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.
Search engine optimization is the process by which search engine rankings are increased for a website. There are two types of SEO’s – White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. White Hat SEO follow the guidelines of the search engines and work accordingly whereas the Black Hat SEO do not follow the guidelines of the search engines and try to spam the results.
Here, in this article I am going to explain the top 10 White Hat SEO techniques to improve the search engine rankings. These SEO tips are discussed below:-
1- Smart on page changes-First and the foremost thing in SEO is doing proper on page changes according to the selected keywords. Changes on the meta tags are very important before any further optimization tricks are executed.
2- Directory submission- Till today,directory submissions are considered as one of the popular techniques to increase search engine positions for a website.One should always try to submit ion all the available web directories only once.
3- Forum Posting-One of the oldest and the popular ways of getting a backlink is by having a link of your website on the signature of the particular forum.Most of the forums allow signatures and this is the area where you can post the URL of your website to get a backlink.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
When it was thought that a google page rank highlights the reputation of a site, the statement no more hold true. I use to do SEO for a site now shows 0 which was 2 before optimization.
It’s all to confuse people in to thinking that PR matters. The inconsistency is outstanding and yet people still think it is down to the brilliance of Google. There are factors on and off page there is no denying this; although how much is subjective. URLs with the key words in them have value, as does the age of the URL. Back links count although it is unclear what value is put on a back link from relevant or non relevant sites. I would say that reciprocal linking is now pretty worthless. Your title counts a hell of a lot. If you have a new site and want to rank somewhere you will need to think of a long tail keyword that is relevant and not too sought after in a competitive sense and stick with that. Fighting for short tail keywords can be fruitless in terms of hits and this is generally down to the SEO promotion of people that are looking for something know how to search. They don’t and they generally type in something obscure because if they knew about it they wouldn’t need to search for it. Here is the rub . for people to write your long tail key words as you have is less likely than the ones more specific to the search (short tail) so a balance must be struck and this is done in the content text.
PR is outbound juice, inbound Google traffic should not be effected.
My blog is still given a PageRank 2
waw.. my pr is increasing? i just started register this domain about 2-3 months lol.. what happened?
I’m still confusing of this pagerank thing. I have a website that doesn’t have any backlinks at all, but it has PR 3. While other website has hundreds of backlinks but still no pagerank. What does this pagerank purpose actually?
PageRank seems to have become a far weaker factor in the ordering of businesses in Google 10-packs and Google Maps.
I will put AdSense now. I hope this is a good thing.
Sorry for leaving two, but just wanted everyone to know my blogs that use AdSense were not affected, Google’s not evil, Ha!
RE: Update 2: Flaw in your theory, my blogs have lost PR, no link selling, no networks, just my content, many other blogs through no fault of their own, lost PR. Just another Google slap in the face. Be sure and remember what Google says, were not evil.
Yes Gildo, I saw the same thing.
It’s good that even though the pagerank lowers the traffic stays the same!
It is very bad that most sites lots Pr. But i dont understand what is google pr algorithm.
Not only in this list, but many people from worldwide lost pr.
I wonder how many people actually know in detail how the pagerank system works and i wounder if they would let slip the details over a few beers?
My site was started in summer 2009, in October it went to PageRank 5 and on 31 December it got a PageRank 4 🙁
I would like to know how this mechanism works.
Does anyone has some documentation about PageRank?
Google sucks…I don’t even bother with back links because it really does not matter. I have sites that do not and have never sold links…I don’t even have google ads on it or make any money whatsoever on it and it has yet again gone down now to a zero even though I have great traffic!
WOW! Just checked mine and now it’s Zero! There was a time I had a 5.
WTF???
My traffic would say differently and the back links also.
I have no paid links, no bad neighbors, have good content and I get my pagerank taken away, donno why? I think Google should make a new ranking system because the one in use right now is horrible.
Its really difficult to say that `Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm because Google has their specific rules and regulations for such change.
But it looks really strange when you seen your PR down
I have page rank 4, can u temme hw to increase it…
The site I work for got a PR5. I am really happy!
We had 3 specific clients that we were doing SEO work for that insisted on taking up blogging themselves for the sole purpose of adding on to what we were already doing (we avoided blog post). Well, Google updated their PageRank and they both dropped 2 whole points. We are convinced that this caused them to get a penalty that pushed them back much further than if they had done nothing.
The good news is that this also pulled down the competitors of many of our clients, thus shooting our clients up even further.
I am glad that Google dropped the PR of sites that were selling links. This helps to solidify the search engine mechanism, and they are better off safe then sorry.
The funny thing is, bloggers whose page ranks dropped have published posts about how Google page rank is totally irrelevant, how it didn’t affect their search engine traffic and how it didn’t impact thier revenue. Well, if Google page rank didn’t matter, why bother make a post about it.
I’m sure your blog will show a more robust ranking in the next update
Any idea around when these updates were made?