I have a fairly prominent site [*cough*] running for the last couple of years. For most of its life it had a PR of 5.

I connected today and it has suddenly dropped to 3. Have I missed something? Have I not paid my dues? Have I offended them?

Also, over the last couple of weeks, the same site has seen a doubling of traffic due to a Stumble surge, and there has been a corresponding drop in Alexa ranking. Traffic is beginning to drop to normal levels now, and my Alexa rank is rising again?

Has anyone got any idea as to how these things work? I'm not losing sleep - just wondering..

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I'm starting to realise how many theories there are ! I was chatting a buddy of mine last night and we both agree (so there it is, it's in stone now - joking!!!) that the topic/category of the site affects the PageRank. This is something we've proven before and I'm now thinking about setting up 3 new blank domains to prove this, not sure if anyone cares!

Others believe, with a good deal of evidence, that PR is simply backlinks. I can't argue this - I dont have insider knowledge. RedC is an ardant fan of this. It was the basis for the Google PR that was initially patented some 10 years ago.

Our theory - it's got to have changed. PR must be relative - and in context of - the search index its dropped into. For example, take a word that is not used on the web a lot, like a name. Register that as a .com - e.g. DavidTJohnson.com. Build 20 backlinks to it, put up some content, pages, - do all the seo stuff right. chances are within a year it will be PR4. Change the page title to "Property Ireland" - I bet you $10 it'll drop to PR1.

I can't see how a website can have 30 backlinks in a narrow category and a PR of 4 can also hold the same PR in property, holdiays, car rental or other high search categories. Note: I'm talking PR, not SERP.

Perhaps your site got assessed and relative to it's neighbours within it's category, it's got less backlinks/points for it's PR ?

I have too many sites that have 3 or 4 backlinks as sumtotal with huge PR, some even as high as 5 or 6. I've taken on many as SEO projects and watched the PR drop once you change the page title from "ACME CORP LTD" to "Acme Cars Dublin" without chaging BL or even increasing it.

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That would explain things if the title had changed [which it hasn't] or the number of backlinks had dropped. If anything, the backlinks have risen. I just did a Google on 'link:' and it gave 1,690 which is reasonably healthy?

Essentially, nothing has changed about the site, apart from an overall increase in traffic over the months. I could understand a drop of one point, but a two point drop overnight? Weird?

yeah, I just dont use that number at all. If you click on Google results page 5 or 10 for example, that number will probably fall very quickly


Use the Microsoft Webmasters tool to do your count check or use Backlinks Checker Tool - Backlink Watch - its so very useful!

I hadn't come across that site before. It gives a figure of 66,661. Maybe it's the Number of The Beast??

[That number seems extraordinarily high?]

I'd have to say Link8r that that's some theory, but I personally think you are way off the mark and I'd happily take you up on your bet.

I've been seeing PR fluctuation on some of our client sites over the last few days, so I'd hazard a guess that there's a PR update on the way.

My theory around PR would be on the side of links, not the quantity, but the quality. I'd also heavily put a lot done to the hirearchy strucutre that Google tends to give to PR. For example, at one stage my own site, 2bscene.net had a PR of 7. The site jumped from a PR 4 to PR 7, in Google updating terms, overnight!

The PR 7 stuck for about 2 years and then took a dramatic drop, to a 4 at one stage, and has been sitting at 6 for the last couple of years now.

What happened in that period? Well when we went from PR4 to PR 7, we completed a website that we included a link to our website from, it had a PR of 8. I can't tell you the reason for dropping back to 4 and then 6 other than I changed my my domain from 2bscene.net to 2bscene.ie.

The site that was linking to us, no longer includes a link to us, but it too has dropped to PR of 5. They were hit at the same time as those other high profile sites were hit ( Popular websites losing their high Google PageRank Tom Doyle :: TALK)

Anyway, I'm kind of going off topic here, I would put your drop down to a temporary change as Google updates.

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Most of the sites that linked to mine had a PR of 4 or lower, as far as I can judge. Backlink Watch completed its scan and listed 951 [I thought 66,661 was a little optimistic?!] but didn't list the sites' pageranks.

We'll see if it is temporary. I'm not really concerned about Google, as the advertising, for some obscure reason, relies on Alexa rank for payment rates. That seem to have recovered slightly.

Actually, now that I think about it, my Alexa rank is following fairly closely with the Dow Jones Index! Or maybe it's the other way around? could my site be the cause of the financial crash?

hello

Do you have had your web site, linked that google could be problerm for google?

Google PR is a really odd thing. One of my newer blogs currently has a PR of 5, while my main personal one has a PR of 3
I've more or less given up worrying about it - as long as the sites are being crawled and appear in SERPS I'm happy enough ...

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Grandad, what's your duplicated issue like on your blog? Have you done anything to combat WP duplicated content problems?

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