Google PageRank updates again, more sites lose PR
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.
März 20th, 2009 at %H:%M
@mypassion, I don’t think joining autosurfs is already a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. But if you have Adsense ads on that site, that is not allowed. Google Adsense’s policies explicitly say that clicks coming from autosurfs are invalid clicks.
From Adsense Help, on “Invalid Clicks and Impressions”:
Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions on your Google ads is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to repeated manual clicks or impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software.