There are many theories and frankly I have seen only a few who have the real answer... even seo who I highly respect are saying things that don't add up here. Let me tell you what is really going on with google pagerank After writing my article I downloaded the stompernet conference discussion of this very thing and they agree with which is comforting since most of you won't listen. Ohh well
not sure about others, but it seems that Google has reverted backlinks for my sites to the number they were at 6-7 months ago (April).
I have seen a couple sites that have had pagerank loss but traffic and rankings all remain the same...
I have the complete opposite problem of everyone. I went up in PR (2 levels), but now my site is no longer listing for the keyword it was before. I used to be on page 1 for my desired keyword and now I'm nowhere in the listing (on any pages). However I still have my PR and my site still comes up for both the url and for the name of my site. I checked the data centers, and my site still shows up on the first page in the data centers, but it doesn't appear in any of the actual live results (checked for various countries..it's just not showing up - I don't sell links, and the site is an actual website - not a directory or anything). It's very unusual - I've been waiting like 4-5 days still no change..I hope those data centres are what's to come ...
A few hours after the PR update, my keywords went from the first page, to nowhere. ... Last night They returned to the first page It seems unstable and will go from the first to the second page.. but there rank has at least returned.. I think you may be right about the data centers! Cheers James
Listen that is irrelevant. As long as you lost no rankings obviously they are still valuing those links so that is meaningless. Nonesense... this all adds up. I have yet to have an answer from Google which adds up. Matt has already made a post if you want to fall for that... To a certain degree maybe... but not really. There is alot of evidence to support this... Okay GUYS instead of posting "we are stupid nobodys and until Google tells us we will not know" why not post why you think I am wrong... what part of my theory is bad? My conclusion is you haven't compared my theory with reality yet... I keep asking people to prove me wrong and nobody can. Completely unrelated... I seen a site go from PR7 to PR4(actually many of them) and none of them lost any rankings. Your incident was purely coincidental.
Give me an hour in consultation and i'll tell you why you lost your rankings... if your pr was(before this update) below 3(2-1) you will have likely seen an increase that is if you have built any kind of links to it.
I am not sure if you analysis is completely correct, but have to admit; I made the same observations! Just I believe: It's not over yet, there seems something more to come ...
This is a leap into the dark for Google... they aren't sure of how it all will work out. They are hoping but I agree, they have other plans so there is likely more to come. Ohh and for those who noticed John Chow being banned... this was part of the whole gig. Ban respected webmasters to intimidate the rest... that is not right IMO. Google needs a competitor to keep it in line.
During the last 3 months, i check all my concurrent sites in the serp and i've noticed that backlinks are now less relevent than before, i mean backlinks with anchor text for the given keyword, so i think that Google is giving less weight to backlinks and more weight to others things such as onpage optimization, age of domain, ect... in order to avoid buy/sell links. I think they change the algo in order to filter some domains and to not consider them in PR calculation, it's because the lost in PR. What do you think?
Google can filter any keywords for your site so if your site have a good result on some keywords that can hit some other big company who paid for adwords so google can filter your site and put you out of result , that is my experience.
No I don't think so... backlinks are still as relevant as before. And I think this is proven by the fact that no many sites which lost PR and appear to have lost backlinks are still ranking is as good as ever. Google is discrediting certain types of backlinks such as directories, reciprocals, site-wide etc... you are right there.
If any of you have participated in paid links before this update and during the PR update got penalized in serps please post... I have been arguing this point with many at DP and some still will not listen... this was PR update to dilute PR and was not a penalization... a penalization hits rankings. Why is it everyone takes a biased persons articles(matt cutts) over a reputed seo? Seems stupid to me...
I agree Matt is communicatiing company interested versions of what is happening, not webmasters help! One of my client's sites went down from PR4 to PR3 without SERPs been affected, just for a sidewide link placed on a THEME RELATED high traffic site (for targeted customers, not for PR manipulation). I advised to place rel=nofollow and the PR is now back to 4. But thats not the point, serious and qualified SEO observations show; Google communications have few to nothing to do with the real thing, but with their company policy.
Hmm I don't know if anyone suggested this yet, but could this all be simply because there is a lot more web sites on the internet these days (due to the blogging boom, cheap web hosting, bandwidth and domain names etc.) and so the PR has to scale back a bit to account for this growth? Otherwise, if everything was kept as is yet the number of web sites grew, sites which were, for example, PR8 would continue growing and be untouchable while the sites that have low PR would be essentially doomed to it for... too long. Not that PR ultimately matters THAT much, but to Google it does and from their perspective they have to make it work on the web as it is *today*. This would mean that PR5 could today be just as worth as PR6 was before. It's just a different number for the old thing. This could also explain not having losses of traffic even though PR fell. Just a thought.
i was active in only one blog from 3-4 months and for my that effort i got PR3. I am happy for that. but i received PR4 for one blog, where i hadn't posted more than 1 post. and this shocked me. does anyone have the answer??