phpBB.com PageRank Drops from 9 to 5 overnight... why?

[Highway of Life]

I’m not sure how many of you noticed, but phpBB.com used to have a Google PageRank of 9, further back in 2005, it had even reached as high as 10, being one of the few (25 or so) sites that had a PageRank that high.
The main reason is that every single phpBB board installed has a line in the footer: Powered by phpBB.

As phpBB got extremely popular and more than 2,000,000 (2 million) phpBB bulletin boards were installed, this caused an incredible number of backlinks to .com
Over time, as the Google search algorithm changed, phpBB.com page rank fluctuated up and down between 8 and 10 for several years.
However, as recent as 2 months ago, .com page rank dropped overnight from 9 to 5, and has been sitting at 5 ever since.

Many theories have come fourth as to why this has happened, but there seems to be no one single consensus. If you search Google, you find that the backlinks are still there, nothing seems to be lost, at least from what we can tell from doing various analysis of it, some think it is because of the sponsored ads on the front page, and that we should give them no-follow attributes, others believe it is because Google thinks that phpBB has too many backlinks and that somehow it is spam.

phpBB.com has 654,000 pages indexed in Google, 1,777,000 (1.7 million) individual incoming site links (backlinks) from Google, and -- to show it’s actual traffic ranking for comparison -- has a Alexa Rank of 2928, much higher than most sites with a PageRank of 7 or even 8.
Take WebProWorld as a comparison, WebProWorld has 1,060 unique site backlinks, yet has a higher PageRank at 6.

What do you think caused it to drop so hard overnight?

[incrediblehelp]

Have they lost traffic or rankings? Probably not so who cares about the toolbar other than people that misunderstand it.

[espmartin]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

...Probably not so who cares...

I do actually. Not that I'm one of the PR worshiPeRs or anything, but this would make a
great case study, with the information already gathered, and the questions asked by incredible
answered.

I wait for inputs from the pros!

[Tubby]

Google are playing with the green toolbar.
It might simply be that Google thinks a self recommendation is worth less.
if a phbb installation comes with a link back, Google might consider it a self recommendation...

Who knows what Google thinks... I do not for sure.

I think PHBB.com will continue along quite well, no matter what the little green bar says. The PHBB product quality has not changed, I think people will still use it, (Even if the Google green lines turns purple and register 0.5 on the Richter scale)

[Highway of Life]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Have they lost traffic or rankings? Probably not so who cares about the toolbar other than people that misunderstand it.

I don’t know for sure if they’ve lost traffic or not, keyword searches always perform well, but with a site that huge and with the recent Gold release, it’s really difficult to determine the impact, if any, that it had on phpBB.com
Though this does beg the question: what is PageRank for? just for the users of the Google Toolbar, or does it actually affect a site in a negative or positive way?

[Tubby]

Highway of Life asked
"Though this does beg the question: what is PageRank for? just for the users of the Google Toolbar, or does it actually affect a site in a negative or positive way?"

Toolbar page rank, is the remnants of a system that is past its used by date. It is a stale bottle of milk that has gone sour. The fresh bottle of milk is hidden in the Google fridge (where it is harder to get at.?)
Ignore it. . It has gone sour

[nashville]

I used to have a page rank of 7 and now I am not even sure, maybe 5. But I have 4 times the number of visitors and rank higher in the search engines with good honest descriptions ... and I make money now.

With about 100 factors being included in the concept of ranking, I just focus on the visitor at this point.

[visio]

my main site was PR4 for the last 2 years and backlinks varying between 16 and 30, now backlinks 243 and PR is 3....

also for 2 years I wanted to be on the first page for e-gold hosting, and yes I was like on the third position, the all site was optimized for that keyword, then after the problems with e-gold I started to move away and now that the site is optimized for other keyword I'm the first on google for e-gold hosting.

Funny, also I have a directory, on the last update most directories were hit hard, but mine?! the PR increased.....

[leesw]

Originally Posted by visio

Funny, also I have a directory, on the last update most directories were hit hard, but mine?! the PR increased.....

So what is the URL of your directory so I can submit to it?

[visio]

the directory is only for hosting sites and web design, but here it is:
Web Hosting Directory

once a month I check the new links and only 3 or 4 are accepted...

[DanThies]

They're selling paid links, and they're getting the same toolbar PR drop that other link sellers are getting. Look at the footer links on this page as an example:
phpBB • MODX Utilities

[phx-keith]

Maybe it has something to do with your outbound links. If you link to a site Google does not like you can be penalized, so I have read.

Try using nofollow in your links. From everything I've experienced an outbound link with nofollow in it still counts as a link for the site it is linking to. It is my understanding you do not lose PR and you are now safe from being penalized for linking to a site google does not like.

BTW: As far as I know PR is a number Google give a website based on Google trust. I was a PR0 and was on the first page for several terms and now I'm a PR4 and still get the same traffic.

I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say on the subject.

[RegDCP]

Originally Posted by Highway of Life

some think it is because of the sponsored ads on the front page, and that we should give them no-follow attributes

I would make that my first guess.

Reg

[seo4china]

Strange, SMF is still PR8...

[schmeetz]

Maybe it's just that footer links dont have as much value anymore? Definite possibility no?

[datetopia]

During the last PR update, PR dropped for many websites. This caused the back links provided by these websites to worth less also.

We should also take into account that most phpbb forums (probably over 90%) had low PR as the software is free and many are amateur forum websites or empty contentless forums attached to low PR websites, so with the last PR drop most of them went to PR 0 causing phpbb to lose most popularity gained from these.

IMO, with the latest algorithm, it's almost impossible to get PR9 if all your backlinks are one pages with PR5 or less (even if there are millions of pages like that). You should have some PR8 backlinks or many PR7 backlinks.

[khurramali]

It had to happen, because Anchor text of the links said the same thing.

It is basic SEO that Anchor text should be slightly different for all back links and preferably your key phrases.

[DannyS]

It does look like a Google punishment for selling text links. This site should obviously have a higher page rank. A quick check on two other major open source software sites both show a rank of 8.

Interesting was the value they have put in for the link attribute tag; i.e. rel="external sponsor". I'm not sure if this was done in reaction to the page rank drop or might have caused it. The "external sponsor" is new to me. Might it have been a red rag to the Google Bull?

[edhan]

Personally, PR does not concern me too much. Rather, the influx traffic daily will be my main concern. Even if PR goes up but traffic goes down then it will be a great impact. As long as I still have the traffic, PR will not be a real concern unless traffic increases with PR.

[blogdawg1]

I have to agree with Dan, obvious paid links in the footer of the site.

[qh4dotcom]

My guess is also that they have paid sponsored links which Google does not like.

[Highway of Life]

Originally Posted by qh4dotcom

My guess is also that they have paid sponsored links which Google does not like.

But don’t most sites, and nearly all large sites have some kind of paid ads or sponsored links? Why would Google not like these in particular?

[candysoo18]

this is really a great news for phpbb..keep the postings coming for good backlinking strategies...hope no spammers get through..

[flanok]

What about relevancy.

Most back links are not about forums, but every other subject under the sun.

maybe 1.5 million of the links are discounted because the subject matter on most forums is not about PHPBB

[stnicolas]

Originally Posted by qh4dotcom

My guess is also that they have paid sponsored links which Google does not like.

Are you insinuating that Google wouldn't appreciate sponsored links that are not AdWords?