PageRank Update Yesterday

[Clinton]

There was a PR update yesterday. As usual there were "winners" and "losers".

As most people know, PR doesn't matter a lot now and it's not the main determinant of the Google algo, but it's still followed quite seriously because people see it as an indicator of backlink building efforts paying off ... and it does influence how much advertisers pay for ads.

As seems to be normal of recent PR updates, there's something quite screwed up with how some pages are gaining/losing PR. PR now bears no resemblance to how it originally worked. First, there's nofollow. Links using the nofollow tag are supposedly discounted by Google and don't pass PR. Also, some pages - such as privacy pages and pages called links.xxx - are blocked by Google from showing any PR and there are a few other exceptions.

Even accounting for that, there's a problem with how PR seems to be flowing - it flows too fast sometimes and not at all at other times. Reports abound about new pages getting a PR3 despite having just one link from a PR0, and pages with several high PR backlinks not rising in PR at all.

The main forum page on here has gone from a PR3 to a PR4 despite the fact that we haven't acquired any big new links ...and the main links to this forum (from the site in my signature) haven't changed visibly in PR. In fact, PR of our main page should have declined because as number of threads increase internal PR is being spread more.

Some users have acquired PR to their profile pages like crabfoot and I, but members who have roughly the same number of posts like grynge and Kay seem to have been treated differently with some profiles getting PR and some ... not! KenW3's (join date June 2011) profile page has gone to a PR3 from his 199 posts while benitez17's (join date: Jan 2010) profile page still shows no PR despite his 1470 posts. There could be some logic to what Google is doing ... or they could have thrown some element of randomness into the allocation of pagerank.

This is how some sites have fared.
Webmasterworld (home): PR6
DigitalPoint (forum home): PR6
Flippa: PR5
Websiteproperties: PR3
Flipfilter: PR4
Bizquest: PR4

Google.co.uk has dropped from a PR9 to a PR8 and some major edu sites that I follow have dropped a notch or two. Adobe and Apple have both dropped from PR10s to PR9s.

What have you noticed about the PR update and how have you fared?

[grynge]

Actually I didn't even notice this one, all but one of my pages stayed the same with that one page losing all pr maybe for selling links which it isn't lol some of the smaller sites gained a pr1 or 2 but apart from that nothing really to report on my end.

[Kay]

Not much to report from me either. Assuming the tool checker I used worked properly, then there's not much change since Panda. Most sites stayed the same, a couple of sites slipped down one rank, and a one-page "this domain is for sale site" is now a PR3, but I don't know what it was before.

It's completely bizarre that a one-pager would have the same PR as my Not Delia site (previously PR4 and now PR3). It makes a complete mockery of using PR as a metric for anything.

[Clinton]

One new site of mine that has zero dofollow links pointing to it and about 8 nofollow links has become a PR3!

[Denny]

One new site of mine that has zero dofollow links pointing to it and about 8 nofollow links has become a PR3!

That's incredible ! I have 2 sites, each of which has just under 200 links and has just gone from PR2 to PR3. So, based on links and what I've read here, I agree that there would appear to be some degree of randomness involved in Google page ranking.

[Kay]

I had another one-pager, with hardly any links in, which became a PR4 some time ago. Someone on another forum asked me how on earth I'd done it. I hadn't a bleedin' clue how I'd done it so I just said something along the lines of, "Just SEO, I guess".

It's back to PR0 again, which is where it should be if PR is to make any sense at all.

Why, oh why are people talking about PR again? It's like the Royal Wedding. People say they're not interested and yet they'll have "Let's ignore the Royal Wedding" parties.

OK, 'fess up.

Who believes that PR is a useful metric?

How many of you who think it's nonsense still check your PR?

I think it's nonsense but I'll check it only because other people are talking about it. Most likely there's some twisted prankster at G pressing a random number button to see how people react to any changes he makes. That would be a fun job!

[benitez17]

Google must be monitoring what I write about them here and punishing my profile page because of it!

I didn't see much change on my sites that I checked. I have an autoblog that jumped up to PR4 on the last update and held through this one, several internal pages on a high ranking blog were boosted, and that's about it.

[KenW3]

Google must be monitoring what I write about them here and punishing my profile page because of it!

That makes more sense than anything. For the EP home page, Crabfoot's article on the concepts of flipping websites rates a PR2. Clinton's VIP article on getting funding from angel investors gets a PR2 even though it's an extract. ...but my G FUD satire has a PR n/a. Somebody at G doing manual PR reviews doesn't have a sense of humour

[grynge]

Google must be monitoring what I write about them here and punishing my profile page because of it!

I didn't see much change on my sites that I checked. I have an autoblog that jumped up to PR4 on the last update and held through this one, several internal pages on a high ranking blog were boosted, and that's about it.

That makes more sense than anything. For the EP home page, Crabfoot's article on the concepts of flipping websites rates a PR2. Clinton's VIP article on getting funding from angel investors gets a PR2 even though it's an extract. ...but my G FUD satire has a PR n/a. Somebody at G doing manual PR reviews doesn't have a sense of humour

You would think anything I wrote would get a negative pr but they "still loves me"

[ScottJ]

I thought most of the recent updates seem to reset the values making them a little tougher than before but for the most part mine have all stayed the same. PR still seems to pass as usual for me, I have plenty of new pages that have gone straight to 4,5 or 6 from one strong link.