The Pagerank Of My Website Dropped: What Could Be The Reason?

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Yesterday, I witnessed a drop in the pagerank of my website Human Anatomy from 3 to 2. First I tried to find the possible causes of this on my own. I searched on google alot about the issue and tried to find whether the problem is global or only my website is affected. When I entered search terms like "Drop in pagerank", "pagerank dropped" etc, I got pages written in 2007 in results of the search. This clearly indicated that the phenomenon is not global and only my website is affected. Then I tried to find whether my website is penalized by google or something like that. I tried to find the pages of my website in google's index. I was happy to see that almost all the pages ranked the same on google and there was no decline in SERPs. So neither the problem was global nor was my website penalized. What could be the reason? The next think I thought was that probably google has updated its pagerank criteria or something similar. But there was no way for me to find it out. I searched and searched and searched and finally got a page written in june 2011 by the webpronews saying that some people have witnessed google's own pagerank drop from 10 to 9. Firstly I was amazed to see that a company which calculates a metric drops its own ranking in its own metric. There must be something going behind. By the way, I tried to relate this to the drop in ranking of my own website but I couldn't find a solid answer.

 

So I had only one option, which was to seek help from other people online,

I posted my problem on Google help forum, which is constantly criticized by some people for not providing correct information. I got a few replies in which I was told that I don't need to worry about the pagerank thing. Its importance is dropping with each passing day. I was told that the only possible cause for you website to drop the pagerank is that the google has recalculated the value of the backlinks that point to your website. This recalculation might have resulted in a lower reputation than before and that is why the pagerank dropped.

 

The answer looked reasonable and I think this might be the reason, but I am not sure about it. I need to know a few things and I know the Xisto community is the best place to get these facts.

Number one: What is the actual cause behind the pagerank drop in general? I mean lots of people experience this and some are very intelligent and educated. So they can tell the reasons behind the phenomenon better.

Number two: Should I worry about the drop? The more probable answer is no but can anyone tell me any bad thing that can happen to me because of a lower pagerank.

Number three: What should I do to restore the pagerank to what it was before? Should I just concentrate on getting more backlinks or should I give my website some time to get the real natural backlinks.

Number four: What should I do to avoid these drops in future?

I hope someone on this forum would come up with a brilliant answer

[Xarex 1]

Google dropped a lot of page ranks. Your site might not be keeping up. Ever since Google instilled their new Panda Program.

 

A search of Google will provide you with a load of information as to what happened:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+Panda

 

But I think you should agree with your responders on the Google forums.

 

Your page is extremely informative without being too cluttered. It's even less cluttered than a Wikipedia page on the same information.

 

And it's very simple and beautiful to the human eye.

 

You're likely not going to attract the average adult (unless they are curious) or child to your site. YOU WILL BE ATTRACTING MEDICAL STUDENTS, NURSES, DOCTORS, etc.

 

Google has probably ranked your page as an informative website that doesn't change too often. How often do you add new content? Google loves pages that change daily.

 

Don't worry about the drop. The only way you can ensure that your site doesn't drop: Google hates duplicates and plagiarism. If your site is copying information from another site that isn't your own words. Google will eventually detect it and classify your site as a copy of another site or something like that. I assume that your site doesn't do this. And add new content!

 

Keep your sitemap.xml file up-to-date.

 

How's your Google Analytics? Do you get spikes? And how's your site in competition with other sites on the Google search engines? If you search for something in a related area, what page does your site land on?

 

Maybe develop a randomly changing tags area with human anatomy keywords and when clicked, people are taken to that page? Or FAQ area at the end of each article on the page with questions and they can be taken to a FAQ area about the body? You need something more that attracts people and keeps them scrolling through your pages? Maybe more articles on different areas of the body? Or just how far the human body can go? It would make your site unique. If you want to attract people beyond the doctor or nurse or medical student, and start attracting a heap of average people... than you might just need to add these unique articles.. articles that teach people new things about the body.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Your page is extremely informative without being too cluttered. It's even less cluttered than a Wikipedia page on the same information.

Thanks for the complements, but I have a question for you. Is it good fro my website? What was your first guess about the authority of the content on my website? Did the website and the content on it look professional to you?

You're likely not going to attract the average adult (unless they are curious) or child to your site. YOU WILL BE ATTRACTING MEDICAL STUDENTS, NURSES, DOCTORS, etc.

The targets of my website are students. Though I don't only target students of medicine, and other people related to medical field, the level of detail I provide automatically makes such people the primary targets.In a broader sense, I want to target all students who study anatomy in schools at every level. But as the growth of the website proceeds forward, I think I am going more towards targeting qualified medical people, and minor students will find the information highly complex and irrelevant.
Currently, it is very difficult for me to address this issue because I hardly extract time out of my timetable to add new content to the website, which is the prime need of the website. I have plans to take steps so that the pages of my website also target minor students who don't require vast details, but currently, it is a secondary issue for me. I know I might be losing great number of traffic because there are more minor students studying anatomy as a minor subject than proper medical students, but it is not possible for me to currently address this issue. I have to add more content to the website to make it a complete description of anatomy. Once I achieve this goal, I would definitely address the issue of expanding the circle of my audiences.

Google has probably ranked your page as an informative website that doesn't change too often. How often do you add new content? Google loves pages that change daily.

Well, I don't add content regularly. Some days I would go on adding up to 10 pages, while on others I won't add a single page. Sometimes week pass before I add a single word to the website. So if your description and explanation is correct, google has classified my website correctly.If google has ranked my website as an informative website which doesn't change too much (which it eventually will become irrespective of my liking), is it good for my website. I think it is, because eventually, my website will become reach a state where I would not add any further content to it, so to keep my expectations in control, I think it is good for me.
But I would here ask that why would google drop the pagerank of informative websites which do not change frequently. Google should give more weightage to informative website, not drop their pagerank. That is something I need your comments on.

Don't worry about the drop. The only way you can ensure that your site doesn't drop: Google hates duplicates and plagiarism. If your site is copying information from another site that isn't your own words. Google will eventually detect it and classify your site as a copy of another site or something like that. I assume that your site doesn't do this. And add new content!

Well all content on my website is original, which I have created by myself. So it is very unlikely that google sees my website as a content farm or one which contains duplicate content. I know that duplicate content isn't going to take me anywhere. I can't succeed by doing illegal stuff and telling lie because the world is not full of fools. People easily detect copied content and once they find you are of no value, they won't return to the website again.

Keep your sitemap.xml file up-to-date.

I use wordpress and the Google XML sitemaps plugin on it. According to my knowledge, the plugin automatically updates the sitemap.xml once I create new content, and this is one of the main reasons why almost every newly created page of my website is in google's index the day after it is published.

How's your Google Analytics? Do you get spikes? And how's your site in competition with other sites on the Google search engines? If you search for something in a related area, what page does your site land on?

Well, I don't get spikes at all. I get a regular number of visitors and the pattern remains the same for every day of the week. I don't get unusual traffic increase or even decrease. So I would definitely ask you is it good to have spikes. If yes, then why?
I try to check on the rankings of different pages of my website. I mostly do manual checking on google for the search terms. I do know the fact that google nowadays may display different results to every single user but still one can speculate generally about the rankings.
To be honest, I am very happy about the performance of my website in terms of SERPs. A good number of pages of my website rank on the first page of google's results for respective search terms, some of which are worth reasonable traffic. For instance, the primary keyword for my website is "Human Anatomy", and my website ranks between 3-8 for this term. It is a high traffic keyword and I receive a reasonable number of visitors through it.
For many other terms the website ranks on the first page of google results, which shows that the website has a good reputation in eyes of big G.
However, I would like to state here that the performance is not by far as good in other search engines. I try to rank good on bing and yahoo but I don't know what to do different to get higher rankings on these search engines. More than 80% of my search traffic comes from google alone, which clearly shows that I am not doing well on other search engines. I should get about 20% of my traffic from bing (according to the search market shares both search engines have) but I don't know why my website don't rank well on bing, and what I should do different than SEO FOR GOOGLE to get my website ranked better.

[rflexii 0]

its mostly caused by drop in traffic to your site

[Xarex 1]

Thanks for the complements, but I have a question for you. Is it good fro my website? What was your first guess about the authority of the content on my website? Did the website and the content on it look professional to you?

My only complaint about your site: Google Adsense.

You have two ads placed almost right next to each other. What is the point of this?

One ad at the top is fine. There should be a picture by "What is Human Anatomy?"

It looks unprofessional to have two of the exact same Google Ads by each other. Maybe not exactly alike each time. But put a picture there.

Well, I don't add content regularly. Some days I would go on adding up to 10 pages, while on others I won't add a single page. Sometimes week pass before I add a single word to the website. So if your description and explanation is correct, google has classified my website correctly.

At the moment, my page rank is 3. Some days, I don't add anything. Some days, I add 100 videos. Each week or at least once every 2 weeks, I'll add an article to my site.

If google has ranked my website as an informative website which doesn't change too much (which it eventually will become irrespective of my liking), is it good for my website. I think it is, because eventually, my website will become reach a state where I would not add any further content to it, so to keep my expectations in control, I think it is good for me.
Well, I don't get spikes at all. I get a regular number of visitors and the pattern remains the same for every day of the week. I don't get unusual traffic increase or even decrease. So I would definitely ask you is it good to have spikes. If yes, then why?

It's not bad that Google has ranked your site as informative. An informative site would be deemed as say.. me typing something like, "Pangaea" and the first result is? Wikipedia.

You want it so that when someone types in "Femur", Google knows that the content on your site is easy to read and relevant to this topic, so your site comes up.

Again, the Page Rank drop probably means less people are coming to your site at the moment. Look at the season. What day is it? What month? It's July. It's summer time. Not too many people are searching about parts of the body. Whose in school right now? Come September-May, your site will probably get a spike in hits. If you don't get spikes and the number is regular, than I guess everything is normal.

However, I would like to state here that the performance is not by far as good in other search engines. I try to rank good on bing and yahoo but I don't know what to do different to get higher rankings on these search engines.

You need to manually submit your site to these search engines. Search Google or even search their own search engines for submitting your site to Yahoo and Bing.


A suggestion if you want more traffic and to get your site name out.. something I would do.. sign up and gain a small reputation on major forums. If you have an hour extra per week, put aside this time to do exactly this:

Go to Yahoo Answers, people will ask questions on there about Human Anatomy. You can even search for questions people have asked -- monitor the new questions and answer them. It asks for a source (where you got your information from), put your website down and Google and other search engines will index it quick, especially if people click on it. Make it a priority to answer quite a few of these questions that people ask. The more, the better.

Search for other major sites related to your subject, things that you might be able to answer -- and sign up for them - and make sure you have a signature to your website in your link.

Even Xisto forums and Xisto are heavily indexed sites -- I search my site, and I always find a result "youtrippy" from here on a google search.

Ultimately what you're doing, more people will click from OTHER SITES. And Google will notice the traffic from these majors sites GOING TO YOUR SITE AND GOOGLE WILL LIKELY INDEX YOU FASTER AND INCREASE YOUR RANK.


Since my site is related to music and it could even be related to drugs, I often post about music-related topics, or I might even comment about some type of drug or whatever, and in that, I always include a link to my site. If you can do this on major sites -- your site will get indexed and noticed in no time.

The more people that go to your site, the more likely your results are going to come up as #1 on Google.

But just remember, you're definitely going up against giants -- such as WebMD or SymptomChecker.. these sites are hard to bypass. Heavily indexed with a reputation. Be happy if you're #3.