As I noted in my last post, the latest Google PR update on 9/26/2008 was quite abnormal.  Deserving sites that should have got PR actually lost PR.  Undeserving and/or sites not promoted gained PR.  The day after this PR update, and on Google’s birthday, Webmasters are lashing out at Google.  Some are even calling Google’s PR algorithm as being broken and badly neglected.

Here’s some highlights of the talk going on…

In this Digital Point post, a Website owner claims that he received a PR 3 on a page that he posted just yesterday.  He claims it is not even indexed in Google Search yet.

Also in the same thread, this post from another Webmaster claims he received a PR 2 from a blog post he made just days prior.

This post claims that an under construction site attained a PR 6.

Another post that claims they got a PR 2 19 days after they launched their Website.

But there is a funny in the Digital Point forum today.  One guy was complaining that he wants Google to lower his PR because the site does not deserve it.  Here’s the thread.  Make sure you also look at the last post of that thread on the first page. :) 

Some noteworthy sites that lost PR are Digitalpoint’s forum, which went from a PR 7 to a PR 6.  Also Namepros, another large forum, went from a PR 7 to a PR 5.

Some Web directories took a beating as well.  AuthorityDirectory.com went from a PR 4 to a PR 0.  Worldlinksdirectory.com, which is still advertised as a PR 6, is now a PR 3.  But if you are the bid directory owner in this thread, using a dropped domain, you are happy to go from a PR 5 to a PR 6!

From everything I have seen, it looks like Google’s PR algorithm is simply broken.  If that is not the case, then as a Google Executive I would be questioning employees about the apparent failure of this toolbar PR export.

While Webmasters use this as a gauge to determine the health of Webpages, there are quite a few average surfers that use the toolbar PR to determine if a site/page is trustworthy.  By Google giving PR to sites/pages that do not deserve it, Google is doing a disservice to the Internet.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 1:39 am and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.