Google: PageRank Drops Most Likely Because You Sell Links

In a new Matt Cutts video, the Google engineer answers why webmasters are likely to see a toolbar PageRank drop for their site. He mentions three reasons:

(1) You simply lose a link from a third party page that had a lot of high PageRank.

(2) You have weird canonicalization issues with your site and domains that caused confusion.

(3) The most common reason, Matt said, was because the site is selling links and thus Google will demote the PageRank of that site in order to remove the incentive from link buyers to purchase links from that site.

Here is the video:

Matt also explained that – Google PageRank Toolbar is updated three to four times per year, in order not to have webmasters focus on the PageRank, over content and other SEO concepts. Also, Google PageRank Toolbar data is not unreliable, just rounded on a scale from 0 to 10.

Finally, if you are/were selling links and have seen a PageRank drop, simply stop selling links, submit a reconsideration request and Google will review the site.

For more on PageRank, see our What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters.

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• What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
• First Google Toolbar PageRank Update Of 2011
• What Is A Link Worth? Part 1: Valuing PageRank
• Google’s PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?
• Why PageRank Isn’t A Useful Metric For International Link Building
• Google’s Norvig: PageRank Is Overhyped
• Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google