Back to the Dark Ages of PageRank
White Hats Suffer in Recent Backlink Update
Posted by Adam Hayes
The June 2006 PageRank and Backlink update has left some white hat SEOs puzzled.
Well another PageRank update has come and gone and unfortunately it took many links with it. We aren't sure yet (and Matt has yet to comment) as to the reason for this drop in the amount of pages displayed after using the "link:www.ahfx.net" operator in Google. We all know that Google displays fewer links than they have on record (just go compare the linkdomain:www.ahfx.net of Yahoo to the link:www.ahfx.net of Google for a quick difference.)
However, normally with every PageRank update there is a corresponding backlink update where the number of backlinks should increase (if you are continually getting links). During the beginning of last year a site showed 23 back links. Later that year it showed 58 and hovered there for most of the year. Then there was another stir (or messup) and the backlinks dropped back down to 23 then shot right back up to 58. Unfortunately, this last update dropped the page to the old 23 links again (is this a coincidence or are they using last year's old data???).
This might just be from an even greater increase on the crack down of reciprocal links. Or it just might be a "oops we used last years data again...." Someone made a comment on Matt Cutts' blog about this:
I would love to hear about anything related to the June 27 issue so many of us with white sites got hit by. Should I be looking for new job (the changes are permanent) or is it known by Google that white hat sites got hit too and things will change back to white sites?
Whatever the reason, it will be interesting to see if Google brings back the lost backlinks or if it will be more of the same since Big Daddy.
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