Why Has My Website Lost Pagerank?

By Robin Porter

Back in October many webmasters were panicking as Google apparently reduced the Pagerank of millions of websites. Pandemonium ensued as many webmasters worried themselves sick as to why this had happened and how they could restore their glorious Pagerank back to their website.

Why did this happen?

First lets take a look at Pagerank and how it is calculated. Pagerank is understood to be calculated according to the number and quality of incoming links to a website. It's a complex formula that only Google knows, also taking into account the importance of the page that the link originates from. Pagerank is calculated on a scale of 1 to 10 but it is not a linear scale ie getting from 8 to 9 is a lot, lot harder than getting from 7 to 8.Other factors it is also thought to include are ones such as the authority and trust of a website.

It is wrongly believed by many webmasters that Pagerank may be the main critical factor that specifies their search engine ranking positions ( SERPS). To be honest there are a large amount of factors that Google looks at to determine the SERPS, One of them IS Pagerank although it can be a deciding factor if all other things are equal.

The result over the last few years has turned many webmasters into Pagerank junkies. They obsess about their Pagerank, about getting links from other sites with higher Pagerank, they decline to link to sites with lower Pagerank etc etc. This has led to a whole industry of websites buying and selling links according to the Pagerank of the link page. And this is what has infuriated sleeping dragon over at Google.

Broadly it has been described that this readjustment of the Pagerank cause is as a result of Google penalising websites that are involved in the buying and selling of text links, with the aim of passing on Pagerank and hence improving their better SERPS.

It is also an opinion that sites have had Pagerank reduced due to bad linking, broken linking and other general errors. The rationale behind concerns Trust and Authority - the powers that may be in the Googleplex consider that a site with broken links and links to "bad neighbourhoods" is not a site that should be highly trusted.

Could this be the sole reason for the Pagerank readjustment?

Unlikely, as it is not believed that this was the sole underlying reason, as various sites were affected that had no involvement in buying or selling links. It is more probable that this was a complete overhaul or readjustments of Google's Pagerank scoring systems, which has led to a complete broad reassessment. The fact that so many experts point to the trading of links as a reason, is a theory that Google are probably pleased to let us believe. Basically, they do not like the buying and selling of links for the purposes of increasing SERPS, so they're happy for us to believe that they've applied penalties to this which they hope will then deter webmasters from doing this in future. The true reasons will probably never be known.

So how can you increase your sites Pagerank?

- Continue to engage in an ongoing campaign of link building, obtaining links from sites with a similar theme to yours. Don't get too concerned about Pagerank.

- Avoid dubious practices that Google frown upon such as buying and selling of text links. If you do buy text links for any other reason than to improve Pagerank, make sure the no follow tag is inserted in the link. However, it is much safer to avoid them totally.

- Check your site for broken links - including links to other sites, and make sure you don't link to sites that may be considered bad - such as spammy sites and those involved in selling text links.

There are too many urban myths concerning Pagerank and the reality is it is not the "be all and end all". Just concentrate on optimising your site and building incoming links, getting good content and applying a good relevant theme to your website and let everyone else stress about Pagerank. At the end of the day, it just isn't that important.

About the Author:

Robin Porter is CEO of Arpey Internet, a Maidstone web design company based which provides affordable web design for the UK