What could cause a drop in pagerank
-
Our home page pagerank dropped from 4 to 3.
nlpca(dot)com
What are the possible things that could cause this?
-
Vahe,
I accidentally clicked 'Good Answer' twice for EGOL
Your answer was informative. I will be sure and get you next time.
-
"page rank" updates can be a cause - http://www.seroundtable.com/google-pagerank-update-14684.html
I wouldn't stress too much importance on PR.
Hope this helps,
Vahe
-
I recently was adding 4 keyword phrases per title (and one or 2 per URL) to many of the internal pages of nlpca(dot)com. Some of the keywords were a little off topic, but most were OK. Before I could continue and add the same keywords to the H1 and content, we got dropped from a 4 to a 3 in pagerank and we slipped 20 positions for our main keyword 'NLP' and others as well.
I very much doubt that this would cause a drop in pagerank. Pagerank problems are usually associated with link manipulation.
You say that you were adding off topic keywords to page titles. I believe that google imght consider that a small sin. I've never heard of google reducing pagerank for something like that but you never know what google will do and not tell people about it - but a visible pagerank drop is a warning.
Did you get any messages in webmaster tools?
Using off-topic title tags is a cousin to cloaking. It conveys to searchers that you have that off-topic content on your page and then when they arrive and you don't have it they are not happy. They feel like they have been spammed. Google might detect this by bounce rate or some form of report from searchers. They might also detect it from during a automated review of your content.
One experience that I had was with a group of about 80 pages. I published them to see where they ranked then edited all of the title tags, see where they rank, edited the title tags and see where they rank, and then did it again. Those 80 pages all took a big hit. They stayed down for about a year before recovering their original rankings - which were quite good.
That's all I can say. Lots of the above is not "hard evidence". Just what looks to me like cause and effect and guesses at what google might do.
-
As per EGOL, it is both. Another thing with the changes you are making to the pages, if you change things to the point that the meta desc. does not match the content, you will cause a higher bounce rate because when someone clicks, sees something other than what they thought they would see, they leave. That will also affect PR (IMO).
EGOL nails a lot here.
-
Thanks again for your always excellent information EGOL
Let's talk about this one:
-- doing something naughty that makes google drop your pagerank as a warning or as a punishment
I recently was adding 4 keyword phrases per title (and one or 2 per URL) to many of the internal pages of nlpca(dot)com. Some of the keywords were a little off topic, but most were OK. Before I could continue and add the same keywords to the H1 and content, we got dropped from a 4 to a 3 in pagerank and we slipped 20 positions for our main keyword 'NLP' and others as well.
I'm trying to determine if Google dinged us for this, or if it was something else, and if we will come back up - it's all fixed - I'm using one or 2 appropriate keywords per page except for the home page, and I've added appropriate H1 and content (3 times per keyword phrase)
But we're not going back up.
Looking for some of your brilliant advice EGOL
-
Several things can cause a drop in page rank of the homepage
-- loss of links to the homepage or any part of the site
-- important sites that link to you loose some of their links and thus have less pagerank to pass on to you
-- changes in the links that important sites have up to you - changing the code so that they do not pass pagerank - these could be connections through a script
-- changes in the linkage structure of your site that change the flow of pagerank through it
-- periodically google recalibrates pagerank (If they didn't tons of sites would be making it to ten. This is a math adjustment similar to adjusting for inflation. If your site gains PR at a lower rate than the web average your pagerank could go down
-- adding a ton of pages to your site could cause a drop in pagerank as pagerank flows out of your main site and into those pages - similar to adding a new wing onto a swimming pool and then connecting them to allow water to flow in
-- (some people will disagree with this one
-- adding a lot of links to your site that connect to other websites
-- doing something naughty that makes google drop your pagerank as a warning or as a punishment
-- if your site just recently earned four, maybe it was a very low four, now your site is showing as a very high three, this could just be flux in the calculations and rounding... keep earning links and four will return soon
-
Is pagerank on-site or off-site factors?
-
Bob,
Remember, PR is arrived at mathematically and any change to a variable will cause a change to the result. That said, usually the minor changes with loss of a link here or there, addition of same, on page changes, we do not notice right away because Google only adjusts on occasion and not internet wide (I keep asking for the schedule but they won't give it to me). Now, if you had dropped from 4 to 0 or 1, that would be different in my opinion and a signal something was amiss in the eyes of Oz.
Best
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
DA drop down
Hello, I am the administrator of einricht.com . My site DA drop down 6 to 4. How can I recover the Bad links for increasing DA?
Link Building | | cnibkunpeffob0 -
Www to nonwww - domain authority drop build it back up plan
hi there, I recently changed my website over from a www. (or nothing selected so i assume www.). to a non-www. eg webmasters and my website are all on the same page. I contacted as many websites as i could that have my link in there website to update it to the http://websitedotcom the cblocks dropped by 50% (from 12 to 6).
Link Building | | finnmoto
domain authority dropped from 21 to 19. is there a way to see which c-blocks I lost? finnmoto.com.au thanks matt0 -
Is it a good idea to create a blog that offers quality content but also passes PageRank to sponsors
I am a part of a business networking group that has lots of members who services home owners (a/c repair, plumber, home inspector, etc.). I am thinking of starting a blog to help home owners be better informed how to care for their homes. I would like to ask for sponsorship from the people in my group. I would also like to invite them to post on the blog as a way to improve their SEO. Would posting on this kind of blog hurt, help or not affect their SEO? Would this violate Google's policy of selling links that pass page rank as described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
Link Building | | aj6130 -
Pagerank question
Hi, SEO friends I have a question and i'm very thankful if you could help me. My website was a pagerank 4 but recently I checked it, and my new pagerank is 0 or the result is: N/A, I don't understand what it's going on. Even this one has 4,627 external links. Could you help me, please?
Link Building | | Arkix0 -
Why did my rank drop?
I was thrilled that my new blog catapulted up to spot # 5 on google last week for a great keyword. I worked hard on creating internal links to my category page as well as improving my content and getting a couple good external follow backlinks. But today, the report says I dropped off the top 50 list. How can I find some insight as to why this happened??
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
What are the relative values of different PageRanks?
I'm planning a link-building campaign, and I've realised it'd be good to know the relative values of different PageRanks. e.g. does a PageRank 5 site have 10 times as much effect as a PageRank 4 site? Or 100 times? Or 2 times? I'm thinking, rather than spending ages getting 10,000 PageRank 3 links, I should just spend a bit less time trying to get a few PageRank 7+ links! I'm even considering offering incentives to staff for getting links - to do so it would be good to be able to value each PageRank accordingly. Any suggestions / knowledge / experience / stats gratefully received! Alex
Link Building | | reddogmusic0 -
Website is Dropping in PR
Hey there. I'm new here at our company, and I'm working on SEO for a website we are working on (www.greenthumbdepot.com). We are doing some link-building (forums, articles, blogs, directory submissions, etc) and are currently trying to find some good quality links, as well. After 3 months, the site was on page 15 for the search term "hydroponics nutrients" on Google, and on the first pages of organic search for Bing and Yahoo!. However, looking again, our website has disappeared from the first 50 pages of Google (according to SEOMOZ). From what I can see, the incoming links are not spammy, and the articles we have been submitting have been driving a small amount of traffic to the site. Are we doing something incredibly wrong here? We've changed the meta tags a couple of nights ago. I'm a noob here, so please go easy on me! I'm learning... so thanks for any advice you can give. -jen
Link Building | | RENDEV0 -
Pagerank
Hi, I would like to know if currently Google tracks pagerank. Also, I would like to know if link values are calculated from 1 - 100 number? For example could a front-page link from a large
Link Building | | jingliang3_rogers.com
PR 9 news site have a value of 80 and a link from PR1 blog have a value of 1? Is this generally how link values are calculated? Im pretty new to SEO, so i would just like to know about link weights and how they are calculated?0