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Google PageRank Update It was nice while it lasted

By Dave Smith Saturday July 26, 2008

Real Estate Blog Lab loses PR5 to PR4
Many Well Known Blogs Loose PR in this Update

It was April 28, 2008 when I last reported a PR update. That was when we gained our first PR5 ranking. It felt wonderful having that first PR5 and is hard to give up today. But Google giveth and Google Taketh away. I won’t say the rest of the quote. We appear to be in good company I see Bloodhound blog went from PR6 back to PR5 and they are as prolific as any blog at adding new content.

Another blog I follow closely and read everyday is Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider His site went from PR6 to PR5. I’ve not seen any site gain PR this update but many that gained a point in April have lost it in July.

I noticed in June there were a lot of changes going on with Google (more than usual) in search results and rankings in the organics.

For a few months the lab had been ranking for the term “real estate blog”

it was in the middle of page 2
then the top of page 2
then the bottom of page 1
then GONE.

No where to found for that term or real estate blogs. Now at the end of July it is back to the bottom of page 1.

But it meant a lot of lost traffic for the lab and several of our business blogs that experienced the same thing during June and most of July.

The result: One blog lost PR4 to PR3 on the home page. Two others stayed the same as it was PR4 and PR3.

A Point In Every Direction . . .

What this means is there appears to be a major change in the way PR is assigned and it hit sites across the board. So if everyone goes down, you stay the same, just not with the same PR you had before but in relation to others you held your own.

The Good News Internal Pages and Posts

As in previous updates I see more posts gaining PR on internal pages than were in the past. Most are PR2 but some are holding their PR3 rank. This means the main loss of PR was to home pages and not to internal pages/posts. It seems Google is doing a redistribution of PR to internal pages over the home page ranking high and internal pages having little or now PR at all.

The Long Tails of PR

This should mean Google is giving even more weight to the Long Tails effect of a site and content on that site than it has in the past. More juice, for content inside the blog/website and not all directed at the home page is a good thing for those that are continuing to add quality content.

It’s not about PR or the Large Toad in the Room

I don’t blog for Google (most of the time). Google is a part of our marketing strategy. It isn’t the reason we blog. Does a loss of PR hurt? Emotionally, sure it does. As a Geek, I loved it when I hit PR5. I loved opening the the lab to a half green bar and mouse over just to see the PR5.

Did it change anything? not really. Same with the business blogs. Consumers and potential clients keep finding our content and expressing a desire to work with us for both listing their home or buying one.

For some it is the photos. Honest, we get a lot of listings based on our listing photos and flyers in the box. We have had some clients say, “We drove around and gathered flyers from all the homes for sale, you had the best flyers and pictures so we called you.”

I’m saying this so you don’t get discouraged about blogging. Yeah, it hurts to lose PR on the home page, but I’d gladly give a point on the home page to gain 50 PR2 pages in the index. We blog on, keep adding content, every post is like another line in the water in the ocean of the Internet.

Have a great weekend. And if you didn’t loose PR in this update, GOOD FOR YOU : )