Your PR drop probably has nothing to do with you

by Patrick Altoft on October 24, 2007

Hundreds of reputable sites have lost PageRank today and everybody is wondering why. Here is my theory.

PR hasn’t updated for 6 months and in that time Google has been hard at work devaluing paid links, directory links and any other “low” quality links they can think of.

If you lost PR this week ask yourself these questions:

How many links did you have from blogrolls?
How many directories linked to you?
How many links did you have from sites that sold links?
How many links did you have from sites that got links from sites that sold links?
How many links did you have from sites that got their links from sites that got links from directories?

People are looking at their site for the answers but if you understand how PR is calculated its clear that the issue probably extends far deeper than your site and even the sites that directly link to you.

If the sites right at the bottom of the chain such as directories and low quality blogs all start to lose PR it affects every single site on the web.

As ever, the PR of BlogStorm sits at a nice fat zero just as it has since we launched in June.

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Published in: Google, Search Engine Optimisation

{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Jeremy Luebke 24/10/2007 at 6:17 pm: I 100% agree with you on this.
2 John Wesley 24/10/2007 at 6:25 pm: I see what your saying. It makes a lot of sense, but it also looks like Google is intentionally targeting blog networks that use massive interlinking blogrolls — Weblogs Inc in the footer and B5 in the sidebar.

This whole “controversy” is getting so ridiculous. More fear, doubt, uncertainty. PageRank has become nothing but a tool to manipulate webmasters.
3 tyler dewitt 24/10/2007 at 6:41 pm: Very good post, I would have to agree with you.
4 Shane 24/10/2007 at 7:02 pm: Actually, looks like there might really be only one question you have to ask yourself: http://searchengineland.com/071024-093938.php
5 Dave 25/10/2007 at 5:47 am: I think you are giving too much credit to Google. You mention Blogroll links. How does an algo determine if there paid or not?
6 Wiep 25/10/2007 at 7:29 am: I like your point of view, but I don’t think it’s the only truth. If the PR drop was only caused by a devaluation of blogroll-, directory- and other links, that should result in a drop in rankings as well.
I think it’s a mix of multiple things, but your point is certainly one of these things.
7 Caroline Middlebrook 25/10/2007 at 10:38 am: It’s easy to sit back and watch the carnage when your blog sits happily at zero. Mine does too. We should be proud because we didn’t drop :p
8 Dave Davis 25/10/2007 at 1:56 pm: Of all the “theories” out there on the latest PR drop I have to say I believe this is by far the most plausible. Noone would listen when people were still fighting for links from johnchow.com when I reasoned why would you WANT a link from a site that is banned. How will that make you look?
9 Zoran Rudman 25/10/2007 at 5:04 pm: Dave,

I would buy a link on johnchow.com because of traffic, not link juice. You are looking everything through PR.

I think that this is just google game where guys at google just want to scare people.

When we see the drop in rankings, then we will know that PR algorithm has been changed. Until then, have fun with this green pixels
10 Nelson Tan 10/11/2007 at 5:24 am: My final income to the bank is disproportionate to my PageRank, Alexa rank and what-have-you, period.

So don’t get too obsessed with it.
11 Emmanuel DeFreitas 27/11/2007 at 3:45 pm: PR is not everything and neither is Google. Google has determined that it alone has a divine right to reap(or should that be rape)profits from a system they devised. Google has most everyone chasing their scraps and living or dying on their every whim.

I keep seeing Yahoo at pr3…and crappy, useless sites like Joeblow/blogspot.com (a fictitious site about recycling horse shit) at pr4…nuff said.

Google can blow it’s new algorithm out it’s over-inflated pompous fat butt.

Do you Yahoo?
12 Charlie 27/07/2008 at 11:10 pm: Just for a heads up don’t use “linkmarket.com” they caused my PR to drop from 3 to “0″. This is no way to try and market your websites.