You can guess what might have fallen in my heart when I noticed my blog was 0 PageRank. Viper proof plugin was showing PageRank: none! What mistake did I do? I never believe on black hat techniques and never tried to snatch a higher number doing anything nasty. Why Google penalized me?
OMG my other blog too is thrashed down to 0 pagerank? And another site too? No, no, no! Something is fissy. All of my blogs and websites displayed 0 PageRank. It was just puzzling. No idea what went wrong.
It was a great soothing to see Facebook too had 0 pagerank. I am happy again, not because Facebook too lost its pagerank, but because I knew there was some problem with Google PageRank system. Facebook can’t loose all of its pagerank at once.
What is PageRank?
It is a Google’s ranking system that awards each site with a number in scale 0 to 10. Higher the number the more authentic site. A site with 0 PageRank is considered less reliable compared to a site with higher PageRank. So you must always try to improve your Google page rank.
Though PageRank is a metric from the Google the biggest search engine company, it is reflect the website importance from all aspects. It is mostly based on the link popularity. It is truly ridiculous that there are some websites with higher PageRank that have 0 or very little content. So, people use PageRank along with Alexa and Compete to determine more accurate value of a website.
How to increase your google page rank
There are profuse tutorials, tips and courses about improving your SERP and increase your Google page rank. Talking about Google PageRank, the best suggestion will be to acquire back links from websites and webpages that have higher PageRank. If you succeeded to get a few dozens of back links from pages having PageRank 4 or higher, you’ll experience significant increase in Google PageRank.
Though the backlink is not everything, but it is most determining factor in calculating PageRank.
Why is my blog 0 PageRank?
Most often you’ll see N/A or 0 for PageRank when it is still a new blog. As it starts getting more links and improving in popularity, the PageRank increases gradually. This is normal and a usual case!
What gave it a big punch was PageRank 0 down from PageRank 3. It is not possible that all of the links I was getting were lost at once.
Finally all it turned out was the change in PageRank query URL. Google changed the query URL and all of the PageRank checker tools failed to retrieve the real value and thus, displayed N/A or 0. Great! there’s nothing to worry about.
The whole incident got more interesting in the shadow of long hypes that Google is going to withdraw PageRank. Most people thought if it is due to the closure of PageRank system. But it is verified now that PageRank is not dead yet.
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About Suresh Khanal
When PR going to show on other plugins and add-ons except Google PR toolbar? Do you have any idea as Google PR toolbar is not compatible with Firefox and Google Chrome and I really feel odd to open IE to check PR of any site.
Aaron @ Goa Carnival recently posted…Goa Carnival 2012
Oh..! That’s the reason why I’m seeing page rank n/a of my site. Right now I’m using SeoQuake extension with Google Chrome, so which is the best extension for Google Chrome to get accurate page rank in real time..?
Once Again, thanks for this nice article…
Ganesh Maharjan@MCQ Questions recently posted…C/C++ Programming Language – Set 6
Just be calm for a couple of days. I hope SEO Quake will publish their update. You can use prchecker till then. Thank you Ganesh for the comment.
Page rank system may not die, but it was expected that Google may not publicly show the page rank for sites…
Dude, the N/A is more horrible than PR 0 . I have noticed that sites ranked N/A take a longer time to get into some PR’s but PR 0 quickly transitions to higher ranks. I am not sure if it was my isolated experience. Any thoughts on the same?
Raj recently posted…Creative Ways You Can Rake In Lots Of Cash By Blogging
Its not your isolated experience but its true to everybody. Somebody said I better like you hate me than you don’t care me
That may happen some time. maybe because of some error on system.
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It almost killed me for some time. Ahh
I saw that PR glitch as well. I was lucky that I actually got an email from one of my advertising networks that told me not to worry about it and explained the problem to me, so I didn’t freak out.
I did discover that the page rank checker page did pull the correct page rank, so you can just go to the website and run a check directly.
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Yea Richard, PRCheckers seems to have updated their code already. The funny thing is Viper Proof on my own page. Hope it will update soon.
Personally, I wish Google would dump toolbar pagerank all together.
It’s misleading and completely skews SEO efforts across the board.
Don’t get me wrong, getting green is very fulfilling, but it is really too distracting…JMO.
Mark
Mark @ Organic SEO Services recently posted…TheBitBot.Com Adds Guest Posting To Every Post
Its why the rumor for long time that Google will stop displaying PageRank publicly. You are very true but some are getting good job
I agree with you. A lower PR site can still do better in the SERPs than a higher PR site.
Google should drop this page-rank concept now. Normal user searching for information wont bother about page-rank, but its bloggers and webmasters who emphasize more on it.And always hunt for high page rank websites.
Marks@Blogger Network recently posted…Blogger vs WordPress
That’s true Marks but most of Online Advertising are relied on this information. When you decide to spend some money advertising, you require something that helps you determine. PR is serving well for them.
I alos noticed the same. So, I didn’t lose all that hard work eh? Whew! Glad to hear that! In fact I think I’ll be gaining a few when it comes back up. Tell me, do you know when things would be back to normal, or would I need to change something in the viperproof settings?
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Hi Ivin,
I guess we’ll get the plugin update soon. But if you like to fix it yourself, there is a small code you need to make change. Please go to the Plugin Editor screen and change “http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?features=…..” into “http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?features=…..”, the Viperproof will start working fine.
Hi Suresh,
I edited the ViperProof plugin as you’ve suggested. It’s working now.
Thanks,
Ray
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I also believe that’s true Marks but a majority of of Web marketing are trusted this information. When you choose to invest some cash advertising, you require a thing that helps you determine. PR is serving well on their behalf. Aside from this, Google should drop this page-rank concept now. Normal user searching for information wont stress about page-rank, however its bloggers and webmasters who emphasize read more about it.
Nikki @ Gathering Herbs for Healthy Kidneys recently posted…Gathering Herbs for Healthy Kidneys
Suresh, I have also noticed the same a couple of days ago but there was no change in SERP and therefore I ignored it. Anyway thanks for bringing it in the notice of fellow bloggars.
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I have always believe that ‘real’ Page Rank is updated more frequently than what changes we see on the Pagerank toolbar. It took one of my blogs about 7 months to see a page rank and that happened during the last update.
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That’s true KC. Public PageRank is not the only number search engines use to determine if a page should be placed above on SERPs. However the toolbar PageRank tells more about a site.
Once I saw all my tools were showing bogus pagerank I knew either something was wrong on Google’s end, right now all appears to be fixed with the tools updating to new api format or whatever they changed.
I was just puzzled to see all of my sites PR dropped. Funny though, isn’t it?
When DragonBlogger was a PR4 and got slapped to a PR0 in June, I was very dismayed and it wasn’t a joke!
That must be really disappointing experience. Most of us believe that these type of accidents are caused by paid links or huge irrelevant links. But sometimes, it can be the problem in Google’s end. My PS Exam dropped to PR 1 from PR 5. I knew I had not done any wrong. I did nothing and just waited. It was just a couple of weeks when PS Exam was again positioned to PR 4. Not bad, but I lost some of high paying direct Ads. Poor me
Suresh Khanal recently posted…Google PageRank Error: Why is my website 0 PageRank?
Oh in my case it was no accident, I got a warning in my Webmaster tools from Google that they detected what appeared to be paid links and they told me they would penalize my PR. I was testing Intellilinks and Teliad at the time to review for my readers so I was in fact using some sponsored links… No accident, guilty as charged.
Obviously the issue is not with Toolbar Page Rank, but rather how third party tools look up the PR values. Google did make a change, they changed the look up URL for the Page Rank value. However, Google’s toolbar is showing PR of each site, but their toolbar is not even compatible with the latest Firefox version which is one of the most widely used browsers.
It was problem with third party tools and plugins like ViperProof. Everything settled now however.
I hope the toolbar works with Chrome?
Jeez I can imagine that causing a hell of a lot of disappointment seeing a big zero – especially as I know how gratifying it is when PR increases. Glad it was only a bug
Apart from checking the PR of other sites to verify, the first thing I would do is check traffic levels to see if something fundamental really has changed…
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I have seen many times the PR drop though without the drop in traffic. One of my website dropped down to 1 from 5. However in two or three weeks it was again got PR 4. I was totally surprised and really feel bad to see PR 1 for a site which used to be PR 6 some time. I’m still working to uplift that site to regain its older PR.
I noticed that my site dropped to page rank 3. I am glad I read this. This tells me that it is not entirely my fault. I hope this gets fix.
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What a shock I bet to see the big O! Thanks for the heads up. Good to know in case it happens to me in the future.
Thanks for raising awareness on this issue. I am actually new to SEO and still learning about getting a higher PR. Thanks for this information, maybe that’s why I’ve seen lots of blog posts just yesterday or the other day about Google PR.
I thought about it after noticing every site I run to their page rank were N/A, I use SEO quake. Do you have a fix for this already?
On hearing I too disappointed first but I bing “page Rank error fixed” and found the solution you can also try this for SEO Quake.
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every blogger write about how to get high ranked in any search engine however no one raise such problem reasons why such problems are created and how to get rid of these problems?
Thanks Suresh for writing such a useful post for us. will keep these these points in mind forever.
Great write up, thanks! It should be noted that Google PageRank is a very outdated number. For some reason, Google just doesn’t update those figures a lot. Make sure to concentrate on content now too to increase PageRank!
Reading your article gives me relief as I was also worried why any of the toolbar in FireFox not showing PR but showing N/A. Only one of the toolbar named SearchStatus is showing PR for most of the sites. Thanks for sharing this valuable information.
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Same thing happened to me…
Thank you for sharing, I will follow your tips and now I shouldn’t woory!
I noticed this effect on couple site’s I manage and was equally concerned.
However, I have begun to look less and less at PageRank, instead opting to monitor progress via SEOmoz’s Domain and Page Authority metrics. They don’t crawl as much data as Google, and they obviously aren’t Google, so it isn’t necessarily as accuate, but they are good measures (in my opinion).
I have experience this before when I saw my page rank went to “unranked” I was afraid also that I google penalized my site but when I saw Google is unranked too it was a relieved.
I don’t why google remove pagerank in any other tools, or maybe they just wanted to there on tool to see the pagerank.
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Same thing happened to me as well, and glad to see that I was not alone in this ordeal. After awhile I also realized that it was not on my end when other websites were also showing up as a page rank of 0. I assumed that it was due Google going private with it’s page rank program, and I actually saw another blogger saying this, but now it makes sense about the query having changed, as I just updated the plugin that I use to check, and they are even saying the same thing! I almost wonder if Google did it to get the webmasters buzzing about it!
-Jean
I agree with you that higher page rank back links also increases your page rank also. good tip for all of us.
I had the same issue last month while checking PR of one of my blogs. I quickly checked the PR of another popular blog and that too had the same issue.
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If the PR of site is lowered from where other site is linked. PR of both sites is automatically lowered.
Continue do follow links building for your site. Hopefully your site will get good PR in coming quarter.
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Hi dear
I have also same problem,my site listing is 1 year old and trafic is also fine but googlr rank is still 0
My domain is less than a year.I am seeing 0 page rank since beginning.I dont know the cause.some backlinks also there.Webmaster account shows several links.Is this punishment or else?
Had my pagerank go down for real. will work on getting good backlinks from related sites.
Good one! Although; my page rank is never rising from 0. I can’t figure out the reason. I write good fresh articles, it is not malware, not adult site or nothing. It’s just clean tech and health blog.
Can someone help?
Thanks for the article. This and the linked one to this; all are good.
Mrinal recently posted…Installing nAa Kernel & Custom ROM on X8, W8, X10 Mini & X10 Mini Pro
Pagerank is something related to link popularity. It is the Google’s count of links on other sites that are pointing to your page. I improved in PageRank by commenting a lot on other blogs. Though I’ve not publishing lot of guest posts, but it helps to improve your PageRank. Try to build link and in next update you’ll see some PR for your blog too!
People in some SEO forums are treating toolbar PageRank as just a number that suggests the reputability of a website, but that’s not always the case. There could be sites out there that are respected, but have low PRs. Yes, you can increase the PR by doing some off-page optimization, but you have to remember that the main purpose of link building should be relationship building. Oh, one more thing: having high PR doesn’t necessarily bring you to the top of the search results pages.
Google page rank 0 is not serious. I say that since I have a website with 500 view pages a day and a lot of inbound links.
I agree if you have many outbound links of your website, the pagerank can decrease. Maybe with the time, I will get page rank 1.
And also if you choose the right keywords, you don’t need a high pagerank.
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Thanks for this post. I also wondered why my blog’s page rank was down to zero, good thing that you mentioned trying another websites. Yes both Google and facebook has zero pagerank from my ends. Nice share!
There may be so many reasons behind zero page rank of a website ! I have view so many tips & strategy about google page rank but I learn via tips & strategy only high quality & do follow link play a important role to increase google page rank
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I hardly create remarks, however I browsed some comments on this
page Why My Blog is Google PageRank 0? | SEO MMO Tips.
I do have some questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be simply me or does it give the impression like some of the remarks look like they are left by brain dead people?
And, if you are posting at additional places, I would like to keep up with everything new you have to post. Could you post a list of every one of your social community sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
Mizuno MX Irons recently posted…Mizuno MX Irons
wow..from now i also start building backlinks thank you
rakesh recently posted…Difference|Switches and Hubs
the post is nice,
thanks for information
imruduu recently posted…10 Ilusi Mata Terbaik Di dunia
I was really concerned too, but this has allayed my fears a little. Thanks
I thought I would never get a higher pagerank and I will be permanently at 0, but after reading this article I realize, I have no backlinks, so that’s my new objective and thanks for the advice, I appreciated it.
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Thank you Suresh for sharing your experience. PageRank is the thing we must leave on Google. As Google suggest, webmasters must only concentrate on building good contenting focusing on readers. Glad to find your blog!
nice post bro very useful stuff.
Yeah.. Its very useful tips to gain apart of SEO
Regards
Kasi Viswanath
Thanks Suresh Khanal for sharing a great experience of PR error. I think lot’t of people searching for a same and hope everyone can get some major tips from your post.
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