What could cause a drop in pagerank

[BobGW]

Our home page pagerank dropped from 4 to 3.

nlpca(dot)com

What are the possible things that could cause this?

[RobertFisher]

Bob,

Remember, PR is arrived at mathematically and any change to a variable will cause a change to the result. That said, usually the minor changes with loss of a link here or there, addition of same, on page changes, we do not notice right away because Google only adjusts on occasion and not internet wide (I keep asking for the schedule but they won't give it to me). Now, if you had dropped from 4 to 0 or 1, that would be different in my opinion and a signal something was amiss in the eyes of Oz.

Best

[BobGW]

Is pagerank on-site or off-site factors?

[EGOL]

Several things can cause a drop in page rank of the homepage

-- loss of links to the homepage or any part of the site

-- important sites that link to you loose some of their links and thus have less pagerank to pass on to you

-- changes in the links that important sites have up to you - changing the code so that they do not pass pagerank - these could be connections through a script

-- changes in the linkage structure of your site that change the flow of pagerank through it

-- periodically google recalibrates pagerank (If they didn't tons of sites would be making it to ten.  This is a math adjustment similar to adjusting for inflation.  If your site  gains PR at a lower rate than the web average your pagerank could go down

-- adding a ton of pages to your site could cause a drop in pagerank as pagerank flows out of your main site and into those pages - similar to adding a new wing onto a swimming pool and then connecting them to allow water to flow in

-- (some people will disagree with this one    -- adding a lot of links to your site that connect to other websites

-- doing something naughty that makes google drop your pagerank as a warning or as a punishment

-- if your site just recently earned four, maybe it was a very low four, now your site is showing as a very high three, this could just be flux in the calculations and rounding... keep earning links and four will return soon

[BobGW]

Thanks again for your always excellent information EGOL

Let's talk about this one:

-- doing something naughty that makes google drop your pagerank as a warning or as a punishment

I recently was adding 4 keyword phrases per title (and one or 2 per URL) to many of the internal pages of nlpca(dot)com. Some of the keywords were a little off topic, but most were OK. Before I could continue and add the same keywords to the H1 and content, we got dropped from a 4 to a 3 in pagerank and we slipped 20 positions for our main keyword 'NLP' and others as well.

I'm trying to determine if Google dinged us for this, or if it was something else, and if we will come back up - it's all fixed - I'm using one or 2 appropriate keywords per page except for the home page, and I've added appropriate H1 and content (3 times per keyword phrase)

But we're not going back up.

Looking for some of your brilliant advice EGOL

[RobertFisher]

As per EGOL, it is both. Another thing with the changes you are making to the pages, if you change things to the point that the meta desc. does not match the content, you will cause a higher bounce rate because when someone clicks, sees something other than what they thought they would see, they leave. That will also affect PR (IMO).

EGOL nails a lot here.

[EGOL]

I recently was adding 4 keyword phrases per title (and one or 2 per URL) to many of the internal pages of nlpca(dot)com. Some of the keywords were a little off topic, but most were OK. Before I could continue and add the same keywords to the H1 and content, we got dropped from a 4 to a 3 in pagerank and we slipped 20 positions for our main keyword 'NLP' and others as well.

I very much doubt that this would cause a drop in pagerank.  Pagerank problems are usually associated with link manipulation.

You say that you were adding off topic keywords to page titles.  I believe that google imght consider that a small sin.  I've never heard of google reducing pagerank for something like that but you never know what google will do and not tell people about it - but a visible pagerank drop is a warning.

Did you get any messages in webmaster tools?

Using off-topic title tags is a cousin to cloaking.  It conveys to searchers that you have that off-topic content on your page and then when they arrive and you don't have it they are not happy.  They feel like they have been spammed.  Google might detect this by bounce rate or some form of report from searchers.  They might also detect it from during a automated review of your content.

One experience that I had was with a group of about 80 pages.  I published them to see where they ranked then edited all of the title tags, see where they rank, edited the title tags and see where they rank, and then did it again.  Those 80 pages all took a big hit.  They stayed down for about a year before recovering their original rankings - which were quite good.

That's all I can say.  Lots of the above is not "hard evidence".  Just what looks to me like cause and effect and guesses at what google might do.

[Vahe.Arabian]

"page rank" updates can be a cause - http://www.seroundtable.com/google-pagerank-update-14684.html

I wouldn't stress too much importance on PR.

Hope this helps,

Vahe

[BobGW]

Vahe,

I accidentally clicked 'Good Answer' twice for EGOL

Your answer was informative. I will be sure and get you next time.