My page rank has dropped

I am about ready to just get rid of the stupid tool bar. All it does is get me upset. Well I guess its good to have but I am getting sick of looking at it. I don't get it. I am hoping its a fluke or something because I have seen it drop before and then go right back up but this is discouraging me. I keep feeling like nothing is working. I checked and my backlinks show one more now but some of them that I know I have are not showing up. One of them I have had since I started the site practically. It was the first one to show up in google and now I don't see it. I know its there cause I just checked it. Its a PR of 5 too. I should stop being so preoccupied for this. I just did a search for parenting message boards and I am at the top of the second page so I have definately moved up but why would that make sense if my PR has dropped? I am sick of trying to figure this crap out. Why would your keyword ranking improve if your PR has dropped and why am I not seeing any improvement?

I'm sorry to hear about your PR dropping, i had the same thing happen on my other 2 sites they went down by 1 pr. About the your SERP going up for that specific keyword is kinda of mind boging for me becuase i haven't noticed any serps improvements as of yet.

Patty,

I went from a 4 off the bat, to a 5 briefly. Then down to a 3 for 3 months. Now I'm at a 6, and after this crappy backlink update, who knows. But things are the most inconsistent the first year you have the site.

chin up hon!

-Greg

but why am I seeing improvement. For instance, for parenting message boards I was at 51 and then I made a few changes and went to like 34, and now I haven't done anything much in a little while and I looked and I think I was at #14 so I am definitely moving up but my PR is dropping. That just doesn't make sense. I guess I should be happy because about a month or two ago I was at like #521 or something like that so I have definitely made progress. I am just totally bummed. I really thought I would improve. But why aren't some of my links showing up. I don't mean the new ones. I mean the ones I have had from the beginning? Does google just sometimes miss some?

Damn have to edit this. I don't know what's going on. I checked my site again and it was back to a 4. What is up with that?

Patty, don't be so frustrated. any of our pages is just one of 4 billions in Google's database. What you see is fluctuation. I'm sure you'll see PR5 or PR6 by the time the update is over.

I'm showing Patty at a 3/10 through the datacenters...the update seems a bit screwy though, with only partial backlinks showing up. A quick spot check on my competitors for the first few pages of a rather competitive phrase shows about 33-50% of what backlinks were before the update, and since it's unlikely that everyone of us actually lost links (especially when we've all probably been adding for the last few months), there is either a filter on the links being shown or the update is incomplete -- meaning another will follow. Personally, I'm hoping for a second update shortly, or an algo update in the next few days.

Cygnus

It does look like some links are left out yes...
Maybe they re-adjusted someting like they did a few months ago and most sites dropped 1 PR point.
What the heck... as long as trafic is steady dudes...

i wouldn't worry too much about the PR. If your pages still show up in the SERP where you like them to be, then thats all you can ask for.

Exactly what I was going to post! Who gives a crap about PR when you have some good placed keywords? Heck, I would be the happiest man on earth if my websites showed up in the first search results page, even if they had a PR0.

PR is so unlogic... I have been working on one website for almost a year, optimizing it, getting great backlinks, working my *ss off, and after a year, it is finally PR5.

Another website I built in a couple of hours and never touched after, jumped from PR0 to PR5 in less than 2 months, without paying any atention to it.

Google is weird, don't try to understand it.

I just looked at my site this morning, it's dropped to a PR3.

One of the IP's I used in my host files is showing it as a PR2. I've no idea how this has happened, Im sure I've got loads more backlinks than when it was a PR4 yet only 2 are showing.

Could the fact that the hosts entry i.e. different IP for Google, is showing PR2 mean that is the final value I will get?

I hope not.

How long does an update normally take?

I think we just need moral support here...!

If a lot of the sites linking to your site went down on their PR, you will be affected and go down too... it's an effect of this and happens all the time it seems... up, down, up...

Screwy is the word - my pr's have been bouncing around like nuts for the last 12 hours but no logic to the results I'm seeing and the "listed" backlinks have dropped for every page although - in reality - they've been increased for every page!

I have 2 particular pages which are driving me insane:

Both are at the same level (one folder inside domain)

Both have an identical number of incoming links from within the domain.

"Page 1" has 3 incoming external links from pr5/6 pages (VERY relevant pages) and dozens of other external incoming links from pr3 pages... the 3 links are all showing in backlinks.

"Page 2" has only one incoming external link from a pr4 page (not exceptionally relevant) which is not showing in backlinks.

Both pages are the same age, Page 1 has more content than Page 2 and before the update both were pr4.

Page 1 is now pr3
Page 2 is still pr4

I don't know how it's happened but it goes against all logic - the pr5/6 sites have maintained their pr through this update so - presumably - no "bad neighbourhood" penalty...

The only difference is that Page 1 is built with php and Page 2 is pure html...

I'm also hoping that this is a hiccup and will be corrected shortly!

Now that the update seems to be settled I can confirm that the page with MORE backlinks has PR3, the page with LESS has PR4 - that seems to fly in the face of the "accepted theories" about pr being nothing more than backlinks!

But it depends on the quality of those backlinks. I have sites with 9 backlinks showing in Google that are PR6 and sites with 30-40 backlinks that are PR4. If you have high PR sites linking to you your PR is gonna rise. A few high PR pages linking to you can be better than hordes of low PR pages, and vice versa .

You missed the point derryt...
The two pages have an identical number of backlinks from identical pages... but - one of them has additional backlinks from at least 3 pr5/6 pages and dozens of pr3 backlinks from other pages and yet that is the page with the lower pr.