If things keep at this pace I might rename this blog to Daily Google Tips. Over the last two weeks we have been talking about Google every other day. This time it is the PageRank buzz again.
Both Problogger and Copyblogger, two of the most popular blogs on the niche, announced that their PR dropped from 6 to 4. Previously other authority blogs confirmed that they lost PR, but the suspect was towards paid links. Given that Problogger and Copyblogger are not selling links, it might be just a readjustment on the PR scale.
Some people are arguing that since the PR drop is not generalized, it must be a slap from Google due to practices that conflict with its guidelines. Andy Beard suggested that the sites that got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside large blog networks. This is a feasible explanation given that most of the Weblogs, Inc blogs (Engadget above all) were penalized, and they do not sell paid links either.
Here is a list that I gathered with big blogs that supposedly lost PR on this issue:
- Statcounter (from 10 to 6)
- Engadget (from 7 to 5)
- AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
- Problogger (from 6 to 4)
- Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
- AdesBlog (from 7 to 5)
- Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
- Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
- Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
- Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
- Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
- JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
- Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)
- CyberNet News (from 6 to 4)
Update: It looks like mainstream websites that were selling links were also penalized:
- Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
- Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
- Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
- Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
- SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
- Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
- New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
- Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)
Update 2: After reading through the avalanche of posts on the subject, it appears that this is not a PageRank update but rather a distribution of penalties (either automatic or manual). The theory that the penalized blogs were either selling links or part of a network that used a cross-linking strategy seems to hold.
Really informative article, it helped me a lot, had to come back a few times and readi it again. keep up the good work, thanks
Thank you for documents.
Pagerank is computed based on many factors according to your website’s relevancy into many different topics on the web. Among these ‘different topics’ on the web, Google either, takes the average or gives the highest rank from any web topic, and the result is your pagerank score.
Since pagerank is based on many topics(CIRCA Technology, Topic-Sensitive Pagerank), Goggle probably updated their list of web topics, and as a result your website’s relevancy to these new web topics changed affecting your total Pagerank score.
Whats important is theres no drastic change in your ranking on google searches, if there is then you’re probably penalized for bad SEO tactics.
But if you used sound SEO practices and delivered useful contents in your site theres no need to worry much about these updates.
thnaks
thank
Thank you man
I think people should not sell/buy links.
and the people who would don’t own an iPhone! Ha ha!
Whatever you do, you are always at the mercy of whoever calls the shots! Easy to see that what Google is after is decreasing the importance of PR through paid and exchange links, so that we rely more on their (Google’s) paid advertising.
thanks you..
Hi! My PR remains at 1. Expecting for a increase the next time around.
very hardworking company.
D:
thanks you.
I run a research web site, and my page rank just dropped from 4 to 0!
My blog’s PR stayed as 2, hooray.
Google page rank update I have gain page rank 0 to 2
Google must not stop link selling
very intresting, google is so smart.
hi guys
My blog got a PR 4 from PR 3 in the recent PR change.but all my search results have vanished. Earlier my blog was on first 5 positions on keywords like ‘c interview questions’. But not its found nowhere. Please suggest me the reason for this.
we are also puzzled with what happened to our google page rank. it decreased from 2 to 0 right now, but it is a good thing traffic still remains the same. we really have no idea what happened.
My two year old blog Table for Five went from PR4 to PR3. But, my six month old blog MomReviews went UP from PR0 to PR2, and my five month old blog MomCooks also went up from PR0 to PR2. I always thought that the age of the blog was one of the determining factors.
I think the next update is coming… hope so too.
We went from a 6 to a 3 yesterday – it has not touched our google traffic though.
Thanks Google!
Wow, this madness has been the buzz of like every forum I visit!
What is pagerank-algorithm of google
How can we increase out page rank ?
Are the relevant backlinks the only elements that matters ?
Thank you!
My blog also dropped from 5 to 3 but I’m pretty happy that traffic remains the same. I removed all my sold links and link exchange partners. Will see if this helps to receive back PR.
I think the google page rank is getting a thing of the past.
Trouble is google has all us webmasters paranoid, i think the safe thing to do is to have any external links with the no follow tag.
Thats just the way is seems to be going.
thanks
One of my websites have PR4 from two years and don’t grow 🙁
How can we increase out page rank ?
Wish I knew more about how Google does things. Its a big mystery to see you sites jump all around in the search engines and go up and down with the PR
Good explaination,
But found that these most of these sites yet contain same page rank.
Jay,
Discussion Forums Open Source
tenks
How many good back links gain Page Rank
which time update google Page Rank
Which time update google Page Rank
Google must not stop link selling
Because google must think webmasters
nice.. thanx 🙂
check out my article about Google Page Rank Update – the PR Mysterious Excitement!
I am certain pagerank is not as important as it once was, what is important is ranking. I would much rather have a high ranking than high pagerank any day.
thans
I wish I understood what I need to do to be smiled upon by Google. There is so much confusing info out there that I am not sure anyone knows exactly how to get on Google’s good side.
Does PageRank matter anymore? It doesn’t seem to affect rankings. At least, not in my experience…
Thanks for valuable information about sell and buy links
My PR went from 5 to 4 and the home page is not a blog….
But I do exchange links….
I have now been hit with a -2 and I’m not selling links and I’m not part of a blog network. Is it possible that Google is going to hit all blogs? If so I think it’s very odd and stupid. If not, there isn’t any reason to penalize my site
How can we increase out page rank ?
Are the relevant backlinks the only elements that matters ?
Thank you
How can we increase our page rank from pr4 to a superior page rank ?
Are the relevant backlinks the main element in order to achieve a better page rank ?
Thank you
Big frustation indeed. People start to get bored and begin to concentrate on other measurement like Alexa etc. 🙁
thanks