I just received my first pagerank (3) on the last google update... ....but my rankings didn't change. My website is online for just 6 months. Do you think iam still in the sandbox?
I have just received the first pagerank for a site of mine aswell, PR4 . (Site was only 96 days old) I haven't detected any changes in rankings either, although I've been #3 for a few search queries for something like a week now. Thus I was higher in the results then some of my main competitors, but didn't have any rank back then. Maybe it takes some time for the pagerank to really start to work?
Your sites already had pagerank before it showed up on the toolbar. The toolbar just updated - a few times this month actually - but the pagerank that is actually important for determining where your site ranks in the serps changes daily. Those changes DON'T show up in the toolbar. In other words: don't worry too much about the toolbar PR. Just create good / interesting content, promote that, get links and watch your visitor numbers slowly increase.
Did google become more strict with their ranks? Once my site had pr3, then 0, and after the last update still a 0...
must e something wrong your neighbors ' check all bad outbound link and delete that from any pages, it might help at next pagerank update. btw, if you loose your rank at SERP, that also bad symptoms