We at Beanstalk generally try to give our SEO blog readers and newsletter subscribers a heads-up on the latest search engine news and information prior to releasing it to the general public in the form of articles. We feel this is only fair for our loyal visitors. 🙂
Last night’s PageRank and backlink update was one of the bigger we have seen in recent history. The article we published on it covered many of the changes but we kept a couple of the key factors out of it and saved them just for our blog and newsletter readers until early next week when we will publish a more thorough article on the PageRank update and the new additions.
The sandox effect and the Google patent of the aging delay technology has been added into the PageRank calculation. This will not stop your site from attain PageRank during your time in the sandbox however an aging delay has been placed on the value of the links to your site and sites with mainly new links will have noticed a drop in their PageRank while sites with links that are many months old will have noticed an increase in PageRank or at least will have maintained their current rank.
What this basically means is don’t panick if you’ve dropped slightly while working hard to increase your backlink counts. if the majority of these links are new then they are not being given full credit in regards to your PageRank however as the links age the value of them will too and your PageRank will increase.
An additional note in regards to this update is that it only appears to be affecting older sites. Many sites that had a PageRank of 0 prior to the update continue to do so after. This is not uncommon during mild shifts but it’s the first time we have seen this during a major update such as this one. Our feel is that this further reinforces our belief that history is playing a stronger role in the PageRank calculations.