Uncertainty around Page Rank update (March 2009)

During the first couple of weeks in March there have been many sites seemingly affected by a Google Page Rank update. Unfortuntely, most webmasters are complaining after seeing their Page Rank drop quite drammatically i.e. from 5/10 to 0/10. There is normally some fluctuation that occurs during the update of the Page Rank algorithm, which is commonly known as the Google Dance. However, changes aren’t normally as extreme as they appear to have been this month.

There is a lot of uncertainty around the update to the algorithm after Google announced that it is only updating 3-4 times a year now as opposed to the monthly change. A lot of webmasters are claiming that this recent change is due to a glitch with the Google Page Rank tool bar, but others think that a new element has been added into the algorithm. Most of the sites heavily affected are blog and news sites, which have all dropped to a Page Rank of 0. SEO experts think that this could be related to the introduction of an age-deflation factor, where news and blog items over a certain age lose their importance.

Personally we do not think that a Page Rank update her happened just yet, although everybody is waiting to see what happens when the first update occurs.