Anyone want to tell me why my PR keeps dropping?

[masterofthe]

I have a personal experience to site as an example here with a claim. First, I noticed that Google indeed likes sites that get a constant link building and with a very optimized linking structure within the home page. If you do this, there is no way that Google will resist giving you a higher PR. I have a blogspot that gave me this idea and the URL is hxxp://cebu-seo-contest.blogspot.com/. Since this is an obvious SEO contest entry, I am constantly promoting it through a daily basis of link building. Would you believe that even if this blog is just less than a month old, it was given a PR 3 by Google?

This means that even if you have tens of thousands of link pointing to your website but it has been stagnant at that number of links, Google won't give you a higher PR. But if you try to build backlinks to that site on a daily basis, then there is no way that you would be given low PR.

On the other hand, you are still lucky that you have a lot of traffic and conversions instead of just a trophy of appreciation from Google which is PR.

[Lavinco]

without reading any responses and assuming that you are withing google webmaster guidelines, I can say this; Google PR is just one huge mathmatic equation with one number that increases all the time and is divided by PR. and that's more web pages.

Millions if not billions more than just a few years ago. It's kind of like sharing a can of beer with only you and one other person. Until 10 other thirsty people show up and want a drink too. Still only 1 beer can, but now a room full of people want a drink.

The pr is spread too thin these days based on how many pages are indexed. Google just indexes the pages faster than the math can keep up.

I have a 5 year old website that I forgot to renew the domain for last year. It was down for a month before I realized it and renewed it. Since then I have been white barred. However, I get more quality traffic to that site from google now than I ever have.

PR does not always mean much. It's measure is no longer as meaningful as it once was and certainly not an acurate measure of a quality website. It's almost like an alexa stat now. Just a number that some people get way too excited about, but has no direct effect on actual quality.

I have a personal experience to site as an example here with a claim. First, I noticed that Google indeed likes sites that get a constant link building and with a very optimized linking structure within the home page. If you do this, there is no way that Google will resist giving you a higher PR. I have a blogspot that gave me this idea and the URL is hxxp://cebu-seo-contest.blogspot.com/. Since this is an obvious SEO contest entry, I am constantly promoting it through a daily basis of link building. Would you believe that even if this blog is just less than a month old, it was given a PR 3 by Google?

This means that even if you have tens of thousands of link pointing to your website but it has been stagnant at that number of links, Google won't give you a higher PR. But if you try to build backlinks to that site on a daily basis, then there is no way that you would be given low PR.

On the other hand, you are still lucky that you have a lot of traffic and conversions instead of just a trophy of appreciation from Google which is PR.

Google has a threshold for every measure of a website or page. PR will follow right behid exactly what is happening within that threshold.

If links increase by 10% every month, then PR follows. If links decrease by 10% each month, then PR follows in that direction too. As long as you stay active with your website's inbound links and don't fall under your average threshold, and don't spike up or down, then you'll do great. But once you get sick of the time involved and take a break, then your links will decline and spike down and google will detect this and reward you with a sudden drop in PR.

PR does not make a website popular. Instead it measures how popular your website is through other efforts. It's just a like an rpm on a car. Too low, and you don't get anywhere, too fast and the engine blows up or you smash your car before that happens. But it's not the rpm meter that causes anything to happen. It only measures what you are already doing.

[alfredbaldwin]

updating the site regularly..
and also building the links ..
There is a provision for increasing the page rank ..
check that where did you lag

<snip>

[A.N.Onym]

Updating the site regularly probably doesn't influence ranking as much as links and the amount of *quality* content on the homepage and on the website.

[PatrickMc]

I had the same problem. So I wrote a small script to periodically check if my web site is still appearing in search engine results - thought I would share it with everyone. The script is written for google, but you can modify it for other search engines.

Lets say your web site is mycompany.com. And you are looking for keywords "flat screen TV lowest price guaranteed free shipping".

I am listing the script at the end beginning with # START SCRIPT. Copy and paste it into a file C:/Scripts/WhatTheySay.txt. Then from biterSCripting command line, enter the following exactly as is shown here.

script "C:/Scripts/WhatTheySay.txt" website("mycompany.com") keywords("flat screen TV lowest price guaranteed free shipping")

This script command needs to be entered exactly as shown above. It will result in reporting whether mycompany.com shows up for the specified keywords. You can try various keyword combinations. (And, here is a very important tip - you can try your competitor hiscompany.com instead of mycompany.com also.)

If you don't have biterscripting yet for doing all kinds of things of this sort, do a free download from biterscripting.com .



#START SCRIPT WhatTheySay ==> STORE IN FILE C:/Scripts/WhatTheySay.txt
var str keywords
var str website

# Create a str variable containing the exact search page URL.
var str URL
set $URL = "http://www.google.com/search?q=" + $keywords

# Get the results from seach engine into a str variable.
var str content
cat $URL > $content

# Is $website showing up in the search engine results ?
var str sen_arg
set $sen_arg = "^" + $website + "^"
if ( { sen -c $sen_arg $content } > 0 )
# Yes, $website shows up in $content.
echo "Website " $website " shows up for keywordswords: " $keywords
else
# No, $website does not show up in $content.
echo "Website " $website " does NOT show up for keywordswords: " $keywords
endif

#END SCRIPT WhatTheySay

[A.N.Onym]

Well. What can I say. I say it's good links don't become live in the first few posts.

Other than that:
- Writing articles for your own site *and* putting your own address in the byline? Do you really think it's necessary and it works? If so, show how you've done it, please.

As far as I know, you actually create a byline, when you write articles for other sites or article directories. In those cases, yes, it's, basically, a must.

- Exchanging links is basically linking out to all your competitors. Do you want to do that?

The only way you get one-way links that drive targeted traffic is if you write quality stuff or create awesome tools and promote them. You can write articles for other established sites and, maybe, article directories, aiming for maximum redistribution.

- A blog is helpful not because you can spam 50 blog directories with it, but because it's a place where you publish your quality articles, where your visitors can ask questions and communicate. It adds interactivity to your site and creates trust that you need to sell anything to your readers.

- Search engine submission is meaningless. Nowadays, you can simply get a few links (5-10 links is enough) to get indexed. Search engine submission alone doesn't increase your rankings: links to your site, placed by humans, do.

- Forum signatures are probably devalued right now. It's an easy to see pattern. Also, most forums don't have the link weight to matter (threads are too deep), so spamming forums or even participating in the forums to build links is pretty pointless (there are more efficient ways to do that, like quality article writing and promotion, tool creation, etc).

The smart reason to participate in the forums is to:
- get ideas what interests the people (your target audience, on the right forum)
- get to know more people in your niche
- share and discuss your ideas to get more ideas to implement
- answer and ask questions to learn new things

Basically, that's what we do here: we discuss things that worry us, learn the new stuff and share what we know.

P.S. I really need to check the Web once in a while.

[NavyCS]

Looks like PR started another update today. How is everyone fairing?

Moved from a 4 to 5 on navycs, hope it holds

[skitzzo]

Yeah, Matt Cutts confirmed it yesterday on twitter.

I haven't seen much in the way of change on the sites I keep an eye on.

[dazzlindonna]

a new site got a couple of pixels but everything else stayed the same.

[skitzzo]

a new site got a couple of pixels but everything else stayed the same.

Yeah, one of my new ones got a PR 1. The site I did a reinclusion request for didn't get any PR back. I'm debating whether to move the site to a new domain and see if that transfers the PR or the penalty along with it.