It appears Google has been rolling out their pagerank updates with a frequency not seen since 2004/2005. Last year, pagerank updates were few and far between but this year we’ve been seeing them every few months. For the most part, these updates have been downgrades for the vast majority of bloggers and webmasters as seen here, here, here and here.
On the other hand, it seems some three month old blogs are being rewarded with a PR5 from a PR0 ??? I really think granting a three month old blog a PR5 authority simply because it’s distributing free Wordpress themes with links back to the blog in the footer is utterly ridiculous.
If the afformentioned scenario didn’t get your blood boiling and you want to have an aneurysm, check out this post about a network of bidding directories that have seen a significant increase in pagerank. Bidding directories? Google has been adamant about the fact that buying and selling text links for pagerank value is prohibited. Remember how Google destroyed PayPerPost bloggers last year? Ok, so somebody writing a paid blog post is essentially more improper in Google’s eyes than having people bid for text links on a site with no content ?
What the hell is Google thinking?
It seems more and more older, well established blogs are getting whacked in the pagerank department these days because Google is definitely not following up on policing natural link building, which they profess as a guideline for webmasters to follow. Google’s Matt Cutts has stated time and again that links should be relative to a blog or site’s niche, which means a “free template blog” getting backlinks from a “celebrity wallpaper blog” should not weigh in as relative. So why isn’t Google following their own standards which they have strongarmed white hat webmasters into following?
One blogger wrote about dofollow pagerank updates and how 3/5 of the blogs in his dofollow blog directory which were PR5 had dropped in this update. Looks like Google hates dofollow blogs so once again, webmasters and bloggers must bow down and alter their policies regarding dofollow comments as a reward to commentors.
Another blogger took it upon himself to do a fair value pagerank analysis of many of the various MMO (Make Money Online) bloggers. The assessment lists the blog, it’s current paregrank and what the blogger believes the pagerank should really be. hmmm, I wonder if he read 10 secret Confessions of the Super Affiliate?? Probably not.
I’m beginning to see that the old adage “nice people finish last” or “honest people never get ahead” certainly rings true, especially where anything related to Google is concerned. However, I refuse to be bullied into going “black hat” or changing the way I choose to operate my sites and blogs because Google wants to shoot themselves in the foot by alienating more experienced webmasters with their kindergarten “gold star” Google pagerank.
I’ve noticed quite a few people coming out today to complain about the new pagerank update. Not to add fuel to your fire… but my site is a not even three months old, dofollow blog directory-ish site, and it went from no PR to a PR3. So really it seems as though google just hates everyone but me ;)
In the end I thought pagerank didn’t really mean much anyway…
my web site is only 3 mths old and all this seo stuff ive been trying daily to learn,my web site gained its first pr2 from 0.
And since then i have had 10 link requests from sites so as much as i hate this green bar ,without it most webmasters wont exchange links.I am listed on pg 1 to 4 for my key words and have ok traffic ,you would think that should be enough for link exchanges .
I think it’s nuts a three month old blog is PR5. Maybe the webmaster is doing some funny 302 redirects to fake the PR ??
I felt upset about my PR :-(
I don’t know what I did wrong? I built more backlinks at a steady pace, added useful content and my site got dropped from a PR4 to a PR3. I was honestly expecting to move up to PR5 sometime this year but I guess Google is against me.
I’m not satisfied with Google and I’m starting to get angry with them. My website is almost 3 years old and it still has a page rank of 0. How can these three month old sites get a PR5????
Something is wrong.
WTF?? PR5 for a free themes blog? PR3 for bidding directories ??? Google can kiss my butt with this update. I’m going to use Yahoo from now on.
My advice is to forget about pagerank and Google. pffft..
those of you wondering what this up date is all about may have missed a little contribution from Matt Cutts on sphinn.com - to quote
“it’s just a toolbar PageRank update. Even if you don’t show much PageRank, Google still has 200+ other signals we use in our ranking. It’s definitely common to see lower-PageRank sites ranking above higher-PageRank sites–which tends confuses the people who obsess too much about PageRank and who don’t focus on other factors that search engines might use to rank pages.”
http://sphinn.com/story/74952
so - a load of fuss over nothing - and interesting to see Matt Cutts categorically saying that lower PR often does better than higher PR in serps.
Thanks for the link, Dave. This update makes you wonder if you should stick to white hat or not. Doesn’t seem to pay off.
But on the other, though my blog dropped from 4 to 3, I don’t see my ranking taking a dive in the SERPs.
Hjortur, You probably won’t see any changes in your SERPs as a result of the PR decrease. What I’m seeing is a lot of PR4 and PR5 sites are being dropped to PR3. It’s almost like Google is dropping so many sites’s rankings this update to keep webmasters from expecting a PR5 or something like that.
From my experience, Google doesn’t like giving PR5’s to non-corporate sites (or sites buying Adwords), so when I saw the three month old blog with a PR5 mentioned in the article, it was quite a shock to me, especially considering this blog has three times as many backlinks as that site???
What really has me perplexed is I have two sites that are over 5 years old, very well established with links in Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, Clush, JoeAnt and BOTW that are now PR23 from a previous PR5 over the last two updates ???
Both of those sites no longer rank #1 in Google for their main keywords and have been replaced by big corporate sites that are heavy Adwords clients.
Something’s wrong there ;-(
Yep, it’s strange. I have a site that is only 3 months old (not a blog) but has loads of links, all natural, none bought, none in a directory and with no AdWords bought. It’s got a PR 5 :)
But then I have another site, about as old, where I’ve bought directory placements and AdWords, and still only has a PR2 :(
It’s tricky…
Its time to penalize google.
I have 4 sites. I am not selling any links on any of my site. No spam. 3 of my sites were PR3 and one PR4 two months ago. Google update PR and my 3 sites get penalized by google and page rank was dropped to 2. In recent google update google penallized my PR4 site and set it’s PR to 3. One site get PR -1 or N/A.
I am very much depressed. Now its time to take revenge from google. I am going to sell links on all of my sites. All links in my blogs will be do follow. I know i am very small tiny webmaster in front of google but this is my way to take revenge from google. If Google dose not respect me than i will also not respect google.
You are so right Dave. Something is wrong here. PR can no longer be trusted as it is severely flawed as seen in these last two updates. Here’s an example somebody posted on DigitalPoint…
——-
Recently my site was pr3 and dropped to PR0 on previous update. Yesterday’s update gave me PR4 for most of my pages. One strange thing happened. I just put new page I guess on 26th sept. that also had PR3, isn’t it strange. I also had some pages which is completely unique content and uploaded 10-25 days ago they have PR0 but this page has PR3 in just 2 days…. Anyone had the same thing before? Why do you think this happened? (even that site is not indexed by google yet)
——-
Nowadays it’s best not to pay any attention to PR and try to get away from Google if possible. Use Entrecard and social networks to promote your site and forget about search engines and things you have no control over.
Very uncool. All three of my sites got dropped in PR and I just got banned from Adsense. I think I’m going to commit suicide.
Since Jan. 2008, i am noticing that Google Toolbar PR and IBL’s are updating each and every month or one and half month.
Do you all people still think that still Google PR carries Logical importance.
I feel now, it does not.
What you want to say about it.
James
Dave, I think you deserve a gold star for this blog and it should be at least PR5 for all the truthful articles you have written and all the help you’ve given to any of us who have asked for it.
Google’s pagerank ratings by default are meant to be gamed and Google have put quantity over quality. That’s not suprising for a company who would be so foolish to make their motto; do no evil
[…] Yet another PageRank update for September 2008 […]
Ive had my website for 3 months, and had a PR0 on all pages. Now a couple of pages are PR2, my home page is PR1 the rest are not ranked or 0.
Also, I seem to have come out of the fabled ’sandbox’ as I can now find my site for my main keywords. However, Im on page 28 which confuses me bacause I had calculated that the only thing keeping me from page 1/2/3 is the sandbox effect.
Now Im confused.
Man to think I just launched my website, [url=”http://www.puredezigner.com”]http://www.puredezigner.com[/url] back in the middle of July 2008. I remember reading about the PR updates that were taking place at the end of the July, that’s when I was thinking to myself, man 3-6 months before the next update. But when I check my Alexa stat this evening I noticed something else. I just now finally had an update to my PR, From PR0 to PR3! It’s a simple website based on CSS and XHTML validated web projects I have in my portfolio, non the less, I am very happy about this update to my first ever SEO efforts in web. I’d love to see examples and reports on how your current SEO efforts are going and possible results from from the latest Google PR update, please share your updates with us?
Thanks,
Curtis
I myself have found that Google is now punishing sites that used social bookmarking, either on their own or thru a social bookmarking service.
I am not sure what Google is doing, either. I had a PR2 bidding directory, which I haven’t did anything on for over one year. Google gave it a PR3 this update.
There have been no new directory submissions for over one year and no new content. What is with that?
I gave up on the bidding directory, because of the big bidding scandal on DP forum about one year ago.
While, I have been working on blog with adding new content, it stayed at a PR3. Just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
I don’t think google did pr update on this month… No official announcement as such. Also my sites pr remain same..
You make some very good points there, I have a blog which I’ve been adding content to almost daily and building links regular aswell its gone from a PR4-PR3 and now its a PR0.
I guess that at begginign PR was thinked having natural linking on mind.
Since Google, for some reason, make it public, they change the way people manage their links.
Today is almost 0% the percent of natural do follow links, so the links dont show nothing today. Its all manipulated.
I guess thats why Google is fading out PR.
Many authority sites are using nofollow because they do not want to loose their PR, so natural linking is dead.
Pagerank is overrated, but it is useful if you look at is one view of your site. It can let you know that you still have other avenues of SEO to explore, and you can probably increase your traffic by incorporating other techniques.
well google has completed its one decade of existence and it’s still ruling….. i think google has some hidden strategy behind this awful approach
Although I do not agree with everything that Google does in regards to its indexing and de-indexing I still believe it is the best thing going as far as search engines. I know Google has started to De-index Bans sites but yet adsense sites are still ok? This I do not agree with.
I trust Google will do the right thing and put me back to where I was before all the DP mess. Also do they help in search engine rankings? Thanxxxxxxxx
WTF??? Has anybody noticed that their toolbar PR has been rolled back to the original values before last weekend’s update?
My one site which has gone from PR2 to PR0 was PR2 before the update. Infact it was a PR2 for over 6 months and now it is back to PR2 from PR0??? So, atleast for me, PR has went back to its previous state.
Ok let me tell you what happened with my websites:
I had a PR5 blog with many pages with PR4 and two pages with PR6
At previous update this blog got PR6 but all blog posts got PR5.
Now, digpagerank shows old values and new values on various datacenters and i believe all pages rolled back to old state for this website.
Same with another PR3 website with PR5 subpages.
It had PR1 with PR3 subpages before, at latest update all pages got good ranks, but now digpagerank shows old values again.
I confirmed this issue with 5 of my websites even one of them one sold last month.
I would like to believe people who got increased update at previous upgrade, won’t lose their values at this weekend.
I will keep you posted about my results.
Btw - i haven’t been able to my current ranks with toolbar yet.
All my websites’s page rank has dropped. But traffic couldn’t be better. I guess PR does’t matter after all.
I don’t agree with you Nits…
My website traffic went up and my PageRank went from 0 to 1.
yippee! 3 months of hard work and my Pagerank is 1, haha. :)
Hello,
I believe on the Google and i think Google do the best thing.
I do not know if Google updates the pagerank, but I already has over 1 years with a PR4, every time Google does not put it more difficult to attract visitors to our site, Google wants all the web traffic for them, is not just be left to compete and I am trying to get by with Google Adsense.Pero really earn a pittance if you have it 5 to attract more visitors.
Greetings.
My website traffic went up and my PageRank went from 0 to 1.
yippee! 3 months of hard work and my Pagerank is 1, haha. :)