Google Drops PageRank For Many Sites: Paid Links or New Algorithm?

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127
Sphinn It!

Went Hot: Oct 24, 2007 - 09:12 am
Posted By: Rhea 876 Days ago
Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Category: SEO

Loren Baker reports a page rank drop for Search Engine Journal as well as sites like Forbes.com, Engadget and the Washington Post. What are you seeing?

14 Comments

Comments

from toprank 876 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Indeed Google is where the fish are but relying so much on it is putting too many eggs in one basket. Especially when direct communication tools like RSS, email, social networking and communities are available. Hello?

from Rhea 876 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Hmm... to Loren’s point, he’s still seeing the traffic, so is this just a devaluing of page rank?Either way, I don’t think we should ignore an update or redesign our sites/marketing strategy around one. Everything in moderation and definitely don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, but it’s important to be informed of changes in the industry.

from mistercharlie 876 Days ago #

Votes: 0

At the risk of repeating myself...Isn’t it a bit early to proclaim that the sky is falling? I’m not saying that there isn’t a concerted effort by Google to combat the selling of links, but as SEM professionals, haven’t we learned that you can’t look at TBPR during an update? What shows PR5 today may very well bump back up to PR8 tomorrow.Let’s have this discussion next week...

from lorenbaker 876 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Good point Greg, and like I said in the post, I did not lose any sleep over it, but I think there are many Digital Pointers and other bloggers who are sh!tting their pants over this right now, and exposing them to the sounds of the calming waters, may help them weather through a self proclaimed storm.

from Rhea 876 Days ago #

Votes: 0

No one is running around saying the sky is falling, they’re reporting on findings, testing the changes and seeing what they can learn from them. Period.

from mistercharlie 876 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Testing changes during an update? Based on what? Seems a bit counterproductive to be making changes before the dust settles.

from AndyBeard 875 Days ago #

Votes: 1

I have openly declared both 2 weeks ago that I have no intention of making any changes to what I have been doing.But when you start dropping down 20 places on various ranking tables that use PageRank in the same way as the Google Directory... as an indication of better quality, it damages your "bragroll".This affacts my "social proof" value more than anything, I don’t sell PageRank.

from Halfdeck 875 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Yes its still too early to call, but its bizarre to see SEJ with a TBPR4 home page.

from DanThies 875 Days ago #

Votes: -2

My toolbar must be broken or something - I’m seeing a few PR7 that are now PR6. This happened in February too, but nobody freaked out AFAIK.If any of the "victims" would like to report the loss of something other than green pixels (traffic, maybe???) it would be a lot easier to see this as a huge issue. Any "victims" not running text link ads, or ads for text link brokers, please speak up.

from iBrian 875 Days ago #

Votes: 1

*shakes head disbelievingly, walks away to just get on with serious business while others are left comparing how big theirs is*

from wrock 875 Days ago #

Votes: 0

I maybe wrong however pagerank is only one factor in the big algo of Google. However besides paying so close attention to what a little green bar has your traffic changed or conversions decreased because of this? Google is always changing, has this site made any major changes recently? If so I would check the history and she what was done, and maybe refer to your webmaster tools and see if Google is giving any feedback within the reports.As we know it really comes down to the visitor experience.

from DanThies 875 Days ago #

Votes: 1

LOL @ Brian. :DWrock, the PageRank number that’s displayed on the toolbar isn’t a ranking factor at all. It does affect the price of link spam, though.

from AndyBeard 874 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Dan I will drop you an email with apparently clean sites that were hit

from DanThies 874 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Please, Andy - it would be very helpful. I’m writing up a post with a little history of SearchKing, PRAN, WPGold affiliate penalties, etc. to try to put this into some kind of context. Too bad Google doesn’t do webmaster relations any more - once upon a time we would not have had to speculate so much.