Small Business Resource Center Blog: Google PR Update and Owner Protests

Google PR Update and Owner Protests

PageRank, or PR, is the Google method of ranking sites based on importance, and this week's PR update confirms what I warned small business website owners years ago. Don't get hung up worrying about PR. Online forums are a great way to test the pulse of an industry or get reactions to trends. Forum members are buzzing about PageRank.

Within the last few days I've viewed forum posts with protests by site owners because their ranking dropped by several points each time in the last two Google PR updates. On the Google scale of 1 to 10, one dropped from PR9 to PR5.

I believe Google is cleaning house in line with advice that I give small business clients for my commercial website design services.

The site that went from PR9 to PR5 is well established, so I doubt they employ deceptive techniques. Instead, I believe that in tweaking algorithms, a site that was PR9 earlier in 2007 may be just as important now at PR5, and PR6 to PR10 is being reserved for truly outstanding websites. The secret to success in small business website design is still providing original quality content often.

Small business owners may never achieve PR10 by the very nature of being "small". Megasites with a large staff of site developers and search engine experts are more likely to get premier ranking. However, there are methods that you can use to improve ranking and site performance.

View label results for SEO to read more search engine optimization advice on this blog. You may also be interested in my latest published article Small Business SEO Tips and Tricks to learn more about what happened to Google PageRank in 2007.