Did you get slapped by the recent Google Smackdown? And if so, how hard?
Did you feel the most recent PageRank update by Google?
I think everyone got affected — and we'll discuss later on the biggest players who got affected by this recent Google Smackdown.
I heard from a number of people in my circle of influence telling me how this one site got dropped a good couple of PageRank notches from where it used to be and then this other site — and another one and so on.
But what the ultimate affects of this most recent PageRank update remains to be seen. And the only true indicators of how this affected you can be understood by taking a look at your web traffic stats and comparing them to last month's statistics and the month before.
Did you lose any rankings? Did your traffic take a dip?
In the most likely event, nothing much happened.
Unfortunately, I heard a lot of dismay from this recent Google PageRank update from people and, personally, I pay it NO mind. 
A common mistake a lot of people just starting off tend to make is putting a bit to much faith in the Google PageRank system. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not bad mouthing the system at all).
Firstly, your site's PageRank (or "PR") should not be a mood level indicator.
Some people base their whole entire outlook on their website as to the PageRank level that Google assigns their website at each and every update — as if it's some sort of acceptance that your site is progressing.
I've been through this rollercoaster many of times, and, again, I pay it NO mind.
If you're just starting out and a complete newbie to the search engine game, then you may be wondering what the hell is this PageRank stuff anyways.
Simply, it's a formula that Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) came up with to rank websites according to popularity. The popularity is judged by a number of factors, but moreso, it is based upon the number and quality of inbound links that point at your site. This is also known as Link Popularity.
Sad thing is too many webmasters and online business owners place all their belief in this PageRank system and I've personally heard from people that rely on this so much to the point where it seems people are walking on eggshells, or even worse, fearing to step on a landmine that might contain an explosive reaction that blows their website out of Google's index.
I have received many messages from people so frustrated in not knowing what Google's criteria and what they wanted and how they wanted it, that they give up their entire website promotion strategy based on this PR rollercoast.
That's just basically absurd!
Fact is, no one on the outside walls of Google will ever know what the largest, most dominant search engine on this earth REALLY wants. But we do know that it's somewhat about fresh, unique content and an assortment of good quality (mixed with some low quality) inbound links pointing at our sites. Search engines seems to love blogs, forums and web 2.0 sites that are driven by human-generated content by its own users such as blog comments and forums.
But the truth is — if you do something deceitful and slightly black hat in the Search Engine Optimization world, they (Google and others) are bound to tag you, flag you, and push the red button. And zap — you're gone.
But time and time again - after all the different updates - PageRank goes haywire all the time and you should not hinge upon the next update, but stay steady and fast on your mission. Stay committed is what I'm saying.
Too often, I see people stop mid-stream after months of promotion because an update plummeted their PageRank from a 5 to a zero.
It happened to me and it's happened NicheBOT as well. NicheBOT has gone from a PR0 to PR5, back down to PR0 and then up to a PR6, then back down to a PR4, then up to a PR10 (and boy, people were blowing a stink about that), then back to a PR6, and now down to a PR5. Yet, I will tell you time and time again, this does NOT affect my mood. 
One update ago, I just visually saw EzineArticles.com (a very popular article directory) go from a PR7 to a PR0 and then back up to a PR6 in the span of a couple of months back earlier this year. Did people stop submitting articles to them? Absolutely not! This is a great place to get traffic nearly 24-48 hours after your article gets approved.
To make a judgment and then a business decision based on a PageRank update is much like stopping short of hitting gold. I almost did this once before myself.
And the real truth is — you may somehow set off some trigger or flag system that had nothing to do with anything you did. You just need to carry on and keep doing what it is you were doing, unless it is something black hat.
As long as you are adding valuable content to your site that enhances your visitor's experience, even if you are making 1-5 blog posts and posting 1-5 articles per day on your site, it doesn't really matter.
As long as you are getting inbound links to your site (not from link farms) and not doing anything too highly automated or black hat, then you should not be at risk at all.
I look at PageRank as a sort of vanity — and that's it.
So now let's talk about who this PageRank really affects.
I'm about 99.99% sure that this most recent Google PageRank update had some dismal affects on the those that sell text ad links on sites and/or just sell links to other webmasters on their websites.
If someone was paying $75 or even more a month to have a link back to their site on some PR7 or PR8 web page, and that page fell to a PR4 or lower, then that link is no longer worth as much. It's sort of like a falling stock price on Wall Street.
The link selling business is a scary market to be in when you have no clue what Google could do next — and why bank on a market like this whose belly could fall out from underneath it. Not that I believe that Google's PageRank might disappear anytime soon, but I believe this last update was a true indication that text ad brokers have something to worry about when selling links to other website owners.
It's now common knowledge that Google is going after sites that are attempting to use the PageRank system for monetary gain (by selling links).
Sure, NicheBOT could probably go about selling text ad links in our Resources directory, or anywhere for that matter, but why cheapen things just for a few bucks?! There's too much quality here and we're certainly not hard up to lease out space for some people to cram their keyword phrase text links on our precious real estate.
Either way, I hope I've made my point that you just can't rely upon the Google PageRank system to judge how well or bad your site is doing.
Keep building valuable content and adding it to your site and continually strive to get inbound links.
PageRank is just an indicator — and it's, quite frankly, very easy to pass PageRank from one site to another by having a well established site link to another to transfer what we call "link juice."
I'm just curious what your impression was about this most recent Google PageRank update and the perception of how you were effected.
Please leave your comment below.
Thanks!
Best wishes for success,
Jim Morris, President/CEO
Full Throttle Enterprises, Inc.
NicheBOT - "Finds exactly what people search for."
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40 Comments on Did you get slapped by the recent Google Smackdown? And if so, how hard? »
Jake @ 4:13 pm:
My website had a PR4 for at least 4 years. It dropped to PR3 previous update and stay down the last time. Also my internal pages dropped by 1PR and some to zero but my traffic increase and have better search ranking.
So, PR don't mean a thing.
Andy Beard @ 4:17 pm:
I think it makes it harder for me to launch some SEO based products, and we still haven't got 100% clarity from Google.
Google still buy sponsorships without requesting nofollow, Yahoo still sells links, people can still charge for publishing press releases.
Whilst I haven't seen any drop in traffic yet, it might still happen.
The penalties were not applied universally, and even blogs I know Google engineers read were not given penalties.
It is not over til the fat lady sings…
Janet Southern @ 4:27 pm:
I'm so knew I don't have any idea what an "interior landing page is". So this infor on page ranking is very helpful as it has indicated to me that there is one less thing I will need to worry about. Thank you.
Patricia @ 5:03 pm:
You're right Jim,
Just keep building great content page by page and let the search engines worry about the rest. I use to worry about Google and all the other search engines until I started watching their sudden page drops and traffic slow downs and slowly everything starts coming back better than it was before they dropped everything. It's like playing the stock market, some days you win some days you just have to hang in there. As long as you feel you're doing the best you can to keep things white hat there's no sense in worrying.
Patricia
Semmy.com @ 5:30 pm:
Well… I had been on roller coasters with black hat, grey hat and white hat sites, and one thing is for sure: what matters is that your pages rank well for the given keywords that convert to leads or sales.
I mean the page rank stuff even puts big pressure on PayPerPost that is actually a great system to monetize your blog, and I personally find it absurd how Google fights for "content for pay" and "linking for pay" with page ranks to zero or other silly detention strategies to silent their competitors. (I mean come one Google is the biggest "link for pay" after all.)
But hey it is their game.
I tend to see income coming in from pages that rank sometimes low or do not have any page rank at all, as long they get keyword traffic. And nichebot.com is quite a good way to stay on top of things.
Semmy Stumpp
Without Fun There Is No Success!
http://www.semmy.name
joe @ 5:40 pm:
I too look at PR as a vanity thing… all I care about is that my pages are indexed and some of the them find there way into the top 3 or 4 pages of search results.. closer to the top the better…
I did notice since this latest update a few of my better sites (traffic wise) are getting a lot less traffic…
Joe
Steve Phillips @ 6:07 pm:
No effects here - or on our client's sites - with the Google Page Rank. We look at PR about once or twice a month. There are too many other important SEO factors to worry about rather than Page Rank. Thanks for the information! Steve
David Chura @ 6:55 pm:
It would be nice to have links, but think I could get one good one would be nice! especially for climate change,
I got so PO"D with google and their page rank system and their adwords, I told them and their managment how stupid and blind they are. Haven't heard back from them. I told them they should stop playing stupid games with this human race and help guys like myself who are trying to raise funds for research and ass's like them charge money while this planet sufferes and guys like myself try to do some honest research and they are hindering what should be done. Told them they really are blind. And I held not back. If it was not for people who do something from the love of our hearts for our fellow man , We would not be here. They should do all they can to help. Told them they were the blind leading the blind. Wonder whay excusse they will come up with. David Chura , www.magneticenergy.ca research for climate change and global warming.
Dropship Wholesale Products @ 7:09 pm:
Jim,
Your advice to not let your site's PageRank be a mood level indicator is advice to live by. We just can't let things that we have no control over altering our moods…..
Ted
Las Vegas Real Estate Guy @ 7:10 pm:
My pr stayed the same on my main site and my blog. Plus I saw page rank go up in interior pages, so I can't complain. Plus I don't have any paid links, so that helped.
ChasMasterson.com @ 7:33 pm:
I noticed that articles I had written went from 350 search results down to 5, the original count of unique articles I had sent out. So the entire database got de-duped. Maybe that's why PR dropped unevenly.
TA Byrd @ 7:39 pm:
I saw one site go from a PR5 to a PR4. Not really sure how it was even at a PR4. This site just has a couple of pages which have not even changed for about 5 years. It was just sitting there doing nothing.
Our new site is fairly new, I was told to expect a PR4 - PR8, but it started with a PR0 and is not a PR1.
Pamela McDowell @ 7:44 pm:
I'm inclined to agree with Joe, what is most important is coming out in the first few results when someone actually searches for your keywords.
But it is a bit exciting when things change (up or down).
I was a bit disappointed when I noticed a drop for some of my sites a couple of weeks ago.
Curious, I checked PR again before writing this post and had quite a laugh…
One of my sites had shot up to a PR8 (previously a PR1 or PR2 - maybe even a PR0).
Too funny. I'm sure it's all part of the upheaval.
Search wise I'm not coming out any higher (with that site) for the big key words, but am looking good for my more targeted key terms.
…It does remind me a bit of watching the stock market…
Dave @ 8:00 pm:
There are so many factors in regards to building a website which will attract visits. Page rank is only one part of the whole. Having a blueprint which encludes LSI, great internal link building, external inbound linking, etc I beleive should be everyones focus. Dedication in this area will always bring rewards.
More is accomplished in 12 hours of "White Stratagies" than 12 hours in "Black Hat". PR is only on small piece of the puzzle.
Thanks for your insights as always Jim!
Nelson Tan @ 8:02 pm:
My index page and blog were PR4 and 5 respectively. For no reason my blog's now at 3 and index page…numero zero!
Some people say the weather's like a woman whose mood always changes. Haha, but I digress.
Jim is right, man. Mood or no mood, I still have to get the money because $$$ has NO MOOD.
I still hear people get so obssessed with PR and Alexa. Looks like I'm past that oredi, which is good
For your info, the number of indexed links and backlinks on Google have not changed much; they are increasing in fact, so is my traffic count. AdSense earnings begin to take a dip.
I suggest netrepreneurs expand/diversify with more sites and unique angles of content to complement their key business and activities.
Sandra Evans @ 8:04 pm:
Wow, I am relieved, I was baffled by going from PR4 to PR0 over night when nothing had changed. We were in the middle of a promo,getting traffic and gone. However we are taking the site off line as sales are marginal,loosing money every week. Still learning and not sure how to use the blog on a retail site. Thanks for the encouragment.
edward @ 8:52 pm:
I did not loose any page rank but my search position did go down a few. Is there a way to prevent the down on ranking.
Thanks
EA
John Luider @ 10:44 pm:
I meet the last day a link partner who deleted my link from his site because i was affected after the last PR update (from GPR4 i received GPR3). It's really a stupid mood to exchange links thinking at the PR. I'm sure the page rank value at this time is only 0 (zero). It's more like an Award for your linking work. That don't mean if you have GPr4 or 5 you are a big fish..maybe you will have more link exchange partners or you will can to sell some links at highest prices but for the SE without quality content your Page rank value 0!
John Cisar @ 10:58 pm:
I've actually experienced an increase in PR corelating to about the time Google altered it's PR algorithm. I'm sure they acted in the knowledge that they will be creating a system for Page Rank which is more true to reality of the web than the previous one had been.
Cristian Ionica @ 11:15 pm:
Great article, Jim!
You're absolutely right. There's much more to a website than it's page rank.
If traffic and conversions are increasing, but page rank is decreasing, who cares?
It's about results, not page rank.
Cristian
Professional Audios for Internet Marketers
http://www.VoiceOverPal.com/
Kim Snyder @ 11:17 pm:
I noticed it happen cause I went from PR4/PR3 all through my site to PR0 BUT my traffic went way up. Go fig? Not changing anything I am doing I am sure it will be back.
One thing I am curious about is, links for ads that are not Google adsense, is that a problem causer?
Sam Clark @ 12:33 am:
Hey Jim,
Great post about Page Rank. I have to agree with you about not living and worrying about PR. All things being equal it comes down to 2 main factors. High quality unique visitor driven and value driven content, and a consistent linking strategy. I have spent my days following and then joining one of the best linking experts online, Jack Humphrey, for about 3 years. One of his motto's…VALUE TRUMPS WASTE everytime.
The only point with you i dare pick a bone with…is about the statement you made about posting 1 or 5 times a day, it doesnt really matter…I guess my point on that would be whatever you do, do it consistently. If you are going to build 1 link a day, than build 1 link a day…if you are going to build 20 links a day, than in 4 weeks you should maintain that consistency for the most part.
Thanks for the great post again, it is spot on…
Sam
KCW @ 1:18 am:
I like your attitude Jim. They will do what they do no matter what you do.
"it's a formula that Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) came up with to rank websites according to popularity"
Isnt there a strong court case right now saying they didnt come up with it all? Thought I read something like that at webmasterworld.
–Kenn
Hi Semmy!
diamonds on ebay @ 1:44 am:
Not much PR affected this time… i am seeing marginal increase in traffic for the last few days.
PG
phillip skinner @ 3:04 am:
Hi guys n gals… A Big Point worth mentioning about taking SEO too seriously??
Could it be about the feeling of vanity this pops in to my mind … yes NO:1 just the feeling … be honest with yourself … once you see your site tripping up those SEO page-rankings a vanity-feeling of satisfaction is the first feeling that strikes most webmasters online I dig it so much to …
It reminds me of my first real gush as a young lad getting my first new bike … then again when I had served my time as a tradesman and branched out on my own with my own business by working for my self I needed a van I bought a second hand van BUT as soon as I had my name and phone number painted on the side of that van the buzz I got was of a so sooooo proud nature I really thought I had made it … then after lots of had work with lots of referrals success followed and income seems to stick to that formula … even with my 4th and 5th new and even bigger vans that feeling never left me
So its the same method online that works offline feeling of trust and respect the internet is over-brimming with customers treat them with respect through your website websites are just front doors to your shop be it information or products Google thrives on respect there mantra and or mission statement is "NO EVIL" … they simply want to be the best “Searched Engine” and will use there big stick to make sure they stay the best and if you take the time to check out all of there products they are very very helpful to assist you on being the BEST you can help them to help you…
Respect and Regards
Phillip Skinner
Tom Chuong @ 4:40 am:
I lost a PR in the recent update and I'm still holding onto my #1 long tail keywords position in the Majors. Not too long ago, I made a promise to myself to stop following my PR and start offering more to my website visitors.
Sonny Felker @ 5:37 am:
Great Article
I felt the best thing I ever did was turning OFF the page rank tool bar. Yes Virginia you can live without it. It is like an addication at first. You just wanna keep going back but with will power, you and your pages will survive.
I feel the only concern a marketer should have is to keep posting Quality content to their sites. Let google play their games.
The only way I knew about this topic was you told me about it.
LOl
Randy @ 6:16 am:
What I don't understand is the mis-information going around… such as mass-penalizations which is total baloney.
This update was the result of google attempting to discredit PR in such a way that buying and selling links based on PR would be much harder… there was no mass penalizations… if there were I would know about it cause I consult many sites including webmasters who do buy links for rankings(I tell them what to do, they don't always listen, its there money)
Fortunately for me I do not depend on paid links so a PR drop does not influence my link building campaign at all… it has actually made it harder for some of my competitors which is okay by me.
Basically the uproar is way out of proportions, again many people are passing bad information on what really happened here.
About 9 months ago I decided to go natural, take a natural approach to seo and since I have found it to be the easiest, fastest and funnest method. I don't have to worry about getting penalized because of paid links cause I don't use them…
Randy
Fred @ 7:02 am:
The displayed PR for several of my sites went down, some stayed the same, and a few increased. However what is important is that traffic to my sites either stayed even or increased.
Some people have commented that the important thing is to keep building content rich pages. That's certainly true but you need more than that to get traffic… backlinks!
Tubby Teenager @ 8:38 am:
My sites all went up or stayed level, so I'm not complaining.
The key to their PR progress seems to have been the steady addition of one way links.
BUT that the sites with most genuine original content get more traffic - regardless of page rank.
My sites with duplicate content get very little traffic even where they have decent page rank (thanks to link building).
The other factor that is stands out is that the sites with content for keywords having less competition clearly do much better for traffic than content with more competition.
Bottom line - content is king for longtail niches with less competition. If you can get page one SERPS all good things will follow.
But don't waste effort building original content for competitive keywords. If you can't get a top ten ranking for the keyword then you won't see much traffic.
Steve Henderson, Publisher
Safe weight loss strategies for overweight teenagers
Senile Dementia @ 9:01 am:
QUOTE
Kim Snyder @ 11:17 pm:
***********************************************************
I noticed it happen cause I went from PR4/PR3 all through my site to PR0 BUT my traffic went way up. Go fig? Not changing anything I am doing I am sure it will be back.
One thing I am curious about is, links for ads that are not Google adsense, is that a problem causer?
***********************************************************
Kim - I can't remember ever seeing any adverse effect from links to ads other than Adsense. Nor seeing any reference to such an effect in any SEO literature, forums etc.
One correlation I've long suspected is that running ads on Adwords might help quick indexing of the target site. Has anyone else noticed that?
Nevertheless, there are plenty of other (free) ways to get indexed fast (e.g. directory and bookmark site entries). So I wouldn't advocate spending on Adwords for any reason other than quick, targeted, darned expensive traffic.
Regards,
Name_forgotten
Cy @ 10:40 am:
Well, in fact I personally didn't get affectedt too much, but one of my client's domains dropped out, despite the fact, that I use totally white hat measures to optimize my clients. The reason, as to my beleaves are as follows:
My client had 2 domains, -one was english, the otherone in german. Now, on the english-search, you can't find the german site, nore can you find the english site in the german search any longer, even though, the company has two headquarters in europe, -one governing the english and european market, one just the german. I believe, google is getting more concerned about de-valuing links from other language sites, in order to get more and better related content
Star @ 11:40 am:
Are there any nichbot meetings in LA?
I am building a nwe website,well i actually hired someone and need help with the seo part of it…
Kim Snyder @ 11:47 am:
Thanks! I have one long running ad thats not google adsense.
But I have had it for months so its not like its going to be the cause now, I was just wondering.
I just keep adding content and I am sure it will return. The PR seems to matter most to those who want to link with you not your site itself.
Cris @ 12:35 pm:
I quite worrying about PR a year ago or so. I have one site that has 50 static pages of links and some sporadic RSS feeds - that's it. Some of the pages have over 50 links on them. Yet consistently I have been receiving at least 1200 unique visitors each and every day for the past three years. The PR on these pages have gone anywhere from 0 to 5, but the organic traffic has always stayed at an average 1200 per day.
These pages contain text links that people are searching on everyday - they would be considered "long-tail". But they give people what they are searching for, and the search engines (all 3 majors) like sending people to them. And for those who don't find what they need, they click on the adsense and give me about $400/month in revenue. So everybody's happy, and there's no junk on these pages. The interesting part is that the pages have stayed basically the same without too many updates the past three years - so that kind of goes against the fresh content theory in some ways too.
Enjoyed your post - thanks! Cris
OLED @ 7:27 am:
seems a little bit tricky for the google logistics
SirCommy @ 8:46 am:
Pagerank do vary a lot on its each update. One of my PR1 sites dropped to 0, BUT one of my PR0 sites jumped directly to PR4, that was rather shocking, however, I never paid attention to PageRank, I just use some tools to check my search engine positions, 'that' is what counts. PageRank is just a fast way to determine the "importance" of a site in case one wants to buy it/link to it/document from it etc. But at the end, PageRank DOES have a purpose and it *is* a way to see that a site has its importance in search engines and that other people are willingly linking to it, perhaps due to link exchange or just the fact that they enjoyed the site and useful resources are in it. But once again, seek your search engine positions, not the ranking
One more example I can give here:
A certain website with PR1 can show up in the first page of search engines on some keywords and a PR3 website can show in page 2 or 3 on its keyword. So throw your PR worries away and concentrate on your positions and note that titles and keywords are most important. I won't get into many details, like, fresh content? a LOT of it?
Cheers
Sara Gray @ 7:32 am:
Well, I love looking at my page rank on various pages of my site, but for me, it's always just been for fun. I just keep plodding away, adding more and more content and although i don't have a HUGE page rank, I certainly have lots of my pages on the first 2 pages of Google and other search engines. For me that is where the gold is. Thanks for a great article - heartening and a good reminder to not get so caught up in the numbers.
Samantha @ 12:51 pm:
Where do I find my google page rank for my site, I have google analytics but it doesn't tell me, where is a good source for page ranks for the search engines?
Any help or suggestions are appreciated.
The NicheBOT Guy @ 12:14 am:
Samantha,
You can find PageRank here at this tool:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/future-pagerank/
That shows you what the PageRank of a page and a number of data centers around the world.
You can further download the Google Toolbar here that also has a PageRank indicator built into it…
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html
Best,
Jim