the good news is, google has updated visible Page Rank PR that’s displayed in google toolbar. one of my sites got a PR7, which is rather hard to get. take a look at singtel web site, theirs is also a PR7. 🙂 achieved from years of hard work.
although the visible google PR is not up to date, still looking at the green little bar is enjoying. according to google, PR is calculated and updated constantly and is factored into ranking algorithm constantly, it’s kind of ongoing process. however the PR value shown in google toolbar is only updated once every 2-4 months.
so if you see a google ranking jump, at the same time you find your PR increased, the PR improvement might not be the reason of the ranking jump, because your real PR most likely was updated some time before.
some people conclude that PR is dead, no point to monitor, follow, improve, etc. i do not agree with this. will talk about it later when i have time.
back to latest google update, which is still in process at this very moment.
this google update, named Jagger, is quite unique. the result is bad, at least for me, till today. very bad. many of my sites dropped rankings under major keywords or key phrases, sometimes dropped to nowhere, often from top listings. 60-70% of traffic are gone.
not only my sites, many many webmasters are reporting the same. no, we’re not using blackhat seo tricks, all my sites are clean, whitehat, useful to visitors. it’s not something personal, there’s a pattern, many good sites are buried deep in google at this moment.
some webmasters noticed massive google ranking movements as early as 22th sep, announcement of google update was made by webmasterworld, however goolge then said it’s not an update. but from last weekend, around 15th oct, more and more webmasters see more and more ranking movements in google. that’s the time i saw many of my sites dropped. webmasterworld decided to name it Jagger, and google says, ok, lets name it Jagger.
it’s the most lengthy google update so far, considering it might have started from 22th sep, and it’s still going on. best part is, google said, we’re still on stage 1 of Jagger update, 2 more stages are coming over the next 2 weeks.
good thing is, it’s not settled yet, i/we have good opptunities to recover. i’ve gone through many google updates, with no problem. every time my sites go stronger after updates. the reason is very simple, we do not use spammy dirty tricks.
bad thing is, it might be like this for at least 2 weeks, 70% of total traffic is a lot, and it affects our business seriously. it may become worse: current results may stick. although we’re confident that our sites are clean, but we are not google, they can do anything they want. sometimes good honest web sites may become victims in google’s battle with spammers.
if you too suffer in this update, the best thing to do now is, wait and see.
fingers crossed.