Thread: Page Rank Drop!!

Lots of my sites when up except one from 5 to 4.
youtube is down from PR8 to PR3 !!

All of our sites were safe this time round, the last update was not kind to us at all - this time all but 2 sites have gone up in page rank, one from a 0 to a 4! And also I have one site that I have done no work what so ever on, it has joomla! installed but still with the joomla! install files and it has gone from a 0 to a 2 - not bad at all

I haven't seen much change on big sites yet or sites that I use often but I will probably stumble upon some surprises no doubt!

My site went up. It looks like they were going after paid links with this PR update. I might be crazy, but it seems like almost all sites are between a PR 3 and PR 6.

Do you have paid links Mike or do you know of anyone that has paid links that have been affected by the last update?

I'm being nosy, but would like to know though?

Do I sell links? No. Do I have links pointing to my site that I paid for in the past? Yes. There are plenty of people and directories that were selling links that got hit.

My homepage ranking went from a 2-3, my blog page went from a 0-4 and my map search went from a 0-5. I have no idea how it happened.

I have the impression so far that not only sites that are selling links got hit but even the ones that are link exchanging in ways that imply link selling to the Google algorithm.

My market in Chicago for example, more than half the top 10 for Chicago real estate keyword is top 10.

First off, as a reminder the little green toolbar PR indicator has nothing to do with SERP's.

Second, PR is dynamic. The same linking criteria that made a site a PR7 last year might equate to only a PR4 this year.

Lastly, as stated above, some of the toolbar changes are in response to Google going after paid links and sites that distribute them. This has both a direct and trickle down effect.

For example, lets say you have a link (even a free link) from a site that offers some paid links. Now let's say that site lost toolbar PR this go round. Naturally, that site now passes less PR to your site. Situations like this may have caused a drop in your PR.

Or lets say that you have a link from Site A, but that site got most of it's former PR by buying links on Site B. If Site B lost PR, they passed less PR to Site A, and Site A passed less PR down to your site.

As always, my advice is to not worry about toolbar PR.

Well I was under the impression that I you accepted money in exchange for a link Google gets mad. If you do that enough times Google takes from your status. In other words sell links lose PR.