dead grey bar and make sure that the outgoing links you have are relevant, but don´t worry so much about the number of outgoing links. In this update, I dropped too. From a 6 to a 5. I have only been a 6 for a couple of months, it was nice while it lasted. But at least I can convince myself I must be a HIGH 5 and work at getting some more good in and outbounds to consolidate a PR 6 next time round. In any case, as you will see over and over again in this and other forums, don´t worry too much about PR, look at SERPs and traffic. PR 1´s regularly come up above PR5, 6 and 7 these days. Two steps forward and one step back. Cést la vie.
Smeilach, I wrote the previous email before I actually looked at your site. While you work on getting your PR 5 back, you could perhaps increase traffic by working on other elements of your site. Your TITLES could be tailored to draw in more visitors. Unless you are only interested in attracting people who know you already, change the TITLE´s to reflect the theme of your site instead of your name. I didn´t spend a long time on your site but I got the impression that you were wanting to pass on spiritual and motivational inspiration. If that is the case, use this as your keyphrases in the TITLES and body text. Instead of what you have now, use 6 to 10 words describing each page of your site. Look at it this way, how many people are likely to search Google for Sam Meilach, compared to how many might search for inspirational quotes or motivational quotes?
The link you posted is almost a year old and imo, very dated. If it was true that outgoing links help, I would have a site with a PR10 since I have a site with about 4,000 indexed pages of outgoing links (informational site, no selling of links). The recently released google patent information also proves some of those claims as wrong. I also strongly disagree that reciprocal links are not being discounted in certain (not all) circumstances. It isn't too hard to figure out that two sites swapping links doesn't make them a more relevant or authority site. I don't think PR leak is anything to worry about (it's small at best) but it could explain a site going from a PR 5.01 to PR 4.99. There are also directory's that use javascript so PR does not pass thru.
mjewel, Well, nobody knows for sure except Google, and I don´t have any argument with the fact that recipricol links have less value than one-way inbound, but in your original post to Smeilach you said: The inference is that outgoing links are bad and I don´t believe that they are. One- way outbound links to on-topic, relevant pages that will be of value to your visitors (IMHO) will not hurt your website. Smeilach at least can read that article and form his own opinion.