Weird PR distribution

[DuaneJackson]

The home page at www.kashflow.co.uk has a PR of 2, whilst internal pages have mainly PR4 and some PR3. The vast majority of inbound links go straight to the home page.

The internal link structure is pretty normal too.

Any idea why this might be happening? It's not a glitch, it's been like this for months.

[DuaneJackson]

What happened to all you google experts? : )

[Coding Monkey]

The problem with SEO is that because no one actually *knows* the answer, people are afraid to guess and have someone contradict them.

I have the same on some of my pages, yet those with the lower page rank are either those with several out going links and low text, or those that are new (added several months ago). Remember, it is only a rough estimate and not the entire formula via the taskbar, but even so, I do consider it quite strange, though you're certainly not alone on it.

On a sidenote, I like the changes you've made to the layout.

[DuaneJackson]

On a sidenote, I like the changes you've made to the layout.

Good to hear, the problem is I have no idea what changes you are referring to : )

I have 3 totally different layouts/content for the front page. When you visit the site one is selected for you at random and a cookie is set to ensure you get that same one in future.

When people sign up I can tell which page they saw. After another 80-100 or so sign ups I'll see if there is a significant weighting in favour of one of the 3 different pages.

[Coding Monkey]

Oh, yes. So I see. Nice idea there. The one with the ticks in the main content.

[Tin]

Agree with Tom, no-one's got the answer except Google and he doesn't want to spill the beans at the moment (but I don't think it's a phase he's going through) :-)

I've never had this problem but if it was happening to any of my sites I'd examine
* PR of IBL's to any given page of my site
* PR of page with any OBL's
* Directory structure in relation to different PR levels
* Navigation areas
* PR bleed. (Happened a lot last year) PR hijacking you might hear it called
* Use of tracking cookies (I haven't looked at you site so don't know if you use them)
* other little bits & bobs but it appears from what you say the it's a 'transfer' based issue whereby Google has problems distributing PR consistently throughout your site.
* Have some of the IBL's to your home page been swiped or penalised by Google but not filtered to internals yet?

I've not listed them in any order just what came to mind really but I'd start by examing everyone who links to your home page first. If you've got PR3's internally then your home page should be a 4, if it used to be a 4 then something has definitely changed and IBL's to your home page is where I'd start. Was your home page off-line or unavailable for a while? Are some of your pages 'supplemental results'?

Sorry but I've never had this problem/glitch and a quick check on the web didn't bring anything especially relevant so my guess is that it's not madly common. My best hunch is a PR flow issue caused via navigation, I always have a sitemap link going from my home page to all other pages of the site which possibly means I've circumvented this problem.
There's a PR update around the corner so I'd wait until it settles down the see where things are :-)
Hope it helps

[mattk]

Do you find that internal pages rank higher in the SERP compared to your homepage? If not, then I'd be tempted to ignore the superficial PR that is displayed.

One other thing - and other guys are more than welcome to add their comments - you don't seem to have meta keywords/descriptions on your internal apges. I'd add keywords at the very least and have the same 15-20 keywords/phrases on every page and then 10-15 page specific keywords/phrases.

[DuaneJackson]

Thanks. Yeah, I'd have suspected navigation issues to cause the uneven spread of PR, but the layout is nothing different to usual.

I've not looked to see if the internal pages are ranking any better in the serps. I will do.

Tin, thanks for getting back to my PM, I will reply once I have time to do so properly : )