Google PR

My google PR recently dropped from 6 to 4 on my index page. Is this something to worry about or just the monthly google dance?

With a couple of my sites, I always notice a difference in the PR for 2 different versions of the index pages.

For example, http://forums.myispfinder.org/ has a PR of 5, but
http://forums.myispfinder.org/index.php only has a PR of 0!!!

Google treats www.domain.com and www.domain.com/index.html as completely different pages.

I thought I'd throw this out there, in case you were looking at a different version of your page!

One of my other sites (www.myispfinder.org) had a PR of 6 without the index.php, and a PR of 4 without it... just sounded like the same issue maybe.

If that's not the problem... a drop of 2 PR points can be very costly to overall traffic in my experience with google. But, on the other hand... google has been acting strangely lately... a couple of months ago, they lost all PR data, and were using a copy that was recorded months prior.... I'm a member at www.searchguild.com which is great for search engine info... it's where I keep up with all my google woes... :cry:

Hope this helps... the forums are great!!! :D

Oh, and it (PR) can differ from datacenter to datacenter, so if google is in the middle of the dance, you might see some crazy changes that won't be there in a day or 2

Hey there! Thanks for all the help. I already know about the difference between / and /index.html

I'm sure that the drop in PR is at least, in part, related to the fact that I have recently switched from phpBB2 over to vBulletin, and therefore many old google-indexed URLs are broken.

However, my index.html page has never changed name, and I'm very worried about its low PR :( To offset the inevitable drop in traffic, I am spending a bit more than my norm on ppc Overture and Google AdWords this month.

Ooh, and one more thing. I think the google dance just finished, didn't it? At least that's what those guys over at www.webmasterworld.com are saying.

I no longer use subdomains due to the PR conflict with google. When I used to, I would always forward them server-side over to a subdirectory of the www domain, in hopes of avoiding the PR problem.

btw, heads up on the searchguild.com link. I just checked it out and it seems I'm going to be a frequent visitor of that place!

Just thought I'd tell you I don't think it's uncommon to have "irregular" PR. Mine is usually at 6, but not too long ago I stayed at 4 for one or two days.

By the way... What is PR good for anyways. I have a really crappy page rank at all the search engines. Can it be because my site is fairly new (put it up in June this year)? I'd love to have a better pagerank.

If someone knows anything about this, please tell me. If you've got lots of time on your hands, head over to my site too and tell me if you see something wrong!

PR is Google's ranking of how important/relavant a page is. It's ranked based on how many sites of similar content link to you, in addition to how many sites of similar content and HIGHER PR your page links out to.

PR is used in Google's ranking in search engines. For example, out of 2 pages that are equally relevant to a search query, the one with a PR of 7 will be shown 1st while the one with a PR of 1 or 2 will be shown way down on the search result page.

beeman, I split your post into a separate thread :)

[thread]1019[/thread]

I have only learned tonight of the existance of PR numbers and that you can get them. Can you tell me how I can find out the PR of my own site and others? I have a Mac. Thank You.

Kevin

you should download the google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com

I think they have a mac version? I may be wrong....

Unfortunately I don't believe the google toolbar is mac compatible. Instead, the google search form in addition to a popup blocker are built into Apple's Safari browser, with no way of knowing a site's PR.

you are right....

I have a Mac. Can I install the Google Toolbar?

The Google Toolbar is not currently available for the Mac. The good news though, is that Apple's Safari browser offers a Google search box, enabling you to perform Google searches directly from your address bar. Safari can be downloaded for free from http://www.apple.com/safari/ . Safari also can be configured to perform Google searches from its address bar. To learn how, visit http://www.google.com/options/defaults.html.

I'm not a mac person so I actually had to go and check. :)

Alternatively, google does offer this nifty trick for Mac OS X users:

In OS X, you can register Google as a service available to all applications under the application menu. Install the Google Service and you will be able to select text in any application and press Shift-Cmd-G to launch a Google search for that text.

Yay! This is great news ... I just noticed www.daniweb.com hit a PR of 7 today. My forum homepage has PR 6. I hope this stays for the long haul and isn't just a google dance.

Darn do I love the google dance! daniweb just went back to PR4 and techtalkforums just went back to PR5. It was great while it lasted!

Ajax's 2 cents: Have you considered building yourself a links page and filling it with links from sites that have good PR in exchange for a link back from them? As long as you keep the content closely enough related to the sites you reciprocate links with then you should be fine. Bear in mind that, for the most part, they won't be linking from the index page, but instead through a links page and the PR of that page may be low. If you stick to at least 3PR or higher link backs then you'll probably do alright.

Just thought I'd tell you I don't think it's uncommon to have "irregular" PR. Mine is usually at 6, but not too long ago I stayed at 4 for one or two days.

By the way... What is PR good for anyways. I have a really crappy page rank at all the search engines. Can it be because my site is fairly new (put it up in June this year)? I'd love to have a better pagerank.

If someone knows anything about this, please tell me. If you've got lots of time on your hands, head over to my site too and tell me if you see something wrong!

We already have that. Just look at the footer of any page around here and you will find our Link Directories. :)

I was refering to another post. The site that beeman runs. It's a suggestion for him and a damn good way to boost PR AND traffic.:)

PR is interesting, but I wouldn't at all give it the repsect it used to have. I just lost PR 6 to 5 on a couple of my big sites - yet their rankings for primary keywords is up and so is traffic by 30%. If PR was the God it used to be, this should not be the case.

If I may ask, what have you done in terms of marketing your site in the past month? There may be a good reason for the PR drop that you don't see yet....PR is important, but so are other traffic increasing means that you are obviously getting benefit from.