PageRank from 5 to N/A

[kymodo]

Hi there,

I do SEO for .. and it's a great site with all very valuable (and unique) information and resources. It was previously a PageRank 5 but recently (in the past week) it has gone to PR N/A across the entire website.

The website is still being indexed in Google and our rankings are still the same. And although I'm aware PageRank means very little these days, I'm a little concerned this may be the start for a decrease in rankings due to something being wrong on the website.

Have other people seen this?

Would love some input in case you see something that I'm not or what may be causing the issue.

Thank you for you time.

[TomRayner]

Hi Chris

That's a bit odd to say the least. Normally a loss or PR that dramatic means that Google might be penalising the site - although this normally means it goes to 0, rather than N/A.

You're right in thinking that there are much better metrics out there, but I think this certainly worth investigating.  I'd advise you to keep a close eye on your traffic in analytics and your rankings - it may be penalty related. Only briefly looked at your link profile but there does seem to be one or two links that are a bit unnatural (such as this one) - but like I say, haven't checked fully so could just be the exception to the rule.

Has your hosting or domain expired or renewed recently? I've seen PR fall because of that on some occasions. Also, have a look at your webmaster tools for errors - specifically for any crawl errors that may have occurred, like 403s.  Check for any spike there.  If there is one, it may reoccur, so you'd obviously want to remedy any problem there. You might also want to check your robots.txt hasn't had anything added to it by mistake.

Failing that I can't really think what may have caused your toolbar PR to fall.  My advice would be to watch your site very closely over the next week.  Hopefully, everything will be fine and the PR may return.  Worse case scenario, however, will be a penalty.  Look for any sharp traffic or ranking falls.  If you have the time, you may want to go through your backlink profile and make a note of any poor quality or suspicious links, just to give you a head-start should you need to remove them.

[kymodo]

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[TomRayner]

Yes, potentially it could.  It always used to be the way that it didn't matter who linked to you, you wouldn't be penalised for it.  But that all changed with the Penguin update. Now who links to you, where they link from and how are all very relevant.

I have seen these things sort of "fix themselves" in a few days, but it's a good idea to stay vigilant. If you ever need a hand, just drop me a line.

[kymodo]

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[TomRayner]

Absolutely, would love their insight too. It certainly has me stumped as to why it has happened and I've only give a few potential causes, nothing definite. So would love to see as well!