I never paid one bit of attention to my page rank until I decided to monetize my blog. As I studied and read about how blogs are ranked through google and Alexa I began to realize the importance of page ranking. I was pleased that my Google rank was PR5 - considering I’d never paid one seconds attention to it.

I put a little badge from BlogFlux on my blog and was pretty much satisfied with my PR5 ranking. I worked at getting my Alexa ranking up. At the point that I realized there even such a thing as an Alexa ranking my blog wasn’t even in the top 500,000. When I started keeping track of it, it was at 496,606. Now that I have sporadically and half-heartedly attempted to get the Alexa rating up, it is now 110,624. It moved up quickly at first and then became a little more reluctant to move up farther. With a little more effort I should be able to get it above 100,000, which is the goal I’m shooting for right now.

MEANWHILE, on the other hand, as everyone knows Google is doing some funky things with page ranks. As I understand it, they are trying to make the ranking more valuable by filtering out sponsored links (the links people pay for to raise their PR ranking). I have never paid for a link and won’t ever pay for one thank you very much. I know some people do and if you have an SEO blog it probably makes sense. It doesn’t make sense for my little blog.

Until yesterday I was feeling pretty smug that my PR had remained at 5 while I saw others dropping like rocks. Then yesterday, out of the blue, mine dropped all the way to 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was actually upset about this. I wouldn’t care so much except it really DOES impact how much money you can make on your blog. That blew me out of the water.

The thing is, BlogFlux still comes up with a PR5 ranking (and has read at 6 and 7 periodically over the last couple of days), but on PRChecker comes up with a PR3. Has anyone ever heard of different rankings on different PR checking systems? That doesn’t make sense to me.

~~~Sigh~~~ Now I’m obsessing over it. Since I don’t know what I did to get a PR5 to begin with I’m having to study up about what I can do to get it back. Is anyone else having this happen? I know a LOT of people have had their PR dropped. I wonder if the system will continue to fluctuate until Google gets their new system in place or if this is it and we are stuck with what its showing now?

Just griping and grumbling and knowing that a lot of people who come here don’t care one bit about PR ranking! LOL

UPDATE: I ran across this post by Andy Beard about the google gods and all the hooty-do going on with page ranks. That’s my techno explanation of it! ha! I’m actually putting this link here because I want to refer back to this post when I have time to read it more thoroughly AND I thought anyone reading this might want to check out someone who writes about the page rank crisis with a little more techno-savy and without using non-words like hooty-do.

Google Toolbar PageRank Fluctuations (Round 4)

Problogger, Copyblogger, John Chow — Welcome to the PR4 club! - HAHAHAHAHAHA