Google’s PageRank Drop - SEOs Dissapoint Me
There’s been a flood of activity in the SEO community talking about PageRank drops and every assessment I’ve read continues to ignore the bigger question. Did the affected sites lose search engine ranks?
My fellow SEOs have long been preaching how Google Toolbar PageRank (PR) is fairly inaccurate and that PageRank is only one element, among hundreds, of Google’s algorithm. Then when Google dials down the PR on a number of sites our industry goes nuts. Wait a minute - didn’t we say PR isn’t that important? Maybe it really is. Or maybe it really is for a certain set of sites: those who sell links based on PR.
From the list of the sites affected, it appears the PR drops targeted mostly sites that sell links or were strongly interconnected with these sites. For all we know, it is simply a simple visual adjustment - a very effective tactic to hit link sellers where it hurts most, but without hurting innocent sites in the cross-fire. Though an innocent site might be concerned that their PR dropped, if their SERP ranks haven’t changed then it doesn’t really affect them because they aren’t selling links based off their PR.
So among the list of site that have been affected by the PR dial-down, regardless as to whether they sell links or not, I must ask: have any actually seen SERP rank drops?
For example: Search Engine Guide is reported to have dropped from a PR 7 to a PR 4, but when I do a Google search for “search engine,” I see them ranked #8 (ironically, Google doesn’t even rank itself on page 1).
If you work at, or have been tracking keyword ranks for any of the following affected sites, please report whether or not you have seen actual drops in rank:
Washington Post (PR7 to PR5)
Forbes (PR7 to PR5)
Seattle Times (PR6 to PR4)
Charlotte Observer (PR6 to PR4)
Sun Times (PR7 to PR5)
San Francisco Chronicle (PR7 to PR5)
New Scientist (PR7 to PR5)
Engadget (PR7 to PR5)
Copy Blogger (PR6 to PR4)
AutoBlog (PR6 to PR4)
problogger.net (PR6 to PR4)
www.tuaw.com (PR6 to PR4)
www.seroundtable.com (PR7 to PR4)
www.searchengineguide.com (PR7 to PR4)
www.searchenginejournal.com (PR7 to PR4)
www.johnchow.com (PR6 to PR4)
andybeard.eu (PR5 to PR3)
www.blogherald.com (PR6 to PR4)
(or other sites affected)
October 25th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Well, despite the PageRank turmoil at other newspapers, I am happy to report that the Idaho Statesman (www.idahostatesman.com) remains a PR6. Who would have thought that our mid-size paper would have a higher PR than the Washington Post, Seattle Times, and SF Chronicle. Although it might have had something to do with a certain toe-tapping senator…
October 25th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I dunno…Barry at SERoundtable, Loren at Search Engine Journal and myself (Search Engine Guide) all wrote posts stating that search rankings and traffic was just fine.
In fact, my post talking about our drop pretty much said “what’s the big deal?” I’ve seen the same from many others.
It’s a line in a toolbar. It’s not the boss of me. (or anyone else.)
October 25th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Very true, Jennifer. I don’t think our editors even know what a PageRank is. They just want to know where we sit for certain keywords and that doesn’t seem to have changed much recently.
Personally I think Google just has too much power over people and too much market share for their own good (or anyone’s good for that matter). I’m really hoping for some more diversity among search engines in the future. Oh, I’ll have to cut this short… gotta go check my Gmail for Google News Alerts, review my Google Calendar, catch up on my Google Reader, plot a new running route in Google Maps, check in with my friends in Google Groups, make some revisions in my Google Docs, and read up on the company stock in Google Finance… yeah, umm, down with Google, errr… I guess.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Jennifer:
So it really is a targeted cosmetic toolbar change. I know many people are pissed off about it, but I must tip my hat to google, I think it had the effect they were after (many link sellers are scrambling). However, the web crowd is very adaptable - I wouldn’t be surprised to see an increasing number of alternative metrics used to sell links. This would be a great opportunity for people like Rand who offer alternative pagerank scores (trust rank, etc.).
Patrick: Google definitely has an increasing stronghold - it would do the web good if the other engines could increase their marketshare, but we’ve been saying that for a while. In some ways it is nice to focus mostly on one engine, but I gladly welcome a brand new player. Ideally, there would be three major players with nearly equal market share. Oh, I have to go cut this short - gotta check out Google webmaster tools, Google custom search, Google Adsense, Google Adwords, Google Publisher, Google Coop, Google video, Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Gadgets, Blogspot, Google Search, Google images, Google blog search, Google video search, Google APIs, Orkut, Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, Froogle, Google Checkout, Google Patent search, iGoogle, Google search history, Google site optimizer, Google enterprise search, Google Scholar, and what’s future Google things will be pushed out of Google Labs.
December 18th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
On big media you can’t really measure a drop in rank, unless you’ve been running at least weekly ranking reports on a huge variety of keywords.
The simpler way to test would be on traffic. If traffic hasn’t dropped off at all, then ranking is pretty much the same (it could be a switch to high traffic keywords to long tail, but that would be a weird Google twist and quite unlikely).
December 19th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Foliovision: I agree - traffic is a decent indicator, though rank can leak slowly and seasonality can play tricks with search traffic. I took an alternative approach at my last company:
At my last company, we ranked #1 for millions of keywords so I used sample buckets of rank. For example, I might have generic 1-2 word queries, more specific but common 2-3 word queries, and very specific queries (more than 5 words). Those buckets give an SEO great indicators of problems and change effectiveness, plus provide a great way to know what affect things like the PR situation has on a site.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Excellent post. Keep it up!