Google Pagerank & Backlink Update 07/13

Posted by Miles Evans

On July 13th there was a full blown backlink and PR update across all data centers at Google. I avoided commenting on it because it is even more confusing than the last update, but here is my best effort to lay out some of what we do know.

Please note that this is not a difinitive list but just what I have observed across the properties I track. Feel free to comment on your own observations.

• The PR update was the fastest we have ever seen with most estimates showing the complete export taking about an hour.
• This PR update seemed to focus on updating PR for pages that previously didn't have PR.
• Deep linked pages that received a bloated PR ranking on the last update were corrected. I noticed this myself.
• Established home pages have not changed PR. This would lead me to assume that there is another PR update pending.

And the worst change of all...

• The majority of reports indicate a dramatic loss in backlinks across a wide variety of sites, from sblogs to high quality established content sites.

Due to many webmasters losing 50% or more of their backlinks many are calling this latest update something that will be corrected soon. I would tend to agree as I am still seeing spammy sites getting away with unnatural backlinks of all shapes and sizes - but I wouldn't hold my breath.

So when is Google going to give us a realistic count for backlinks? I mean if that is the key metric on which they base their results, surely we should be using Google to check this rather than Yahoo? One can only dream.

The most insightful thread I have seen on the latest update is this one from DP forums.

Posted Jul 19, 2006 at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Trackback URL | Del.icio.us | DIGG!