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Internet Marketing Coach
Has the Long Awaited Google Toolbar Update Begun?
October 3rd, 2007 | 19 comments
I don’t think it has, but I’ve seen a couple very odd things lately. A few days ago John Chow’s blog (I don’t link to him) went from a toolbar PR of 6 down to a 5. I figure that had something to do with his “link scheme” he had going on, which resulted in a Google penalty so that one wasn’t too surprising. Heres another post on John Chow dropping in PR by Courtney Tuttle.
What IS very surprising is what I just noticed minutes ago. Andy Beard, who I consider a mentor and a great guy runs one of the best blogs I’ve read, the Niche Marketing Blog and his blog just fell from a toolbar PR of 5 down to a 4!!
Other than those two blogs I haven’t noticed any sites toolbar PR change so it’s very odd. The PR update is way overdo and I’m not sure where I read this, but somewhere I heard Matt Cutts saying he doesn’t see it coming anytime soon.
There’s definitely something going on at Google, but who knows what?
Popularity: 18% [?]
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4th October, 2007 at 1:31 am
I’m not saying it’s the same…but I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before. I have one site that once was a PR6, but has since dropped to a 4. Same content, same inbound links, still ranks #1 for all its primary keyterms.
But I think Google sometimes changes the formula for PR…just as it might tweak the way it figures ranking factors. I don’t put much stock in PR…but if it has any relevance at all, I think it’s the way sites rate against each other, rather than how they rank on a scale of 1 to 10 (although that’s what its SUPPOSED to indicate from the way I’ve heard it explained).
4th October, 2007 at 1:42 am
Hey Chuck, I’ve heard of it happening outside of the regular updates, but I’ve never seen it first hand.
As far as PR, there are two different “types” of PR. There is the actual PageRank that I believe does directly influence a pages rankings and then there’s the toolbar PR that I’m referring to here.
I agree the toolbar PR doesn’t mean a whole lot, but it’s still a nice conversation piece
4th October, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Obviously I have noticed it as well…
Maybe it is a bug… too soon to say the possible reason, but I certainly don’t have the same number or quality of links compared to the last update.
Time of last update I had around 200 subscribers, and I was lucky to gain a couple of editorial links per day.
Now I typically gain 20+ links per day just from blogs, and many are very high quality
4th October, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Thanks for stopping by Andy. I wonder if they’re started to penalize bigger blogs (with ToolBar PR anyway) for reciprocal linking. It’s a natural thing in the blogosphere, but maybe they don’t like it. If that’s the case it’s BS. I’m probably way off, but I can’t think of anything else. Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s just a bug that will be worked out.
4th October, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I dont’ use Google’s toolbar, but I do use SearchStatus forFirefox and I see Andy’s ranking at 4 too.
What’s also strange is that you are not showing any Alexa rank either Josh and I’m sure that wasn’t the case a couple of days ago. (I realize the two are not related, just wondered if you’d noticed).
4th October, 2007 at 9:18 pm
It’s very strange, especially considering Andy’s blog is as white-hat as they come. The Alexa rank is showing up at 116,385 here for my blog. Alexa has bugs and there are times no matter what site your visiting when the rank won’t show.
I’m glad you mentioned SearchStatus. I think that’s the one I used in the past that shows both Alexa and Google rankings? I’m going to reinstall it right now and get rid of the Google toolbar. I should have done that a while back.
4th October, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Yep, that’s the one - it’s also really handy for checking nofollow links, and it shows Compete rankings as well as Google and Alexa, plus lots of useful shortcuts to various other site info.
I’m sure the big G know enough about me already through analytics, Feedburner etc and I’ve never been a fan of their toolbar.
5th October, 2007 at 11:02 pm
I didn’t notice any PR changes for my sites, but 2 of my recent sites got a HUGE backlinks update…. and I mean HUGE!
It’s funny how my site with the most backlinks found by Google has no good ranking, while my other ones have much better rankings lol.
6th October, 2007 at 12:10 am
Yesterday, about a dozen web directories has their toolbar pagerank reduced by 1 as well. It looks to me like Google is trying to send some sort of a message.
6th October, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Take a look at Court’s advertising page, and then at the toolbar…
6th October, 2007 at 9:17 pm
wow, down to a 2. I wonder if this is being caused by the new snitch system Google has set up.
6th October, 2007 at 9:24 pm
[...] A number of my readers have noticed that Google have been making some minor adjustments to the displayed PageRank on a few sites, and Josh quite rightly pointed out that the displayed PageRank on this domain has for some reason been reduced. [...]
9th October, 2007 at 2:26 pm
I guess this is the way Google are trying to fight back. I know a blog that quite openly sells links, via TLA , it was PR8 (yes
last year and now it is PR6.
Google are trying to hit people who sell links, with the penalty that will reduce their sales. Now the interesting thing would be, how long will this stay there for.
9th October, 2007 at 5:31 pm
[...] that John Chow's PageRank dropped from 6 to 5. The following week, Josh Spaulding noticed that Andy Beard's PageRank dropped from 5 to [...]
11th October, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Blogs of a certain type have been humming with this news. Just part of Google’s ongoing efforts to stop artificial backlink manipulation. Webmasters need to start thinking outside of Google about ways to get quality traffic. Personally, I’m tired of trying to out-think the algo.
24th October, 2007 at 7:56 pm
[...] the first round of PR reductions was just a primer. Sometime in the last 24 hours or so the big G downgraded even more blogs, most [...]
22nd November, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Something definitely happened. I have some sites which were new and had no page rank, and now they are up to 3 or 4, which is nice (if PR actually mattered anymore).
4th December, 2007 at 8:00 am
Does PR still matter?
30th December, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I love The google toolbar mostly for its pagerank feature. I just wish it would be more live so that I wouldn’t have to wait 3 months to see updated page ranks.