Google June update?

[Furzefield Digital Ltd]

Background: I have an old domain that used to host a large sporting portal on it, I took it down for a couple of years but kept a holding page in situ. At the end of May I decided that because the domain was a nice PR4 with lots of good links I should do something with it. I built a nice wordpress site and did all the SEO things on it like sitemaps, seo friendly URLs etc. As I have added content over the last few weeks traffic has risen about 500% in the last month which is encouraging.

Then over the last 24 hours I noticed that the page rank has gone all together. I do not normally make a big thing of it and just use it as a guide to a sites authority. I am sort of expecting it to come back in a few days if it is just a Google update taking place.

The interesting thing is that my site is now suddenly dominating the SERPs for some extremely hard keywords and phrases!

Anyone got any ideas what might be happening? I will be gobsmacked if my SERPs stay the same!

[JElder]

PageRank is NOT a particularly good indicator of search engine visibility, as it is recalculated infrequently. It may have been re-calculated based on the 'holding page'.

If you are appearing in relevant searches and getting traffic, that's a far more important measure than PageRank.

[forexnutsguy]

Weird that it has updated for you, in all over my 50+ sites none of the PR values has been changed in June.

Too bad, cuz I was actually expecting to sell a few of them for a nice chunk of money once they could see PR3 or 4 stamped in the google's toolbar :P

But Jelder is totally right, PR does not reflect the influence of your website, at all. At least from the majority of my testing, and yeah , Ido a lot of that.

[Furzefield Digital Ltd]

As I said above, PR is just an indicator of a sites authority.

But looking at another forum, it does look like there is an update happening for some folks so keep your eye out folks! If my SERPs stay the same I will be pretty happy.

[I, Brian]

All you're looking at is the Toolbar PageRank value, which is known to be unreliable and buggy at times.

If traffic levels are fine, presume there is no problem. :)

[OldWelshGuy]

June saw a couple of things happen. Furst we saw the mayday update propagate across the pond, and this has hit large sites particularly bad as it has murdered long tail traffic.

Secondly caffeine is now rolled out, angain this is a whole new index, let alone an algo update, it is probably the most major change in Google since the dreaded Florida update.

[nickpp]

we had this is june on an old domain from 2002, always had a pr 3 site on it, changed site content. mid june pr went to 0 then up to 2 last week.

[joelietz]

I've seen the same thing and one fellow even pointed out that some sites seem to be getting 'zeroed' as a way of steering link spammers who feed on middling PR sites that are easy targets. By leaving them at zero for a month it encourages the spam to migrate to other sites where it may be dealt with in a more efficient manner?

Sounds like some crazy talk to me, and any time someone presumes Google to be omnipresent I chuckle a bit even if sometimes it pans out as real. ;p

[crossdaz]

All you're looking at is the Toolbar PageRank value, which is known to be unreliable and buggy at times.

If traffic levels are fine, presume there is no problem. :)

There is a tool bar update due - tomorrow actually.

I've seen changes today on some sites :)

[joelietz]

There is a tool bar update due - tomorrow actually.

I've seen changes today on some sites :)

That would be nice if it's a mere glitch but all the tricks I know for checking PR on sites always come out the same when it's zero so I don't think it's a problem with any particular tool?

[Furzefield Digital Ltd]

I've seen the same thing and one fellow even pointed out that some sites seem to be getting 'zeroed' as a way of steering link spammers who feed on middling PR sites that are easy targets. By leaving them at zero for a month it encourages the spam to migrate to other sites where it may be dealt with in a more efficient manner?

Sounds like some crazy talk to me, and any time someone presumes Google to be omnipresent I chuckle a bit even if sometimes it pans out as real. ;p

This does make sense, the site is a wordpress site so it is always being deluged with comment spam and pingback requests.