Impacted PR and SERP drops

[AussieWebmaster]

Okay the PR drops have been well documented and commented on at places like SEJ - Loren Baker's post is worth a read. (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/071029-102542)

I have not seen anything here and am sure we have some people wondering what happened to their sites - both good and bad.

So let us know so we can start to develop an idea of exactly how things were changed.

[Xcon]

I have seen several different things on my sites.

I have 10-15 MFA content pages that has unique content, but doesn't have any real value for the visitor. All these pages have adsense and some other affiliate stuff on them. All of these has been punished quite hard, pages that was top 10 is now at place 50-60. Al sites was punished the same day. An other thing is that they have gained PR, from 0-4 and 0-5.

Another interesting thing is that my directories, which was punished, (+30 filter) has increased the number of pages in the index, but has lost their PageRank, 3 of them went from 5 to 0 and two from 4 to 0.

I have not sold or bought any links, some threeway link exchange...

[seonew]

As far as I read about this recent PR update, I noticed that PR is affected for sites who does selling/buying links/PR.

I am not buying/selling links for my sites. Iam not using any Affiliate technique also.

But my sites PR has dropped. I only do one, two or three way link exchanges for my sites.

Will this PR drop affect my rankings in Serps?

[didi]

As far as I read about this recent PR update, I noticed that PR is affected for sites who does selling/buying links/PR.

I am not buying/selling links for my sites. Iam not using any Affiliate technique also.

But my sites PR has dropped. I only do one, two or three way link exchanges for my sites.

Will this PR drop affect my rankings in Serps?

I am in the same situation. No buying, selling links.
But we do work with affiliates.

I do not realize any affect in SERPs for us.
But PR drop causes Prestige drop and this hurts.

[AussieWebmaster]

It is tough on many sites that had nothing to do with buying and selling links... Google loves these stir up situations.... people go to adwords to make up the loss in organic traffic

[jimbeetle]

Carsten Cumbrowski also has a good SEJ piece discussing the PageRank drop (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-oracle-of-mountain-view/5923/). I was glad he mentioned the indirect ripple effect. As paid links that had been passing PR drop out of the link graph the PR of the sites that bought the links decreases and the link juice they have available to pass on decreases.

It's going to be interesting. Depending on how Google is rolling this whole thing out I think it will take several iterations for new PR to settle at its new "natural" level.

[glengara]

"..we can start to develop an idea of exactly how things were changed."

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, look at what MC writes back in 2005 -

"Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)."

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/

[Gotbreaks]

I know there's a lot of content here on what I'm about to bring up...but as it stands, I have a sneaking suspicion I may need direct suggestions or answers to satisfy me.

Recently, I updated the keywords on all the pages for my web site.

On the Home page, I removed a Support section and added new section for my newest product.

Nothing except the keywords has changed on two of the product pages.

I had a consistent PR of 5 throughout the entire site.

Google must have crawled the site recently, because now my PR are:

Home page: 0
Product Line 1 page: 6
Product Line 2 page: doesn't even register in
Support: 6
Company: 6

Now as far as the home page is concerned, I'm planning on redesigning it entirely and adding a 'feed' to my forum so that the latest posts show up. But the '0' is bugging me.

Product 2 page should register, and this really frustrates me.

Help, anyone?

Thanks so much,
Gotbreaks

[beu]

Do you sell links?

[Gotbreaks]

Sell links? No. All of the links found on my pages are placed there by me because of either a link exchange or I think it would be of interest to my visitors.

I do buy links -- as a part of my advertising plan. Mostly sponsored links/banner ads on related web sites, and no link farms...

[Angela Charles]

Have you noticed a change in your SE ranking on Google for your home page on keywords that you were performing on prior to your edits? Or is it just that the PR changed?

[Gotbreaks]

There as been some change to the SE rankings -- some keywords are doing better, pulling my pages in anywhere from the very first page to the 3rd page when they were coming in at the 5th before...

While others are losing their place on page 7 and coming up on page 11...

But nothing insanely drastic...yet...

I'm completely stumped.

[Gotbreaks]

Well -

Upon closer inspection I found an error in the coding for the my "product line 2" page's keyword tag. Could this be why it didn't even register?

Still at a loss for my home page, though.

Out of curiosity, how long will it be before my site's PR is updated again?

[darsh39]

According to latest updates of p r google is decreasing the p r of sites who is not selling and buying the links or back links...

[Angela Charles]

There as been some change to the SE rankings -- some keywords are doing better, pulling my pages in anywhere from the very first page to the 3rd page when they were coming in at the 5th before...

While others are losing their place on page 7 and coming up on page 11...

But nothing insanely drastic...yet...

I'm completely stumped.

First, re: your coding error, that could impact the SE being able to index the page, depending on what the error was.

RE: P R vs. SE positioning: We give less credence to P R lateley because it doesn't reliably indicate anymore how well a site will perform. We monitor site positioning on Google instead. But, fluctuations in positioning can happen throughout the day, depending on which Google server you hit at the time. So, unless you're site drops off entirely, not sure you should hit the panic button just yet.

[Gotbreaks]

Thanks so much Angela and Darsh -- your replies were very helpful.

I'll keep a close eye on things.

Cheers!

[caugas]

Our PR was not affected, and for the most part we are still holding very strong for our industry terms in the SERP's. I just wanted to chime in so I can be included into the topic.