More Pinoy sites lose PageRank as Google updates… again
November 8, 2007
Boy, and we thought the Google PageRank (PR) update was over.
I’ve gone bloghopping today and noticed through my Google Toolbar that some of the sites I frequent have dropped PR. Nope, this was not the same PageRank update in late October that saw a lot of sites got penalized. When I checked the PR of those sites in October 30, it showed a different (read: higher) PR. Now, the latest update has got the following Philippine sites affected.
New list of Philippine sites with reduced PageRank (checked November 8)
| Website | Original PR | PR as of Oct. 25 | PR as of Nov. 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| pinoytravelblog.com | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| seophilippines.org | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| rickey.org | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| jrocas.com.ph | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| jepoyeng.blogspot.com | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| macalua.com | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| quezon.ph | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| jaypeeonline.net | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| man-blog.com | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| pinoytechblog.com | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| pinoycook.net | 4 | 4 | 3 |
Original list of Philippine sites that got penalized (updated November 8)
| Website | Original PR | PR as of Oct. 25 | PR as of Nov. 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| inquirer.net | 6 | 4 | 6 |
| manilatimes.net | 6 | 4 | 4 |
| philstar.com | 6 | 4 | 5 |
| yugatech.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| jozzua.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| aboutmyrecovery.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| retzwerx.com | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| pinoymoneytalk.com | 4 | 2 | 3 |
* PageRank checked using Live PR Tool and PageRank Checker.
** Oct. 25 PR of some sites based on Michael’s Pinoy Blogs’ PR One Year Later post.
Most SEO specialists now agree that paid links are the culprit for the Google PR drop. Google employee Matt Cutts also confirmed this in October.
Prior to the recent PageRank downgrade, webmasters consistently bragged about their site’s PR. Interestingly, the affected ones have now started evangelizing how unimportant Google PR has become.
True, as long as the decreased PR does not affect a site’s traffic, then that site is fine. This, however, normally applies only to sites that are already established, sites where visitors need not use a search engine anymore to come to the site.
But for the dominant majority whose traffic still relies on results of Google search, a drop in PR may lead to a drop in the search results ranking which could lead to a drop in visitors. These sites are the ones affected heavily by the PR downgrade.
As of this writing, I have yet to read a blog post about a site losing traffic because of a drop in Google PR. Either that is not really happening or the blogger is just too shy to admit that it is.
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March 17th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
how can we get back lost PR? help
November 25th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Grace, a site’s Google PR fluctuates especially during PR update time. In any case, don’t focus too much on the PR. Just continue building traffic to your site and continue to generate income from it. Higher site earnings is definitely better than higher PR, right?
November 15th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Hello. My page rank in http://trialsofmylife.bravejournal.com degraded to PR0 before it was 3 then degraded to 2 and then it become PR0 :(
November 13th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Biske, yan exactly yung pinagtatalunan namin sa forum since 2006 pa. Look at the discussion on the issue: Content issues for site publishers. The supposed solution is for Google to migrate from using PageRank to TrustRank in ranking websites. But how that will work, I don’t know.
geri, I think Google is selectively penalizing some sites, that’s why there are those who still has TLA and has paid links but the PR did not drop. Or the reason can also be most of the sites that link to you lost PR which eventually pulled down your site’s PR. Since Google has no official statement regarding this, we can only make a guess.
jhay, seriously? That’s the first time I heard of a direct relation between a drop in PR and a drop in traffic. Did your ad earnings decrease as well alongside the drop in traffic?
True, Google does play God at times. Unfortunately, as long as our sites rely mostly on Google search results for traffic, we cannot but succumb to Google’s whims.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Nice that you mentioned my blog. :)
The PR drop has been quite tragic. My traffic has dropped by 20% since then, talk about tough luck or Google playing God once more.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Whew! Buti na lang I’m still hanging with my PR4 kahit na me TLA ako sa page ko. Any explanations po???
November 10th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
I hope we can do an experiment. Halimbawa, we place identical articles in two web sites at the same time, yung isa mataas ang PR, yung isa wala. Gusto ko lang makita kaninong web site yung mapupunta sa supplementals. Nangyari na kasing ganun sa kakilala ko. May nagnakaw ng articles nya, eh yung nagnakaw, may PR, sya wala. Aba, sya ang napunta sa supplemental index kahit na mas nauna nyang ipinost yung content sa web site nya. Ano kaya yun~
November 10th, 2007 at 9:18 am
markku, I don’t know, but I’ll regularly check whether sites’ PRs are being updated. I can’t agree with you more, content really is king.
Actually that has always been the case. It only changed after webmasters became fascinated with PR and decided to focus on link-building to increase PR.
charles, Teejay, I checked again today and it seems Google’s datacenters are still down. Either that or they’ve already stopped updating PRs.
Biske, true, I’d personally prefer to have more visitors, higher search engine ranking and, of couse, more income, than higher PR. But as long as the PR affects a site’s search ranking, we can’t discount the fact that it still matters, in one way or another.
Mig, I’m not sure whether there are more recent views on this, but Matt Cutts himself posted in October 2006 that PR does affect ranking in some way:
By the time you see newer PageRanks in the toolbar, those values have already been incorporated in how we score/rank our search results. So while you may be happy to see that the Google Toolbar shows a little more PageRank for a given page, it’s not as if that causes a change in search results at that point.
True, as long as a site has unique and valuable content, it is bound to be on top of the rankings. But for a generic search keyword such as “PayPal Philippines,” for example, it would be difficult even for Google to determine which article is “more valuable” than the other, and that I think is where PR becomes useful. But again, PR is just one of the criteria to rank sites, it’s not the only determinant of Google SERP ranking.
I do agree with you that bloggers or site owners should not focus on PR, but instead on building content and gaining visitors’ trust. At the end of the day, people will still come to a good site as long as they find it a good site, even if its PR is low.
November 10th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Well, I have to disagree with you on the idea that PR has something to do with the SERPs. There are no reasons for you to drop from the SERPs as long as the content you publish is unique and valuable.
If the drop happens, it is not because of the PR, but because other bloggers come up with something better. Keeping a place in the SERPs means competing .
It is not only the paid links doing the damage to a blog. There are many reasons for the drop - including bad neighbors, blogrolls used to exchange links, sponsored reviews (too many) and so on.
But a fact is clear: you shouldn’t care about PR. Focus on driving traffic and creating a strong community of readers instead. Build up a website with a high trust rank. This is what is going to keep you in the SERPs.