I've gone through many of the threads and tried to pull together an accounting of websites that have been "reportedly" affected by the update. Hopefully, by collecting this data, and combining it with reports in the comments, we can have a relatively comprehensive view of the landscape and make educated guesses and hypotheses as to the root causes:
- www.autoblog.com PR6 > PR4
- www.forbes.com PR7 > PR5
- www.engadget.com PR7 > PR5
- www.problogger.net PR6 > PR4
- www.copyblogger.com PR6 > PR4
- www.joystiq.com PR6 > PR4
- www.tuaw.com PR6 > PR4
- www.searchengineguide.com PR7 > PR4
- www.seroundtable.com PR7 > PR4
- www.searchenginejournal.com PR7 > PR4
- www.johnchow.com PR6 > PR4
- www.quickonlinetips.com/PR6 > PR3
- weblogtoolscollection.com PR6 > PR4
- andybeard.eu PR5 > PR3
- www.volodymyrzablotskyy.com PR4 > PR2
- daily.stanford.edu PR9 > PR5
- www.thecrimson.com PR8 > PR4
- www.statcounter.com PR9 > PR6
- www.washingtonpost.com PR8 > PR5
- www.blogherald.com PR7 > PR4
- www.seopedia.org PR6 > PR5
- weblogtoolscollection.com PR6 > PR4
- www.masternewmedia.org PR7 > PR4
- www.sfgate.com PR7 > PR5
- www.suntimes.com PR7 > PR5
- www.seo-scoop.com PR6 > PR3
- spap-oop.blogspot.com PR5 > PR4
- Onemansblog.com PR8 > PR5
Please do leave comments with any sites you know of that have been affected (or information about any of the sites I've listed above that may be inaccurate). Collective data is probably one of the best ways we can assess the situation.
Also - at SEOmoz, through our many tools, we have access to tens of thousands of toolbar PageRank scores for different domains. I've asked Jeff & Mel to run through those and request the new data as of today to attempt to identify the quantity of loss. We WILL NOT be exposing individual domains (unless they've already been outed elsewhere - as above), but we can provide an overall snapshot about raw percentages, etc. Jarrod Hunt noted in a comment here that he had seen a PageRank drop across the web, not just on sites selling links, and this should be a good way to verify whether our data matches his.
p.s. Please note that I'm not trying to "out" anyone for selling links. In fact, I believe there may be sites on that list that have never engaged in paid linking of any kind! I'm merely trying to document PageRank changes for collective study.
p.p.s. As Duncan Riley noted on Techcrunch, the AOL-owned Weblogs, Inc. blog network appears to have been affected, while Techcrunch's blog network and rival Gawker media have not.
There is a lot of discussion about this and I find it kind of interesting that most SEO's will talk about how meaningless TBPR is throughout the year and when something like this happens it creates a HUGE response. I understand why it is being discussed and I admit I have read everything I can find about it but most of the sites that have had a PR drop are still getting the same traffic numbers from Google. This kind of proves the point that TBPR is not a worthwhile metric and that we should forget about it. Of course, with everyone talking about it so much that will not happen and this talk will bleed down to the general public who still believe that TBPR is something to worry about or even worse introduce to others who did not even know about. These new users will add to the number of people who think the TBPR is actually important when it comes to judging the quality of a site.
I guess when the outrage dies down we can all go back to talking about how worthless and overrated TBPR is.
agreed. if the drops in TBPR correlate with significant drops in organic search traffic from google, then this becomes an interesting story.
if there are not traffic losses, then this is just another instance of google using their brilliant crowd control device - the toolbar - and a liberal application of FUD to manipulate the webmaster community.
All hail...true page strenght indicator!
www.seomoz.org/page-strength
Disclaimer: This comment was not sponsored by SEOMOZ.org
Of course, toolbar page rank is a factor in that calculation.
Good post mpilatow.
I personally feel - as with most things, the answer is yes & no. Is there value to PR? If I'm the guy that bases some of his search, marketing, etc, decisions on PR, the answer is yes. However, if I don't give PR any merit and organic search results aren't affected by lower PR, then the answer is no.
Ultimately, if lower PR has no impact on SERP placement, then it is much less relevant. However, I somehow have to beleive that ultimately - it will, perhaps not so much by Google's actions but rather by the actions of the masses involved in SEO.
Honestly, PR ranking is lagged by 6 months to a year. If you going to put a coat, gloves, a boots to go outside, after you have seen that is going to snow on the news chanel, but it is sunny and worm outside when you get there, how will you feel?
Second, anyone looking at my PR, is not someone I want to be in bed with...
All the talk going on right now is about a PR update, but what it probably should be called is a PR edit, because as Pete notes there are no new PR values for websites lauched after the last PR update.
I agree , its a pagerank "adjustment" rather then an export :)
Agreed. This is looking more like a hand edit to send a warning to a select group of sites. Of course a warning often implies something else is coming.
I was in the middle of writing a YouMOZ post about this - then saw Rand beat me to it - so here's an abbreviated version:
Like others above have implied - I never understood nor cared that much about PageRank. It seemed to me to be a fun way for webmasters to measure their relative influence and that was pretty much it.
When I first became concerned about SEO I obviously fell into the PR trap: find sites with high PR and have them link to me, etc.
But then I noticed something - for some of the keyword phrases I was going for - I had a higher SERP placement than other sites with higher PR.
I've found that with the strategic use of anchor text - it is possible to place higher than other sites that not only have a higher PR but more inbound links as well.
Pagerank has become a kind of benchmark around the web and in a lot of ways it drives a large part of the Internet economy. The price of paid links, paid reviews, even some CPA advertising is either partly or wholely driven by PageRank (I think most people try to ignore Alexa stats now). But maybe its time has passed.
If Google was to eliminate PageRank (or at least our visibility of it) then maybe webmasters would look at content relevancy when building and/or buying links - rather than page rank.
And isn't a relevancy driven web better than a PR driven web - for everyone involved?
I personally think the only thing SEOs should be concerned about is conversions from search engine traffic.
I have to admit that my observations are similar to yours vingold.
I have a niche site that has rougly 50,000 inbounds (according to yahoo) and that is really small in this niche. I rank in the top 10 for close to 100 keywords for that niche and 99% of time above the my larger competitors who have way more PR than I do and many more IBLs.
I totally agree.
buying links where have you, have you not heard it is illegal?
Why would you want to pay someone for a link? If they sell to you they will to whom ever and their authority goes down the toilet.
Better places to get a link in than buying from...I like the natural ones.
I just had to edit it. :)
You would recommend to your client to buy some unstable authority in links. But I would recommend to give out free lunches to homeless on Sundays, and pass this news to some dot org Websites and have them link to a page on my client's Website passing the love juice to the whole domain.
So which one you think will have more authority? Buying or getting it for free?
Cheers
Unfortunately, what this does is take a system that was perceived as stable by many people engaged in paying for links, reviews, etc (as you said) and turn it on its head. For these people, PR was just a simple benchmark for authority/traffic. Relevance is useless if it doesn't bring people with it.
Just look at spammer tactics...
The flurry of comments today and after the other, recent PR "edits" makes me want to run an experiment:
Hey, it would be fun, if nothing else.
This would be awesome. You could create your own little economy based on buying & selling links from sites high in PageMojo, just like Google has.
All of those links and algorithms and stuff seem like a lot of work. I figured I'd just sell PageMojo outright. Want a PM5? $50. PM6? Maybe $500. Looking for a PM10? There's this island in the South Pacific I've got my eye on.
Haha, I will help. I will split that island with you fair and square.
Why not set it up? It would be just as valuable as PageRank. Sounds like it might even be calculated the same way.
I have a theory based on Rand's linkarati idea. If the majority of links come from a minority of people, would it not be logical for Google to somehow devalue some of these a little in order to give a more accurate perspective to PR? If most pro bloggers link to the pro blogging website, perhaps Google sees that as lopsided since another blogging site could be just as useful but does not attract the people that have their own sites or blogs. That's a bad example because it's for pro bloggers but you get what I mean.
Just a thought.
Excelent theory, and I totally agree with it. It takes more than cross linking withoin an industry to get high ranking. Yeap, all the SEO bloggers cross link with each other, so now they pay the piper. It happened to the real estate people this past ssummer, 'Many of them got delisted...there was a big stink about it. Even Sotheby's auction house was involved because their subsidiary Sotheby's reality owned a few domains.
Wow did it hit the fun, came around crying to GWHG and to Matt Cutts. I did a farensic analysis on one of the domains and posted a comment on DaveN blog, the story got syndicated to Google finance...
Anyway, its hard time for SEO now days, I do not even do link exchange recently. Googl deindex my link exchange page that I have maybe 30 domains on for 7 years now. I disallowed the page in robots.txt
Cross linking is a big no! especially in the same industry. Also good to have some Industry directories link to you, not just blog to blog...
I've been away for a while traveling China, Laos, Thailand, and Israel, so I must have mist Rand's post on linkarati idea...
Rand does know his stuff.
Hi Igor. Here is the post Rand made explaining how to attract a certain group of people that have a lot of power to link to sites.
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-secret-to-ranking-at-the-search-engines-thats-really-no-secret-at-all
Nicknick, case and point I am totally with it, if the Paparazi of the Internet are not in your corner you might as well get another job!
Rand, nice graphic work!
So what is the end result? Like I said, it is not buying links, they are an over pay, give away free lunches to the poor, Have an extra marital affair with a person who is of a different race and tell Dear Abby about it. Be contravercial as hell, sure some will love you, others will hate you, but fame on being infamous adds to the same at the end of the day.
I took some contravercial pictures on my travel forum art photography and I posted the link with a short story to a relevent popular forum. I had people jumping down my thought ready to excommunicate me, but there were a few supportors who agreed with me.
I got 260 sets of eye balss in 34 hour period. I got a clean link to my forum, and who know who will sphin this or syndicate it.
Being origanal, contraversial, is what it is about. One should never be shy of a spot light, even if it is chritisizem, that is what the Linkaraties want...
They should simply turn the bar off.
Maybe if Google turns their bar off Yahoo! will turn their bar on again.
page rank is the equivalent of "Becketts" magazine for baseball cards in the early 90s...it gave card dealers a third party valuation so that they could sell things at inflated prices....plain and simple google doesn't want to provide the mechanism for valuation of paid links.
What If...
We should start thinking differently about Google's Pagerank. I have a hunch that gradual algo changes have made the Pagerank indicator to be more a function of quality marketshare and velocity in a page's vertical, rather than some outright indication of authority.
What I mean by that is it is very possible all this had almost nothing to do with paid links. Simply put the algo has changed to take more into account the fact that each of those verticals have more competition out, so it just needs to even out the playing field among quality competition.
For example, Problogger is one of the top blogger related sites, but surely by now we can't say it's the only one out there. Problogger going down may simply mean Pagerank wants to say that the quality didn't go down, and it hasn't been penalized, it's just that there are a lot of other similar resources out there and their respective growth or traffic velocity might be comparable to how Google looks at it.
So really bringing a site down from a 6 to a 4 may not mean anything bad, it could be Google's way of just saying "hey, we think this site is just as useful as the others for this vertical", where as if a site is 7 or 8 Google thinks this site is much more useful than others compared to their vertical.
Think about it, if absolutely every site that played nice and was white hat expected to be a PR6 it really wouldn't mean very much. that's how it used to be somewhat in the past, maybe Google is trying to morph PR into meaning something else now since a lot stopped caring about it already.
I agree with this.
Also, if we look at PR as a sliding scale then everything just about remains the same.
PR4 is the new PR6, etc.
I would like to know when the update is complete. I have a few PR3 sites that I can't believe carry as much weight as some of the PR3 sites listed above.
When you have a few other domains in the same vertical, such as the Wordpress plugins sites I own, or the one of tollbar button just to mention public sites that haven't been affected, but have 20 links compared to my 40,000 and sit there on a very stable PR4 or PR5 for 2 years, there is absolutely no weight in this being relative.
Google might be playing around with a subset before adjusting everyone, but I don't buy that.
They have never done it before.
Also of note they told Danny that the drop 2 weeks ago was often accompanied with a manual verfication.
It is likely today's change is the same
I have lots of sites being added in my comments so I will give you a compiled update periodically.
It is a shame the story was buried on Digg, I angled it carefully to try to highlight that the penalty affected sites they cared about.
Also of note Duncan didn't link out to anyone from his article, and he used to be a founder of B5
B5 have changed their linking in the last few months to only link to related sites in their network, that is better than Yahoo or Ebay with their links to sister sites.
B5 do sell links on some of their smaller sites still, and those sites do benefit from the PR passed on.
Oh I get it. Instead of PR being an indicator of quality, it becames an indicator of reach and influence? Wasn't quality already thrown out of the formula long ago? (I kid)
No, it's can be reach and influence. Our site is (still) PR6 and I would be lying if I said it had much reach or influence.
It seems to me that PageRank is now largely based on trust - but from a search engine spider's perspective. Can the search engine trust the site to link to other quality sites?
When people say PageRank is irrelevant now, I think they just mean it's irrelevant for their purposes. PageRank obviously still means something, the question is what...
We should all just turn off our toolbar or firefox plugin and look the other way until it all dies down. :)
Great idea if you can bear to do it.
Google's war on paid links is like Americas war on Iraq. It's never going to work.
Too true!
Well, Its more like the war on drugs, not an atual war,
Because Our trooops will get bought home eventually ,
But people will never stop selling links , just like people will never stop doing drugs,
Its just a big round and round we go
It is also called as a Google's PR Revolution
It is also called as a Google's PR Revolution.
(Sorry for the double comment. It was by mistake due to browser problem.)
I am actually glad it happened maybe now people wil work on more of what the visitor wants , and worry less about dam google.
Sorry for sounding dobiouse, but I just cannot restraine myself. This escaleting to be an armagidon, the second coming. All the sites that had links to them will be downgraded as well in the cycle. So even if you did not get a primary link from these sites, but a secondary, or a tresory you will fee the Google grunt...
There is no easy way to the top, I am sure you all heard the saying, "Money cannot buy you love." Well in this case money does not buy you link juice!
So chear up, put the pedal to the metal, your nose to the grind stone, roll up your sleaves, and go generate some content, this whay you will get free love, which is always the best.
Aint truth a bitch.
i like the way you think!
Isn't that what it always comes down to anyway? This is just another wave in the SEO Wars.
Certainly easy to feel that way since Google has made the Paid Link War the most public campaign since Florida. Is the 800 lb Gorilla beating its chest and grabbing at small war planes a little too soon? Most of the sites listed have large enough audiences that they'd survive if they lost their Google traffic altogether. Is Google trying to get their attention and let webmasters know they're in charge by knocking around public stats they control?
Smells like FUD to me.
I love the fact that at the end of the day, it is those with real talent, consistently creating real and original content and devising and executing an effective marketing program that will rule the engines - and that is the way it should be.
Paid linkers pay no attention to the quality of the content they are linking to, and thus the sites that employ these methods should be penalized as such.
It is a bit weird - those are all going down but my little blog is still at PR3 and my search traffic has at least tripled in the past few days.
Hooray for the little guy?
I am beginning to wonder if maybe they are taking their war beyond paid links and are going after blogs with 125x125 ads?
You'd never get an advert a magazine that had a little disclaimer saying 'We don't editorally vouch for this product'...
I would sure love to know (perhaps someone here does), what relevance traffic plays in Google's PR formula?
Case in point - I have a customer whose site was developed five years ago. It has remained static ever since. It looks pretty, has some decent content, but no traffic to speak of. Yet, it has a PR4.
I know that's not great, but for a site that hasn't been touched in five years, has no incoming links outside of the posts the owner has made on an unrelated forum, it's pretty good. I know of many sites with great traffic that are much lower ranked. What gives?
perhaps it is not just an edit. i had a new blogspot blog go from unranked to pr4. (www.dzongsarjamyangkhyentse.blogspot.com)
it would make sense to consider it an export, which is being timed to let people believe sites that advertise privately (even if they nofollow..) are being hit.
no harm, from Google's side to let webmasters think the safest form of revenue is Adsense.
however, i think it is just a readjustment of the PR scale. (very well timed to allow the FUD)
but, also, sites like copyblogger dont have nofollow on the sponsor links (i dont think..), and they also dont nofollow affiliate links. so, if it is paid link penalties then they could look there for some answers.
Google need to step up, big time, and clarify. Or they will lose (perhaps irretrievable ground) with the webmaster community. It is fast becoming a war on webmasters, rather than a battle against web spam.
I figured I would add my own information so that others could use it as a baseline:
A site was developed in early 2003. It was on the front page of Slashdot and a few other minor sites at that time. In early 2004 the site was a PR 7. Within a year it had dropped to 6. With the latest update it has dropped to 5. The site currently has around 400,000 crawler-accessible pages
What has changed? Not much. The number of links has slowly been increasing but the quality of new links has been relatively low. The site has steadily increased in size by a few hundred pages per week and traffic has slowly grown (though only by about 5-10% in the last year to over 100k visits/month). Nothing on the site has changed and no marketing campaigns have been done. No link has ever been paid for and the site has never participated in link exchanges.
My own thought is that is that this is at least a partial attempt to decrease the overall average Pagerank as too many sites are PR 5+, but I am probably wrong. Part of this is also likely a de-emphasis on the value of links from certain sources.
I think many of you are fixated with getting links, but you should be thinking content.
Having tones of links to your Websites and leaving them on autopilot because you see your site at PR7 is unrealistic. It will not work, plain and simple, competition.
The little guys find new and creative ways to market themselves to the Global Village Community and the ecomic forces of supply and demand take over.
Living proof.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=rand
Rand is on page one in top ten on Google.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=igor+berger&btnG=Search
Igor Berger, some of my Websites are on page one, two, and three, but I would like to be like "rand" with "igor" on page one for at least one of my Websites.
I learned concistency in your allies - key word is very important. So I put "igor" in all my allieses so a user can identify me as the owner of the Websites.
Now back to content, from my observation, Google has been awarding ranking not just to the title of the anchor link but the word grouping in the article of the title. Also Google has been grouping all the links together under specific keywords.
So if you want to rank megagaone you have to put megagaone not megagatwo, or click here in all your hyper links to your Website and reapeat the keyword in the text of the content.
SEO work never stops and there is no autopilot. If it did Rand, DaveN, and others would be sitting in some bar and spending their Adsense money...
Glad to see SeoMoz.org still popular and hot!
I'm not sure we'll ever get the full story on the algorithm changes, but if it's about putting more onus on good content and clean code, and less on page links, then good on them. While page links should have some bearing on a site's ranking, perhaps it has gotten a little out of hand with how much bearing it has.
If it helps to return more qualitative results when I'm searching for something in Google them thumbs up from me!
Here is a nice tip for you guys. I just had a nice post nuked from Google, just because I changed the topic by moving a keyword closer to the left.
Google is really AI, now, days, cannot trick him!
So he indexed the page and I was getting hits to it, but I got gready and wanted to get a certain keyword show up in the url titel in the search page results, so I moved it to the left and moved another word to the right.
Google sensed it as manipulation, and my hot post is out!
Remember when making page titles, try as humanly possible to put the relevent keywords to the left, less relevence, etc...also check the lenght Googboy only indexes the first few words, the rest are out.
Rull of thumb, do not mess with something that is not broken. If you getting hits to a page or a Website do not go crazy to squize a few more. There is an optimal sweet spot in it you are safe and snugly, try to go abouve you get kicked out, bellow you are lonely.
So something like supply and demand optimal price!
Interesting... but how do you know when you are at an acceptable point? It's all about your point of view. I'm all about having the best... it's just how I am...
Dude you got to go with the gut, There is no formula about this. It is like walking though a land mine field without a map, but you have to go because the enemy is on your back!
In case you guys haven't noticed this is not a penalty, but a PR update! Im suprised no one is talking about this. I have 5 sites, all increased in PR yesterday after seeing a drop on thursday. Sites across the whole industry I watch have changed in PR, this is not a penalty, but a total pr update!
I had one site drop from a 4 to a 2 on thursday and is now back to a 5.
It was a google scare, and looking back on it, its pretty funny how everyone reacted!
This is undoubtedly the saddest event of the week. I am however surprised that the link selling sites have maintained their Page Rank. Strange! :(
My blog - bjornblog - went from a PR5 to a PR0 .. most likely because of one TextLinkAd :-|
I woke up this morning and finally saw a PR for my domain that launched in August. Is Google finally doing a broader update?
My local newspaper had a PR of 7, and now got slammed to a 4. https://www.post-gazette.com/. Down at the very bottom of the page they are selling links ranging from Dog Beds to Credit Consolidation.
Multiple blogs where we have paid for 'reviews' have lost rank as well.
Is it feasible that Google went into PPP, ReviewMe, etc and scanned their marketplace and start nailing sites accordingly?
Don't some of those sites list bloggers for all registered buyers to see? I think at least one of them does/used to. It was to be expected that Google would check in there.
Yes. I had a conversation with the director of sales for PPP, and he was adamant that PPP didn't exist for SEO. Arguing that being able to choose your anchor text was simply for CTR. He cited the recent study that "click here" was the best anchor text to use (can't think of the name of the study!). I told him he was arguing with the wrong person. And he kept on hammering on the fact they had a network of 70k bloggers.... only problem is they list all their bloggers in their marketplace.
I know Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask all cleared reviews but I can not believe Google is kosher with it.
PPP has an open marketplace where you contact all the bloggers. What would stop a force of dedicated spam engineers to start tracking these websites? They hire how many people to manually review sites again?? Over 10,000!
Google's intention is probably to get us thinking like this, so we afraid to use such services. Congrats. I just know, I would rather switch tactics now and start really buying links under the radar rather than spending money only to have them devalued.
Like Mark said above, not sure what the whole hub-bub is if traffic levels have stayed the same for targeted keywords.
Ohhh that is right some websites need a high TBPR value to justify paid links prices....blaaah.
See Google if you just get rid of the TBPR values all together then the paid link market would shrink somewhat and only revolve around relevant link buying which I personally agree with.
Fwiw I've noticed some new 'seo' work on the Gawker media blogs of late. Mainly some 301s and nofollows
Newspapers and major publications pre-write obituaries for celebrities and business & government leaders. Perhaps we should pre-write the obituary for Visible Toolbar and Directory PageRank.
Great idea: I'm for that. Yahoo always treats me more kindly than Google anyway. Sigh.
TMS--You made me laugh, but I think that Google Page Rank is like Fidel Castro. Every time the guy sneezes, US newspapers report his death! By the way, he was born on August 13, 1926, and has outlived an unbelievable number of US Presidents.
Does this PR update suggest that those of us with sites that launched during the long drought since the last update are going to get assigned PRs soon?
Of course, as mpilatow rightly points out, I'm not sure why I'm worried about it. The other day, I experimentally coined a phrase on my blog and came up #1 in the Google SERPs the very next day, and yet here I am obsessed with the fact that my Google toolbar PR indicator is grey and lifeless. I think it's primarily because I changed domain names and am jumpy about having gone from PR5 to PR?.
im interested in what phrase you coined, i coined a phrase too but haven't published it yet :D
in addressing rand's request to leave sites that have dropped:
computer.org PR9 > PR6
at least from the toolbar on my computer
blogaboutyourblog.com
we went from 4 to 3 =\
Well I guess if they lower it for everyone then it will just be a new scale, or they will devalue the entire page rank system so it isn't used in the same way it is today.
Doesn't make the site any less valuable content wise to your readers (IMO). Scott
but the point is that many websites haven't lost rank, so that can't be said to be true. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Is the leveling of the playing field still going on? That would explain why some sites haven't changed rank yet.
I agree that this is not only a PR update but the most weird update I've testified so far. I manage a blog network for experimental purposes for less than a month. Most blogs jumped last Friday from PR n/a to 3! Also, one of the most recent blogs which had never been updated since its creation received PR 4, while other well-developed publications stood still in their current low PR values (around 1 and 2). I confess I don't understand if this PR concept means anything anymore because my PR 4 blog presents "outstanding" audience figures... Around 374 page-views in one month! :-P
Google assigned high PR in the begining because your blog must have some links to it from a high PR Website.
But in the next PR update it will be reassigned based on your blog merits. It is sort of like reward, here is the high PR, work hard at it.
So enjoy your carrot because the stick is coming soon...
Hi, Igor, thank you for the interest in replying!
As for the links, I don't have access to Google's Webmaster Console for this specific blog but Yahoo Site Explorer finds only 15 links from 2 PR (n/a) sites, both from the test blog network. All other variables remained as constant as possible - there's is nothing we did for this blog that we did not do for the others. Also, it was handicaped from the beginning: it's content is purely academic (philosophy and anthropology of cyber-culture, whatever!), it is short on updates and no special promotion. As a whole, all these features are reflected on the audience figures but not in this surprising page-rank evaluation.
I will keep testing and researching to figure out what really happened. In case you are interested, I may inform you of our progresses.
Best wishes,
From my experience, when you set up a new Website and link to it say PR 5, then that Website will have PR 4 when Google updates the PR algorithm.
Then even if you remove the PR 5 link to your Website Google still hold PR 4 for your Website as assigned PR, which will be revised on the next major PR update.
The reason you do not see a PR 5 link to your Website now in Yahoo Explorer is because whom ever linked to you removed the link.
Now understand, the PR update is not real time, but a few months lag, that is why you still showing PR 4 on your Website.
This will be orrected on the next major Google PR update. Which maybe two years from now..:)
I have experienced this with a number of my Websites.
Hey Rand! mpilatow brings up a great point. For years, most SEOs have acknowledged that toolbar PR is essentially worthless from a rankings perspective.
I wrote a blog a few weeks back about an idea for a third-party PR tools that you and I used to toss around back in the day.
I'm not sure if that's feasible or relevant at this point, but it's definitely something to take into consideration.
Haven't seen a drop on the domains I pay attention to. From the list posted I wonder if this more common the higher up the PR ladder you go?
That's funny! Guess they need some text, cannot index videos..:)
Interesting that Youtube.com at the moment shows a PR3, no?Googles own side, not selling links, tons of inbound links and the PR is lower than mine... Great, now I just need their traffic.
Content wouldn't help the PR but a better text to code ratio would be for sure a plus.
Anyways, the Videos, Categories, Channels etc still have a high PR so I guess the last word is not said here.
Well, text is a variable of content object.
YouTube is back to a PR 8 - at least from the data center I am getting results from.
It's a scale of 1 - 10. We're not always going to see increase in PR... I think this just shows that the big G has re-engineered their algo a bit. I bet that if you look at enough data you will see that the changes are affecting many many sites and not just sites that are selling or buying text links.
My thinking on all this is very similar to Ari DIFM.
Its logical really - 2 years ago my site was one of a handful of true quality sites in its market (a specific country - travel site) - had PR7 (which held for 2+ years). Over the last 18-24 months about 400 new sites have launched in this market, some good, a lot of rubbish too of course, but this has to affect the playing field. While we still enjoy our top rankings, our site dropped to PR6 in that last update. Why? We have more links now than before, content has grown by thousands of pages etc. etc. so it cannot be due to loss of links or a static site (and we have never and will never sell links) so it has got to have something to do with the sheer volume of sites available on the topic. We can't all be PR7 and PR8 sites. (99% of the sites in this market dropped PR by one or two "little greenies")
If I look at the "big picture" - although our site might be a really good resource for its niche and has in excess of 20,000 pages of quality content, its a small (comparatively) country that is not on the mainstream tourists agenda - so how does the site have the same PR as, for example, Forbes.com or - better comparison -Tripadvisor.com (who is going down to PR7 right now). Logic tells me that if my site has excellent links and is doing all the right things, it should sit 1 below sites that are more popular WORLDWIDE than mine.
Am I being logical or am I just trying to justify the drop in PR? I hope I'm being logical. Traffic has increased by 30% since the PR drop so why am I thinking about it at all? Because it is a pride thing really - I was very proud of that PR7!
Thats what I believe the fuss is all about. Pride.
Cristine, you may want to do some more SEO on your site.
If you search for this string in Google
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Table+Bay+Hotel+in+Cape+Town+is+a+5+star,+329-room+hotel+with+magnificent+surroundings%22&hl=en&safe=off&filter=0
You will get results for three Webpages. So in a way you are duplicating your content accross three pages.
If you make your short hotel discription a little different than your long hotel description, not use the first 20 or 30 words from long to shot, you will rank better in search results.
Hi IgorThanks, but thats not a page we want to have rank. What made you pick that one? We rank #1 for our top keyword phrases over about 200-300 keywords. Can't be too greedy and go for everty single one :)
But I do have 2 or 3 important pages I could use help with if you are offering?
Christine what can I help you with?
You are so sweet, thats certainly a first. May I e-mail you outside of this public space?
Christina I would love you to do it, but it may not be appropriate.
Maybe you should post you question, and SeoMoz members can take a go at it.
I understand.
Igor - you bring up great points, as always.
Christine's 'on page' SEO issues may assist with her indexing and rankings, but you were not implying that it may be the reason for her drop in PR were you?
-mb
GM, actually it is SEO isues that bring PR down. Just remember that PR change in the green bar is reflected of Website activity for the past 6 months to a year.
Confirmed...
....with that being said, all this 'PR means nothing', converstaion that is taking place in the blogosphere, really isn't the case. It really is reflective of many factors, including how well a site is optimized?
Thanks for the reply...I enjoy the dialogue and education.
Looks like Google did another update. From where I sit, PR has been updated again and many of the sites pernalized have regained some or all their Page Rank!
Really? Maybe Google is lost? Who is on first, and what is on second..
Wow. It sort of feels like the end of an era. We'll be talking about 'before and after the Google crawl of October '07. It could be that there will be another wave of losses as the spider continues on its journey, and as the loss of link value begins to trickle through. Shiver.
There's no guarantee that this update affects actual "link value". In other words, just because the PR in the little green bar has dropped, doesn't mean that a link from the affect site carries any less weight.
Agreed, and I second (or third, or fourth) the rest of the comments on this post so far -- DOES this mean that rankings are also hurt? Or is Google perhaps just trying to deflate the perceived value of these sites' paid links and hurt their economic incentive for selling?
Yes, if this doesn't really impact rankings, then is PageRank deemed insignificant and unworthy of our attention? Many of us have felt that it has been drifting toward irrelevancy for a while, having most value as determining paid link prices similar to a television or radio ratings book.
Seems like an honest mistake, but wierd that nobody noted, 143 comments, and mine is 144th......
weblogtoolscollection.com is listed twice .... at #13 in the list and #22 ... but a great article otherwise. Dont take me wrong here, I love SEOMoz, therefore the paid membership...just wanted to point out a quick little mistake that nobody found till now.
its maybe because google sandbox
Thanks for the reply great work keep it up my friend.
There have been problems with the new updates pagerank for many websites. It is very difficult to buy it, why google pagerank difinio this system so that everyone will fight and work thoroughly, and there were many pages to it have dropped the pagerank. Because everyone wants to be the first.
(link removed)
"PR4 is the new PR6, etc. "
I agree with this statement. I think we all need to rethink what PR means. Clearly, it is impossible to rely on it for any measurable value that we can act upon. And that is exactly what Google wants.
I was hoping that this is a degreadation of page rank of all websites - which made me think that this is a new way of calculating page rank and the overall competitive landscape changes.
all the websites I track have lost 1 or 2 PRs.
some of my new pages also got PR (in fact, got great PR, given the way things are now), but i guess that is a regular process and nothing out of the ordinary.
Our site got hit (in the green bar - not the SERPs).
beanstalk-inc.com
Funny, we don't sell links and I'd gotten rid of any paid links we had that didn't send through enough traffic to warrant keeping them ages ago.
Well, I find the situation especially difficult since a) the definition of "paid links" could (should?) cover donor links, links to cooperation partners, and sponsor links as well, and b) the measures taken just cannot be fair: "innocent" sites have already been affected, and many sites with paid links haven't been penalized at all.
I'm curious about the next steps.
Thank you! Great tips ! https://www.tanmyembroidery.com.vn Tan My, Hanoi's finest silk and embroidery, handmade products. We ship worldwide
It's funny to see so many popular sites being penalized and their PR's dropping but who cares about the stupid PR bar anymore anyway?? If you're getting the traffic and converting on it then that’s all that matters in MOST CASES.
I personally have highly benefited from the last PR update! :)
Maybe some one will find this interesting... maybe not!... I've just received my first shot of PR (today) from Google an a site I launched 5 months ago. It seems Google is updating PR for all website (how ever long that takes to do) so get your sites ready... Stop using purchased links (sell them quickly before your found by Google). Get some quality links naturally and cross your fingers. I know PR doesn't hold much weight but I'm sure it's a good indicator of how much respect Google gives to your website.
I got straight in with a PR4 maybe that would normally be a PR5?... My site has just shot up the rankings for arguably two of the most competitive key phrases in OZ "Search Engine Marketing Australia" & "Search Engine Optimisation Australia" I now find my site on page two so I'm out the sand box as well. It's time to go for #1 now!
Good for you. But the ones that been targeted are in the google sight, so no escape.
Does anyone know how many times the pagerank will be updated in the future? Since some of my sites have not been changed.
ask G...
from 6 to 3 in just a few weeks... :) traffic stays steady.
if you use a tool that checks and displays the results from all the datacenters, you can see that some of the datacenters still have the previous PR in the system.
I can't see why a site such as copyblogger.com would be penalized. Some of those that have been hit are know for link selling (statcounter, forbes) problogger had it times ago, but with copyblogger and other sites you have great resources who have been endorsed by the public audience (notice the feedburner button) and I can't find any "fault" on their part. Kind of nonsense to give a penalty if the reasons are not clearly laid out.
ps: love Rand's disclaimer "not trying to out anyone" :)
No PR losses for any of our sites either and we don't sell any link space. I think Ryanol's spot on: Google doesn't want sites to use their mechanism for the valuation and sale of paid links. It will be interesting to see if the PR drop impacts the affected sites' ability to sell or renew ad space. I'm guessing this is Google's aim.
I work in the Online Book industry and our site (www.abebooks.com) maintained its rank of 7. We keep close tabs on our compteitors page ranks, as well, and none of our direct competitors lost any rank either. We have absolutly zero paid links so from my persepctive it looks like it was a crackdown on possible paid links.
Cheers from Canada!!!
Yeh saw these guys tagspage.com (still claiming to be P7 on their website) have fallen to 3
A
Thanks everyone here...After seeing the amount of FUD spreading throughout the general blogosphere over the last few hours it's nice to come to SEOMoz and see some informed & considered opinions!
I came expecting to have all kinds of things to say about this, but just about everything I wanted to say has already been said.Desperately reaching for some additional comment on the situation, I've come up with this: it may be great for us professional SEMs.
We've all known that little green bar is a poor-to-useless indicator of a sites real value, and a major shake up to TBPR will probably be good for us all. In my experience a great many potential partners judge the value of links from their site on TBPR rather than more in-depth metrics, and a lack of faith in (or at least a sense of uncertainty about ) PR will make that less of a factor.
Anyone else tired of getting brushed off by sites that are PR7 mostly by dint of their age, a handful of mature inbounds, or *gasp* a few paid links? Even when you know your site is stronger and will rank higher given a quarter or two to find it's feet?
My hope is that this update will lead to generalist webmasters trusting less in PR, and more in diversified tools like SEOMoz's page strength indicator. The latter isn't perfect by any means, but I find it a damn sight more useful in determining a links value than that green bar.
Not sure about this one, and, I really am not an SEO person here. Just a real estate agent who was burned by the hand edits in May. I have watched things closely since then. I don't buy or sell links and really don't have any reciprocal links. I have been a PR5 since January. That was basically across homepage and one click from home were all PR5. About a month ago, some interior pages dropped to a PR4, but, I never read anything about it so I did not bring it up anywhere. Now it looks as if all of my pages are moving to a PR3. I have yet to see a change in placement, but, I fear that will come.
What gives? I certainly don't feel as though I have done anything whatsoever that would be considered "gaming the system". I learned my lesson with state pages and would really like something beyond specualtion here. If I am doing something that I shouldn't, I would rather have an opportunity to correct that issue rather than being blindsided.
What further confuses me about this is the fact that I just went to Webmaster Tools (which I thought was supposed to be more up to date) and where it shows your page with the highest pagerank, the most recent 2 pages that apparently had the highest PR for the two most recent months were two of the pages that showed a drop in PR on the toolbar about a month or so ago. How does that fit into the picture? WT's shows them with higher PR than my homepage and the new update shows them with the same PR as my homepage. Both currently show PR4 (before this update) which is lower than the homepage at PR5 and WT's shows them higher. I don't get it.
Any thoughts on whether this is an algorithmic change or a manual edit? It almost feels manual to me.
I think you've pointed out in the past that it would be nearly impossible for googlebot to really know the paid-ness of any link. But an editor could read a site and say, Yep-these guys are doing (saying?) something we don't like. Link farms should be auto-recognizable, but something like Copyblogger seems like it would have to be a specific infraction. Lots has been written on the Stanford page change, so that looks like an editorial change, too.
Scaling the manual edit wouldn't be that tricky. Just submit-to-a-db and have a small team check out potential infractions every day. You don't have to check the long tail sites anyway, only the ones with high PR.
The implication is that if it's manual then sinister competitive motivations can be read in to the decisions. (e.g. Coppyblogger's post today.) It seems nutty that Google would care about one guy in texas, but it's possible. If the change is algorithmic, then maybe the big guns took out some collateral damage.
Has anyone noticed if the sites are using TLA, TLB or both as their choice to promote their sites ability to host paid links? I seem to see it more from the TLA sites.
I am surprised google's intentions are not more obvious to the SEOs. They knew that if they manually adjust PR for many authoritative news and SEO sties it will create a big scare in the webmaster world. Big news sites and SEOs will be scared to continue manipulating PR via link buying etc. However I don't think it is in google's best interest to change relevancy in SERPs. i.e. I have yet to see or hear anyone that has noticed their SERP ranking changing with the PR dip.
That is how trhey do it. They start on a segment or a few Websites then spread it accross the board in the next update. Not the first time I seen them do it in this fashion.
So stay clean and sleep tight.
NewScientist.com - was (I think) between 7 & 9. Now 5. Wonder why?!
That update is a bad update for those sites who offer paid links!I think no good news for those honest sites! And based on my observation most drop happened to those stablish sites. There are lots of sites that offers paid links lower than their PR but no changes. YOu know who you are! ! ! lol
I have a site that has gone from PR5 to PR3... I sell TLA links to fund my hosting costs. I knew Google was going to find an algo that could detect paid links eventually.
The question I haven't heard asked is if your a site or blog who has been penalised, how do you get out of this mess?
If you have advertisers, what rights do you have to put a no-follow on the links when someone has paid good money for the links?
Forget about it, this is not a penalty, but it is accross the board for all forums and blogs.
Google values links from blogs and forums very low, so if you only have tons of links from other forums or blogs to your forum you are in dangeour.
You need to get static links from directories, business Websites, or authoritative Websites.
So back to reality. Do you have content on your forum, blog, or Website? If you do not why should anyone link to you!
Of course it' is a penalisation.
BUT if you don't sell links PR is meaningless anyway. It's only used to attract companies who want to manipulate the search engine results by buying links on high PR sites.
We've made the decision to contact all advertisers [over 15 companies] and inform them of our decision to use no-follow tag on all links.
Shit will hit the fan, but they paid to advertise on the blog with a link, which will drive traffic, which is why we took their link. It's not our problem they used it to manipulate the results.
Whe I say it is not a penalization, what I mean is blog links passing PR is old news...
Several news sites I go to got downgraded as well. HOw long do you think before the dust settles and they are down using the minus button?
Speaking of which - has anyone seen any of these sites mention the fact that they were dinged? I submitted it to engadget...no response... Anyone?
Looking at rankpulse.com i dont see a lot of churn on google rankings over the last couple of weeks, however suspect that this might take a little time to feed through to the rankings and will possibly be restricted to a few data centres to start with.
Onemansblog.com pr8 to pr5
And no it is a manual handjob
And no this will not follow with an algorithmic adjustment like it should.
My favorite comment so far out in webland has been to call the latest PR update a "Google bitch slap". The Google PR toolbar isn't a defacto reason to link or not link to a site, there are many reasons surrounding where to link and ask for links. Afterall, GMail has a PR of 10, great for GMail, but isn't that reason enough to reconsider the importance of PR?
"Google bitch slap". Ha, ha! Google is good at doing this!
There are many false positives - basically it originates from THIS list.
If Bloggers find these URLs in the referrer archives of their traffic stats - it means that their sites are under suspicion.
It appears that all the spam team members nationwide have access to it as part of a Google Intranet and can comment on the sites being analyzed and added as link sellers.
It appears that any site could be placed there on the whim of the spam team for consideration.
Another PR update just occured and some of those punished blogs and Websites have gotten their original PR back.
The "Feel Good Factor" about this whole PR downgrade is that most of the sites are powerful sites. Thus, my site being included in the downgrade is more like "Many powerful sites including mine got a downgrade". :-)
My site is still a PR6 from my toolbar, is the update completed? Or is anyone still seeing some changes?
From what I've seen it is still ongoing and will depend on what server you're data is coming from.
At one point during all of this I thought I saw that SEOMoz was at a PR3 - but now it says PR7 - so I guess my eyes were deceiving me.
If you look it up on the Firefox SEO lookup tool you'll get an updated picture: sometimes it takes a few days for a crawl to show up in your toolbar (in my experience).
Honestly, who cares?
There are more important things to be worrying about then a snot coloured toolbar that doesn't do much, like what am I going to have for dinner tonight?