Our previous PR5 has dropped to PR4 in the current update. That puzzles me. Since the last update, our Google backlinks and indexed pages have increased, SERPs results are up nicely, and traffic is at an all-time high. I have also been diligent in daily submission to directories, and Yahoo shows several thousand backlinks (none of them spam). Any ideas why, with progress seemingly being made on those other fronts, the PR would have dropped on the website? (It's the 4th link in the signature) Thanks for any advice.
I saw that happen with one of my sites during the last PR update. My theory is that G is ignoring or discounting "low quality links". Matt Cutts indicated in one of his blogs that excessive reciprocal links can lead to site indexing issues. That pretty much confirmed what a lot of SEO people have observed for quite some time. If a lot of your backlinks are being discounted, that would also explain a lower PR. My theory is that both sitewide links and reciprocal links are pretty much dead as far as G is concerned.
Tech, that could in part explain it. I do not have sitewides, and only a handful of reciprocals. But most of the other links are free directory ones, many of which are pretty low-quality (I suspect) in Google's eyes. Lately I've been on a campaign to secure some good .edu links. We'll see if that works and shows up positively in the next update. Any other suggestions?
I do agree with an opinion that G changed attitude to some categories of links, but what are the criterions of considering any particular link to be either worth or worthless?
I have some directories I thought were very good. I web tool showed Expected PR6 they did not do well. Some I thougt would get PR1 or PR2 G gave them PR4 and PR3 Kind of not sure what is going on.
I saw a couple sites, not mine, lose PR this update. Both went from PR6 to PR5. I use a program that tells me everything and more about their backlinks. Their backlink profile changed little from several months ago, still have same high PR websites linking to them. I was stumped as to why they would have lost PR, similar to what you are saying. I went back through their sites, page by page and again studied their backlink profiles. My conclusion, both sites have 2 things in common; 1. tons of reciprocol links 2. sitewide links on high PR sites where the links were "bought." I believe they lost PR this update due to high PR site no longer passing PR and recip links not passing PR value. Does your backlink profile resemble any of the two items mentioned above?
PR predictions are rarely correct. Do you still believe that PR can be predicted considering the fact that measures of appraisal of backlinks and other criterions used to estimate value of a page are changing month to month?
sitewide links still have some power as to PR. I found a quality directory www. octopedia.com recently got PR7 and its PR mainly from a sitewide links from a PR8 www. searchenginecolossus.com
I'm gonna have to put my money on this also. My site has a lot of low quality forums links and a couple low quality blog posts. I'm not 100% sure I got skipped on this updated but I don't have a PR yet. Backlinks got updated but I'm still coming up as a PR0 on all datacenters. However I did see a PR3 for one day on a inner site page of mine that dissapeared within 24 hours. I do have good handfull of PR3-5 links in the mix also but I guess they might not have effected anything. The site is about 5ish months old and I obviously missed the update 4 months ago also. I guess I'm just hoping the update is not finalized yet.
I think its a matter of not having been assigned PR yet, if you have pr 4-5 links then expect PR even if otehr links are of poor quality.
Well my website also get a penalty update from PR4 to PR3.. but my backlink on google are update from 33 to 104. one off my subpage got a PR0 to PR4 in the update ... so I'm with you, the "bad" backlink can be a very bad thing... just my opinion...
No, there is no resemblance. I have less than 10 recips out of several thousand backlinks. And I have secured zero sitewides. Still puzzled.
Google is primarily looking for "natural" linking patterns. The reason that I mention sitewide links and reciprocal links is because they are easily detectible as artificial linking. Don't count on all .edu links as being golden. A little over a year ago I saw a site that was buying sitewide links from Stanford.edu. They had over 50,000 backlinks from stanford.edu. They were #4 for a very competitive term and got wiped out of Google's index. The site owner did get one of the rare responses from Google when they enquired about it (the site owner knew an insider). Google's response indicated that inbound links from link farms was an issue. There were no actual link farms involved, so I supect that is G's terminology for sitewide links. This may have also negatively impacted Stanford's site. It looks like they killed their sitewide link sales program. I've changed my attitude on inbound links over the past few years. Here are my observations. 1. The best link is always a one-way link from a leader in your industry. Almost impossible for 95%+ of sites to obtain. 2. The second best link is a one-way link from another site focused on your industry. Write informational articles that provide support for other web sites to obtain natural links. Difficult to do and the competitive nature of business makes links difficult to obtain. 3. The next best link is a one-way link from a directory or another site. Not always the ideal way to obtain links, but without these options most sites would be dead in the water. I wrote an article on this subject a few weeks ago: Effective Inbound Links I suspect it also matters if the link is buried in text (that would look most natural) or on a page that ranks well and whose theme is very strongly tied to your site's theme. This would mean that footer links or margin links could be easily identified and discounted. The PR prediction tools are taking all backlinks into account. They have no way of knowing which ones Google may be discounting. That would explain why so many PR predictions are way off. A lot of low-quality links would skew the results. I just ran across an interesting article on ZDNet that slams Google's philosophy about PageRank and inbound links. Google search PageRank excludes relevant Websites
Google can be a pain in the butt to deal with sometimes. I'd almost prefer a Wiki-type search engine.