31 replies to this topic

[SmellieNellie]

I know that many people have posted regarding the fact that after having successful rankings for some keyword phrases after a considerably short time of being listed in Google, they have suddenly disappeared. But not only have I disappeared for my targeted keyword phrases but my page has gone from PR 4 to PR 3.

Why would this happen. I have in fact been adding content to my site recently - nothing drastic just articles.

Thanks!

[Jill]

PR only has to do with links. The PR scores often go down across the board, and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your site.

[SmellieNellie]

thanks Jill - thought I had done something wrong for a second!

[Scottie]

PR is relative, so when the size of the index changes, the values change as well.

[SmellieNellie]

Hi Scottie

Ah right, so do you mean that if there is more competition for my industry (ie more sites indexed offering the same services as me), then the PR automatically goes down? And vice versa.

[OldWelshGuy]

Also Nellie, the initial PR you get given is 'guessed' PR, as true PR can only be set when every single page has updated, (after the next proper update) Nothing to worry about!

[SmellieNellie]

OWG -

Thanks for that, I will hold tight.

[oneofthe3lions]

Yeahh chill out lol... my site hasnt even had a pagerank since i made it 2 months ago, lol however i was still no 1 and 2 on google for all of that 2 months... (for my specific dozen prhases or so)

ermm, thats not the case now with all this dancing going on, im not in the first 29999999.0000000000000 by the look of it but i just had my first page rank appear. a ranking of 2 .. wow !

so screw page rank, gimmee my positions back

more interested in high closing of enquiries than millions of traffic anyway .. aint you?

[Scottie]

Hey Nellie-

What I mean is that as the size of the index changes, the PR numbers adjust.

Google goes from 3 billion pages to 4 billion pages- that's a lot of pages.

For a simple example, let's say the PR calculation used to look like this:

PR1=1-10 links
PR2=11-50 links
PR3=51-250 links
etc...

Now with all the new pages and all the new links, the distribution changes somewhat to:
PR1=1-25 links
PR2=26-200 links
PR3=201-550 links
etc..

Even though the number of links coming to your site didn't change ( say you had 53) suddenly you are seeing PR2 instead of PR3. It's not a penalty, you didn't do anything wrong, there are just more pages out there with more links that are changing the way the distribution is calculated.

** Just an example!! Do not start counting your links and ask why you have 202 links and your PR isn't a 3!!

[sweepthelegnate]

PR1=1-25 links
PR2=26-200 links
PR3=201-550 links
etc..

whoa...what's this? scottie cracked page rank!

[ListGuy]

are the page rank stats updated daily or is that done on the 3 week re-indexing?

thanks

[Scottie]

PR is calculated when there is an update, not daily.

Alright, sweepthelegnate! Newbies may believe you!! Quit messing with them.

[Nathan Malone]

You know, there are pagerank calculators that will allow you to calculate roughly what the pagerank of a page will be with x number of links pointed at it and other variables taken into account but of course, Google is the only one that knows the exact algorithm they use. The best we can do is make educated guesses that might come close...

[amabaie]

What I mean is that as the size of the index changes, the PR numbers adjust.

Hey Scottie, don't forget also that if the average number of links per site goes up, it takes more links to get the same PageRank (otherwise we coiuld just keep ading links and all be PR10).

I have to admit my jaw hit the ground when I saw all my pages fall in PR. Of course, I did what I advise others to do...I focused on my rankings. All of them had stuck, so I knew it wasn't anything to be concerned with.

Funny thing, as much as I knew I had nothing to worry about, it still felt very demoralizing.

[Jill]

Ah right, so do you mean that if there is more competition for my industry (ie more sites indexed offering the same services as me), then the PR automatically goes down? And vice versa.

No, it has nothing to do with your industry. It's just PageRank in general for all sites.

Remember, PageRank has nothing to do with an industry, a keyword, a type of site, or anything like that. It's strictly a "map" of who's linking to whom. (And it's really not a map, but I think that helps to describe it.)