5 replies to this topic

[Hans G.]

Hi all. I'm not one to pay attention to Google PR but I noticed that one of my sites, which had a home page of PR3 until two days ago, now shows "PR:n/a," according to my SEOBOOK toolbar. With respect to recent activities, I haven't done anything that would remotely resemble 'black hat' techniques. Frankly, I'm not concerned at all about PR, as I invest my time and interest in creating and marketing quality content for this site, which has improved SE positions nicely. However, it does make me curious as to why this happened. The site has been around for over 5 years and has other pages that currently do have PR. Looks like it was just the home page that was affected. I also checked on a few of those shady-looking 'PR check' sites, which supposedly check PR across various servers, and most of them came back PR3, a few came back PR:n/a, and one came back PR0.

Traffic is down only slightly. My thinking is that it's just a temporary thing that will work itself out in time. Anyone have any experiences like this?

[Jill]

It's most likely a toolbar glitch. Keep your eye on the traffic and which keywords it's coming in for. As long as nothing unusual is happening there, then you have nothing to worry about.

[Hans G.]

Yep, this is what I am figuring. Thanks for the reinforcement, Jill. Something similar to this happened to one of my sites a couple of years back, and the result was positive. Given the considerable improvements to my process, I have a feeling this will also yield a positive outcome. Anyone else experience this? I will do more thorough checks and will update this post with what I find.

[Hans G.]

I have an update on this post. Later on the same day of the original post, I observed the that the SEOBOOK toolbar PR ranking of my site's home page was set to 5. It had previously been a 3, and my post was concerning the fact that it was showing up as PR:n/a. I wanted to wait a few days before I jumped to conclusions. For the past 4-5 days, my site's home page has displayed a PR 5. It would appear to me that the display of n/a was simply a temporary reading, as it transitioned to the new reading. While I don't put much stock in PR numbers, the new change certainly doesn't hurt. Thanks for your insight, Jill.

[Jill]

While I don't put much stock in PR numbers, the new change certainly doesn't hurt.

I'm sure you also understand that it doesn't help either, right?

[Hans G.]

Yes; I don't use PR as a kind of gauge for success. I purely go on targeted traffic. But I was admittedly curious about the vanishing PR value. Thank you for insight, and helpful feedback.