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Dropped from PR 4 to 3, has google changed algorithms?

by birdfood
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Checked the PR of my site (my pride and joy) after a week off during the holidays hoping to see a lot of SEO work pay off with a PR increase from 4 to 5 only to find the PR had dropped to 3. A real punch to the guts

Have done nothing black hat or out of the ordinary so trying to work out why the sudden drop.

Does any one know if google has been changing their algorithms used to calculate PR? Has any one else had similar problems?
#algorithms #changed #dropped #google
  • Profile picture of the author freetraff
    No one knows that for sure and Google will never tell the whole truth.

    I do not think that there is any point for Google to change the calculation of PR for pages. Most likely you are experiencing a 'chain of PR drops': this is when some of the pages from where you have backlinks lost PR due to their own loss of backlinks (sites get redesigned and change URL structure, sites get closed, sites get de-indexed = all this lowers the number of backlinks).

    So, it is not that YOU have less backlinks (though this is also possible), but it is also very likely that pages which are giving you backlinks lost their PR due to losing a portion of their own backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author rahulmagi
    dear just concentarte yourself on site traffic instead of site PR
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    • Profile picture of the author freetraff
      Originally Posted by rahulmagi View Post

      dear just concentarte yourself on site traffic instead of site PR
      With so much efforts invested into supporting the PR mania by the sellers of links I think it is impossible to stop people from being crazy about PR.

      This comes with time and experience:

      - at first you really pay attention to the green bar
      - then you see that high green bar can give low traffic and low green bar can give high traffic
      - and only then you start thinking only about traffic

      I remember how much brain cells I was losing 3-4 years ago when my site was dropping PR from 4 to 3. My dear, I had so much frustration and nerves invested into nearly *nothing.*
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  • Profile picture of the author CTABUK
    Simple answer - delete the toolbar PR and learn to ignore it. Even better, use opera
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Brian
    PR has been quite ignored for some time now by some people in the blogosphere as a gauge for anything valuable due to this very reason.

    I've got some affected sites too. PR4 to 1, 4 to 2, 3 to 1...
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  • Profile picture of the author ltdraper
    The algorithm has not changed, but there was a PR update at the end of the year. Matt Cutts confirmed it on Twitter: twitter.com/mattcutts/statuses/1087531183
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    Nothing to see here, move along...

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  • Profile picture of the author ElectricEye
    Google sucks.....only they know why PR dropped........it was PR4.....and now its PR2.......but it gained PR4 when I did nothing for it......but when I acted....it dropped.......don't know why

    This incident is not for one site only......same case in my five sites.......but the fun comes when you see.....one of your just launched site got PR.
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    • Profile picture of the author freetraff
      Originally Posted by ElectricEye View Post

      one of your just launched site got PR.
      My record about PR was making a new blog getting PR 5 (from PR gray) in a month.

      But that PR 5 site had nothing to boast about in terms of traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Hi Guys,

        PR is a relative number, so as the total number of web pages on the internet increases, so must your relative number of backlinks, just to stay even. If the number of pages that link to other pages increases faster than your backlinks, you will see a relative drop in PR, even if you total backlinks increased.

        Now if the internet ever starts shrinking you will see you PR soar as long as it's not your backlinks that are disappearing.

        It wouldn't get all emotional about PR changes as it's mostly for entertainment purposes. What counts is targeted traffic and PR has no significant effect on this. It used to make a difference a long time ago, but not so much anymore.
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      • Profile picture of the author australianrealestate
        That's right freetraf.

        My friend had his new blog go to PR4 in 6 weeks from scratch. It was never registered previously either.

        It's not the be all end all but PR ironically helps you get links from other high PR sites.....that is its greatest benefit...because that will lift you in the serps if you do the linking correctly and that then spells traffic
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  • Profile picture of the author birdfood
    Thanks every one for all the good feedback.

    Time to focus less n that green bar as suggested an more on getting good positions (and traffic) for key words.
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  • Profile picture of the author Suzanne Morrison
    Has your traffic dropped too? If not, then I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it.

    There are a few possible reasons for PR drop (or a combination of a few of these).

    - The PR of some of the sites you have backlinks from have dropped
    - You have added more outbound links to your page
    - As time goes on, it becomes a lot harder to get a PR4 or a PR5 as there are more websites every day
    - Google has detected that you are selling links

    there are probably more reasons, but that was all I could think of for now.

    Cheers,
    Suzanne
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
    sucks to be you...
    losing pagerank is not good
    You need to fight to get it back up again
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