Matt Cutt’s from Google told us a few months ago not to expect a pagerank update anytime soon. Apparently the servers that did the updates were down and it wasn’t a priority to fix them anytime soon so we probably wouldn’t see an update until 2014.
Then at about 2 am on Friday December 6th shit hit the fan when Google surprised us all with a paegerank update. Not sure if people were more shocked that the update happened or the results. Some people are reporting as many as 90% of sites took a hit and lost pagerank.
Some people are hoping (praying) this roll out was a test based on past data and a new more updated will happen again soon, correcting these major downturns.
I took a look at 80 domains that were previously ranked PR0 to PR5. Yeah I’m a geek like that and do randomly track all kinds of things like this on various websites over years. LOL
- 4 of the 80 went up in pagerank. (5%)
- 36 of the 80 went down (45%)
- 40 stayed the same as before. (50%)
Now let’s look at some specific websites that are important to the adult industry.
- FreeOnes was a PR5 now it’s a PR4
- AVN was a PR5 – and stayed the same
- XBIZ was a PR5 – and stayed the same
FreeOnes going down to a PR4 is probably the biggest shock in the adult industry in terms of SEO. That was a big hit for one of the biggest legit sites out there.
How about some adult industry blogs?
- LukeFord.com was a PR4 – and stayed the same
- LukeisBack.com was a PR3 – and stayed the same
- MikeSouth.com was a PR3 – and stayed the same
- AdultFYI was a PR3 now it’s a PR2
- Tattle.xxx was a PR4 now it’s a PR3
What surprises me here is that Mike South’s site didn’t go up in pagerank despite all the mainstream attention he’s been getting lately. One would think a few links form sites like Huffington post would be a great boost in pagerank. Yet obviously that wasn’t the case.
The next big shocker was AdultFYI.com – it went from a PR3 to a PR2. And even crazier is that previously their welcome.php page used to be a PR4 and it is now showing a PR2 as well. That’s a huge kick in the ass for a website that has had a massive increase in traffic lately. Some estimates are that the traffic on this site has more that doubled and maintained that rate over the past few months and their Alexa ranking (I know Alexa LOL) but still their Alexa ranking has improved at alarming skyrocketing levels – going from like 100k to like 20k. I know traffic ratios have no direct correlation to pagerank but still, there are a lot more people linking to the site and somehow all of those extra links meant nothing and the site took a huge hit with pagerank.