Showing posts with label page rank update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label page rank update. Show all posts

Saturday, 3 May 2008

Don't be the end of the web

It has long been said that search engines like pages with internal links - it implies that the page gives an overview, leading to more detailed information. And I've been reviewing my own website in the light of the recent page rank update.

I noticed that on the whole, there's an apparently random scattering of PR3 and grey barred pages, with the home page PR4 - why??? I've also often mentioned customers who complain they are not top of google on a 1 page website.

Well it was interesting when I noticed that the majority of pages that were page ranked had links to other pages in the main content. Not just the menus and other side bars.

What were the exceptions? Well there's a contact page and (OK, very naughty!!!) a landing page. What's special about these to break the rules - well they both display phone numbers - in the content.

I also mentioned yesterday that the portfolio page had gone from grey barred to PR3 in this update. What had I changed?

Well, at the time of the last update it listed 55 - 60 other websites and linked to them. Now, it links to internal pages, each of which points to the customer's website. So this has moved to the theory of giving more detail.

I'm starting to look over other sites of mine and there's a pattern forming - more information as I uncover it! But it looks like the 'perfect page' on Google has plenty of original content and some internal links or contact information in the page content.

Very interesting! Question is - how far does this need to be pushed to work?

Friday, 2 May 2008

Google Page Rank Update

There appears to have been a page rank update in the last few days, possibly like the February Page Rank Update, it was released for the end of the month.

In previous updates I've been able to look back and see that posts over a certain age have a PR0 within this blog, but that doesn't seem to be the case this time around - all are showing as new (grey barred). My mortgage rates site seems to have stayed the same, whilst my own webdesign site has recovered the 1 page rank it dropped in February, and it's back to PR4.

I would suggest that it's homw pages that have changed, but my portfolio page was grey barred after the February update, but it's recovered to a 3, so that's not the case. Maybe it's more of a case of sandboxing new pages. Strangely, I have a discovered that one page showing a testimonial is PR3, whilst others that are older and younger and all linked to from the same places in the site are grey barred.

Also good news is that this blog has increased from PR3 to PR4. Only 8 months' of posting and not really knowing what I was going to do at the start and it's slowly creeping up. Other blogs of mine haven't had this success.

As I discover other strange details of the page rank update I'll record them here in the usual way.

Friday, 29 February 2008

Page Rank Update February 2008

I noticed whilst linking in to previous posts in my earlier post that there has been a page rank update overnight. So far the only changes I've noticed are that sites and pages published on or before the 15 February are now appearing with Page Rank 0.

All but one site that I've checked have remained the same - only my Mortgage Rates Site seems to have changed page rank, and that's recovered 1 page rank, back up to Page Rank 3.

Right direction, still to slow and still on pages 5 - 7 of the results! Will examine this more and feedback over the next few days...

Wednesday, 16 January 2008

Page Rank Update - Not Clear Still

In the October Google Page Rank Update there was a clear demarkation mark within this blog as to which pages had been cached and which hadn't. If you looked at the pages more than about a week old (Read in full here) they were PR0, older than 3 weeks they were PR1. And this held true throughout the site, with the home page being PR3. Not bad for a new blog!

This time around the line isn't clear. I've looked at a website I published on the 27 December and that's PR0 and all pages on this blog since then are grey barred. Now I did notice Google was very active over Christmas - presumably gathering it's data for the update. So maybe around the 27th is the correct cut off.

But before then there's no rhyme or reason as to what the posts are ranked. Some are grey barred, some PR0, some even PR3. There's no simple pattern. Some of the page ranked posts are long, some not so long. On the whole, it's possible that the shorter posts are grey barred, but there are some posts that are grey barred that are longer than ranked posts.

There are probably several factors at play here. All of the posts are linked roughly the same way and amount of times. So unless there are lots of people using RSS to syndicate some of the posts, then something on certain pages is making them more popular to Google than the posts the days before & after. If only I had time to sit here and work it all out - it would help with my page ranking for other sites!

Tuesday, 15 January 2008

Importance Of The Title Tag

I was reviewing my own website and wondering why the portfolio page had dropped from Page Rank 3 to grey barred, along with the system status page. Still not convinced myself why the latter changed, but the former I've worked out.

Rather annoyingly, it goes back to something I mentioned in a December Post. Then, the prices page shared the same title & description as a new page. I corrected that when I rebuilt the site over Christmas, but at the same time when I put the portfolio page into the new format page I forgot to change the title tag. As I copied the home page, the portfolio & home page share title tags. Home page dropped 1 page rank, portfolio page dropped all together.

That really does spell out the importance of keeping these little lines different. The ones that were the same until December are now both back up to PR3. I just need to see why the system status page is also grey barred, when that was PR4 before the update.

It's documented that this tag shouldn't be excessively long, 66 characters is about all that Google displays, so keep within that. But in this case it was only 13 characters, so I was wondering if there is a minimum limit as well? That's hard to work out and prove. So plenty for me to be looking at over the next couple of weeks!

Monday, 14 January 2008

Latest Google Page Rank Update

I am slowly continuing to look at the latest google page rank update to see what might have changed and I'll report what I am finding. How quick this is depends how much time I can devote to it each day!

What I noticed last night was that Google is now reporting a lot more link backs to each site that I look at. Whether this is genuinely that there has been a lot of work on these sites or whether it's because the link back filter has been reduced, I haven't had the time to investigate. But as none of the sites that I've checked have shot up in page rank, one has even lost a page rank in the update, then I suspect it's more something global than the success of my link building.

For example, my mortgages web site was showing 12 back links before the update but now reports 88, with 69 showing in the main results. I'll need to check most of these to see when they were added to know for certain what has caused the changes.

One change I have noticed is that a lot more of my changed sites are showing links back to themselves! This could be because I've improved the internal links, rather than any major changes. And there are plenty of links showing that are new, or are on pages that have probably newly been found by google / given some sort of page rank. If I get time, I'll start through the list of links today and compare to records of when they were added. Not an easy process...

Sunday, 13 January 2008

Page Rank Update January 2008

Continuing my look at the January 208 Google Page Rank Update and comparing it to the October 2007 Update.

It's strange to note that some of the blog pages on this site that were page ranked by the last update seem to have continued with their page rank, but new pages have not got a rank, and the monthly archive pages also seem to have lost their page ranks. On the whole, most changes are new sites getting PR0 or odd pages going down.

What is interesting to look at is the change to my experimental blogs. Both were only a couple of weeks old at the October update and went to PR0.

The one linked to using target="_blank" is still showing PR0. Then something strange happens... For October, the archive page is Grey Barred, but 5 posts are PR2, 2 are Grey Barred. For November, the archive is PR2 and all 4 posts Grey Barred. December has the archive as PR2 and all posts PR0.

On the site not using target=_blank, has now gone to PR3. This time, the October archive is again Grey Barred, but the posts are this time split 2 PR2 and 5 PR0. November has 1 PR1 and the rest Grey Barred. December is PR0, with 1 PR2 and 2 PR0.

As for the site with no links, well it's home page is Grey Barred, as you might expect, as are most of the pages. But 1 October post, 1 November post and the November archive are PR0. Now this is not the pattern you would normally expect, and I think this might be very important in analysing the results of the experiment.

I suspect that people with RSS feeders are linking to the blogs by publishing some entries and I'm gaining Page Rank from them. Very useful, but I should have prevented that to get accurate results... If we accept that some posts / archives having better PR than we expect are caused by this, then the result so far is that by including 'target="_blank"' in an incoming link, you are absolutely destroying that link. Having also looked at my own web design site, the portfolio page that links to a lot of sites using that command has also dropped. This could be accident (more tomorrow???) or maybe part of the same thing. Maybe Google is using the heavy inclusion of 'target="_blank"' as an indicator of link building, and punishing the page the links are on, meaning that there is no PR for the target pages to inherit.

Saturday, 12 January 2008

Page Rank Update

I'll break off for a day or so to look at what has happened last night with a Google Page Rank update. On the whole, apart from new sites I can only find sites that have stayed as was or dropped 1 PR. Is there a theme?

A PR5 site has dropped to PR4. Shame! Interesting to note that the add resources page is now grey barred (from PR3???) and some content pages have gone from PR4 to grey barred. These were a bit off theme - her site is about accommodation in Oxford, but she also shows adds for accommodation in Italy & South Africa. Now whether Google is that clever, I don't know. But I suspect a couple of internal pages dropping PR could be enough to bring the home page Page Rank down by 1.

Lots of new sites now have Page Rank Zero, which is progress. I put in a load of changes to my own Janric website, hoping the new pages were there in time for the update, but it seems to have taken place quicker than I expected. 2 previously grey barred pages are back to Page Rank 3 but the portfolio page is now grey barred. Possibly because the portfolio is quite big and links to 57 sites from the one page? Maybe it's time to split that down a little.

Another web design site I work for has only 29 sites in the portfolio. It's a newer site and that page rank has gone from grey barred to 2, giving weight to too many links.

Sadly, after all my efforts recently for my mortgage rates site there's been no change there and it's still hovering between pages 5 and 7 of the results.

On a positive note, remember the first Seo Experiment? Well, one of the sites in that has gone to page rank 3 - the other 2 are grey barred. It's the one WITHOUT the target=_blank in the links that's made this change. Maybe there is something in that experiment after all?

Tuesday, 11 December 2007

What Are The Best Type Of Links?

If you ran a finance website and I approached you offering you a link out of my PR4 mortgages website (no strings, just a free link) then what sort of link would you want? A couple of keywords? You site name? 'Click Here'?

Nearly everyone would go for the the first option, the rest opting instead for their site name. But is that the correct answer? If you are arranging links, then the answer should be whatever is the best type of link.

What is the best link? We only need to look at a few well known websites that have made Google Page Rank 10 or 9 and then think about their linking structure. These have got tons of links in with the anchor text 'click here'. It's sheer volume of links that Google recognises that has worked for them, not keyword stuffed links. OK, these sites now do well for 'click here', but it's not really a main keyword.

Let's look at this the other way around. If the link is using high performing keywords, is it most likely that the link is a "natural link", a result of a links swap or someone optimising their site using internal linking. On the whole, I'd say links swap, optimisation then natural links (including internal non-optimised links).

So what does a keyword stuffed link tell us. Probably that there's a good chance that link has been created to fool search engines. If Google's long term aim is to detect and ignore these SEO links, then what's it going to go? Probably, if not already, it will start to ignore popular keywords in links and gradually include more keywords in that list until it gets the right results.

So just what are the best type of links? Natural links of course - I decide to link to you because I want to. And when that happens I include in the link's anchor text something relevant to that page, not necessarily to your site.

Thursday, 22 November 2007

Why Does Google Display Page Rank?

Why does Google periodically make available its page rank? And why does it seem to coincide with major changes?

Page rank is being constantly updated. If you assume that pages are always displayed in an order based on page rank (and other factors of relevance) then by displaying all pages in a site (using site:) then all pages should be shown in page rank order.

To test this, I need to view a site immediately after a page rank export – but this assumes that page rank hasn't been exported from an old version… But it would be a good indicator.

So try it now on your site – do all pages appear in PR order – a few weeks after the recent changes. Probably not. This would imply that Page Rank has been updated since – but not exported. And this is what is supposed to happen – the export just gives us an idea of what is going on, not the actual hard values that are used.

So why? It generates far more traffic to Google in looking up the values for every page you open. It means they need a copy of the PR database for the public view (given they are not making actual values public). They need to maintain and update this system.

First and most obvious is that our browsing behaviour is reported to Google. It can track which pages are in use and popular in sites. But when popular sites drop from results, this isn't a major factor.

So what else can they be achieving? And is it me, or do they always export after major changes to the listings? Are they making the data available so that the real world then sees what's going on, have a guess at what took place and start to complain at what we see as unfair results within this – sites missed and sites unfairly hit?

That would then give them chance to refine their algorithms and make corrections. And it would be far easier than have a team of people sitting their trying to monitor millions of sites and the resultant changes!

Sunday, 18 November 2007

October Google Page Rank Update

A lot is being talked about the latest (October 2007) Google Update. Basically it appears that directories and sites selling links for Page Rank purposes have been penalised.

A lot of people are complaining that it's a major hit on their sites and I've heard of PR6 sites becoming PR3 – and I thought a drop or 1 was bad! It would appear that Google has targeted these sites selling links because links = "popularity" = increase page rank.

But some observers have pointed to sites that have been included that don't sell links and some that do sell links that haven't been included. On close investigation, some of those not selling have been found to use other popularity practices that are frowned upon.

So what could be happening? Well yes, fair enough if Google increases sites' Page Ranks by counting links in and people try to cheat this system them they are in their right to change their own internal ranking system. I agree with that – a lot of people don't. But how has Google identified sites selling links and hit so many so well? I'll take a look later this week!

Saturday, 27 October 2007

Google Page Rank

It's quite interesting (for me) that Google's Page Rank has updated today - after a gap of almost 6 months. What makes this update interesting, apart from the fact that I've had a few sites suffer go down, is that because of this blog, it's the first time that I've had new pages added daily that I can use to see how Google has tracked the page ranks.

And I record this as much out of interest and to compare to in the future as I do for a study into Google Page Rank. If you notice anything from my results or learn anything, don't keep it to yourself - post a comment!

First,the blog home page has gone straight in at Page Rank 3. Excellent! Only 2 sites link to it - my own and brit blog.

None of the pages added to this blog in the last 7 days have a Google Page Rank - all are grey bared. Pretty much to be expected.

All pages added in the previous days (3/10 to 20/10) have a Google page rank of 0. This means that Google has taken into account all pages it new about up to and including 7 days ago.

Pages prior to from 2/10 and earlier have a page rank of 1. This must mean that Google has given them some credit for existing some time back. Maybe it indicates that the previous actual update of Page Rank happened around this time - the toolbar page rank is just what is exported on an adhoc basis. This would mean that either the 2 to 3 weeks means the pages have counted as aged more, or (and I prefer this theory) that Google is updating Page Rank about every 2 to 3 weeks.

Lastly, for some reason the August posts are grey bared. This is probably because the blog was just starting up and were quickly archived, before Google had a real chance to take an interest in the pages.

It's also interesting to note that 2 of the experimental blogs are now page rank 0 (as opposed to grey barred).

These are (of course) those 2 that are linked to. The one with the 'clean' links is PR0 on home page and pages up to 20/10 (1 unexplained exception). The one with target="_blank" is PR0 on the home page, grey bared on the rest.

But another similar (and slightly older) test blog remains grey bared, even with links from 1 site that aren't using the target function. Another blog, again with 2 sites linking to it, starts with a PR0 (it's brand new - links from the last week or so.). Looks like there's a big difference to explain there...

I'm sure this is one post I'll be referring to in the future - to compare how page ranks change!