When Google PR Drops Down

I was surprised a month ago when I saw this site Google PR (page ranking) drops down from 5 to 3. But then I thought it’s natural since I put paid-linking ads from TLA (text link ads) on my sidebar.

Google PR sometimes not that important compared to Alexa ranking so far as traffic goes. Nor does this Googe PR drop has any significant influence to your previous traffics. If you see many unranked site or 0 PR have a good standing in SERP (search result pages). This site, for example, is ranked at #1 for keyword “blogger indonesia” , while my other site with PR 5 ranked at number 5 (see screenshot below)

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal whose site drops from PR 7 to 3 (imagine, how heartbreaking is that) says that in no way that drop decreases his traffics (his Alexa rank 3,500):

PageRank is seen by many as the end all value of a web site. Our PageRank dropped but we are receiving more Google search traffic than ever. PageRank does not define site rankings in Google or traffic and it should not be mistaken as so.

Roots and causes

So, what the basic reasons behind some website go down in Google PR?

Many SEO expert with many opinions all of which are agreed on certain points:

1. Paid linking. If you put a paid linking sites such as those from textlinkads.com, you are lucky if your blog / site doesn’t drop to zero. Paid linking is one mistake that will get penalized sooner or later.
2. Paid review. If you do a paid review every now and then from services such as Revew Me, etc you are just waiting for the Google PR penalties to come.
3. Duplicate contents. Either your blog content is a duplicated materials across your own sites networks or/ copy-pasted from other blogs / websites.

If you don’t do those three  breaches above but still experiencing drops in Google PR, chances are, as Daniel Scocco of Dailyblogtips. whose blog Google PR also drops to 4 said:

… a distribution of penalties (either automatic or manual). The theory that the penalized blogs were either selling links or part of a network that used a cross-linking strategy …

Google SERP for keyword “blogger indonesia” fatihsyuhud.com (PR3) is at #1 while afatih.wordpress.com (PR5) at #5