Google PageRank Update: Friend or Foe
Last week, our good friend Matt Cutts informed us that a Google PageRank update would occur over the next few days. By our calculations, this means that the updates most likely occurred over the weekend. Since Mr. Cutts “figured the SEO industry could use something to discuss, so I thought I’d give people a heads-up about the toolbar PageRanks”, I think we should do just that.
So the first question we have to ask is “How will these updates affect Apogee’s Clients?” And maybe more importantly, “How will this update affect our strategy and link building tactics for clients?” Granted, there is more to life in the SEO world than PageRank, however, it is a very visible and easily accessible way for our clients to identify if we are doing a good job with their site, and therefore requires attention. Specifically, the hunting and gathering that we SEO-ers do could be highly influenced by this shift - if a site’s PageRank bombs, should we steer clear? What if there is a huge jump in PageRank for a site? Maybe we should move the techniques that have proved successful for that client to the front of our link building efforts for others.
In reviewing a portion of our client base, it appears that there have been a few who have seen some positive affects of these new PageRanks. This is good to see. In fact, the Apogee Search website has also been given a new PageRank of 6 (up from the PR4 we had on Friday!). As a direct result, this took a few of our rankings hovering around the top 10, and put them in the number 1 spot (Search on Austin Search Engine Marketing today).
However, we should really be looking for the stories of sites that lost PageRank over the weekend. I am sure there are plenty of people crying in the SEO blogosphere about their losses. If anyone lost PageRank over the weekend, let us know. It would be interesting to see if any conclusions can be found in regards to what new things this PageRank update is taking into consideration so that we can all avoid them, or focus on them, whatever the case may be.
