During this last Pagerank update we noticed the continuation of the downward trend of overall pagerank across the board. Hit particularly hard were PR9s as nearly half that we track dropped to a PR8, this tends to send a ripple effect downward through the web dropping the pagerank of the sites linked further down the food chain.

A fairly reliable rule of thumb is that today’s PR is -1 overall from six months ago. So if your site is a pagerank 6 or 7 it is doing pretty darn good. The days of the mom and pop, PR8s and 9s are almost over...

yes I agree to that. But I would add it has more effect on bringing closer to the mid value than anything else. One or two backlinks [yes I know it does not show all but what it shows] can get you PR 3 or something more than 3 even.

Yes one link from a PR 5 will still bring a brand new site up to a PR4.

I think the ones with PR7 and above got hit the worst. Even Google's own sites went down a rank (I now see PR8 instead of PR9 on my Gmail ). I only have one PR6 page and it stayed the same, so I'm not complaining.

Since the Pagerank of lower rank sites ultimately get their Pagerank from higher rank sites this would cause the shift down in pagerank values that we have been seeing across the board.

Why did these high PR sites lose PageRank? A few theories are that run of site links and newer links have been somewhat devalued.

Originally Posted by LinkAdage

Why did these high PR sites lose PageRank? A few theories are that run of site links and newer links have been somewhat devalued.

Interesting. My links are almost all ROS and most are pretty new (I link between my sites in footers) but I wasn't hurt in the last update (at least I think so - one can always argue I could have done better ).

All of my sites went down -1 except one I havent fooled with in months went up +2

I have a theory to float... This is based on my 12 sites, and sites that I get links from so the sample size is a little small.
This update seemed to award sites with few outbound links and demote sites with lots of outbound. Also, I noticed sites with multiple non-relevant links (as they relate to overall site content.) got hit.
By the way, be leery of buying links from linkadage (poster in this thread) a lot of the sites selling links are using toolbar tricks to fake the pr. I refused to pay one such site and linkadage revoked my account.

So, if your theory is true, if you have a site like mine (http://www.scuba-diving-cozumel.com), which was truly created with the user in mind - lots of links handy without digging, I would be penalized?

Not sure... how did you do in the last update

Getting a good position is getting harder and harder, its hard for me to comete with sites that have 6,000 links to their site; sure have of them are from PR 1 or less sites but in the end its helping them out and i dont like it. I just started the SEO on my new site; ive got alot left and im going to continure playing with ad words until I get what I want from them. I still need about 5,000 links to comete in my target market (memphis web design)

TaylorAtCTS,
You won't need that many links. You do need some on page SEO.
Quick tips...
Add your address to the footer (in Text). Include the footer on every page. (this should help you with local search terms i.e. Memphis.
Make sure you are using your target phrase in the text.
Use your target area Memphis in the text. i.e. "Memphis law firm selects .... for web design project..."
Shorten your text in the <title>
Make each page have a relevant title.
Get a few high quality links. I have moved a site from 27 to 3 on G by adding one PR7 link.

Best of luck!~

Bill

Thanks Bill, I really appreciate it. My addresss is in the footer on every page of my site ATM but I need to add a title tag in there. Where can I find highly ranked sites to improve my PR?

Thanks again

Originally Posted by AnthemIT

Not sure... how did you do in the last update

Just got out of teh sand box and have 1/10 - not really good. I do have content, perhaps MORE MORE MORE!!

I do not have many backlinks yet, but working on it!

I have 4/10 PR, i uploaded the new version of my site in VERY late december. I already had alot of links pointing to my site though.