Lower page rank on my home page that the rest of my site

[Dan277]

In the recent page rank update I was expecting my home page to go from a PR 0 to a 3 or 4, and other pages to go from a 0 to a 1 or 2. I was right about the other pages in my site. However, my home page [snipped] has only being given a PR 1. Even [snipped] has been given a PR 2 and that page is unfinished and only contains a couple of sentence, and I have certainly not promoted that page. My home page is full of unique content, has no dofollow external links, and has the more internal and external links pointing to it than any other page on my site. Could I have been given a penalty by google? I have no idea why google would penalize my home page. My home page still ranks higher in search results that other pages. If I search for poker forum, my home page is on the first page of google, not my forum page, and the same with my rakeback page. Does anyone have any idea what could have happened? This is a mystery to me.

 

[djbaxter]

No, not a penalty. PageRank is specific to a particular page and is solely a measure of the quality and quantity of links pointing to that particular page.

On most websites, the home page tends to have higher PR because most people will link to the home page. In your case, you have more links and/or better quality links pointint to inner pages than to the home page for that site.

When all is said and done, it makes little difference anyway. What matters is how well you rank (i.e., ANY page on your site ranks) for specific search terms which people will actually use to find sites like yours. And PageRank is only one of more than 200 factors considered in ranking for that search term, and not even close to the most important factor.

 

[Dan277]

I have produced a lot of backlinks for my forum and for my rakeback page, so I can understand why they might have a higher page rank. However, I have not produced any external backlinks for my shop page, and at the moment my shop page has so little content it doesn't even deserve to be indexed. Webmaster tools clearly shows that my home page has a lot more backlinks than any other page, and that my shop page has 0 external backlinks. I'm confused to why my shop page has a higher pagerank. Should a full page of unique content with thousands of external backlinks not have a higher pagerank than a couple of sentences and not a single external backlink? I have a lot more internal links to my home page too.

 

[djbaxter]

How are you determining the PageRank for that page?

 

[Dan277]

I am using a plugin for chrome and also checking via Free multi PageRank and mozRank checker. It seems to me like the real page rank of my homepage is 3 or 4 and the reason for my shop page page having a page rank 2 is it has received enough internal link juice. It cannot be because the page rank is out of date, since the page rank of my home page should have been higher than my shop page right from the start. Could it simply be that google has reported the wrong page rank by mistake? Another thing, am I OK to include a link to my forum in my signature if I don't use "poker" in the anchor text. I could put "games forum" or "gaming forum". Would that be OK?

 

[djbaxter]

I am using a plugin for chrome and also checking via Free multi PageRank and mozRank checker.

I'm not sure how accurate those are. I know that non-Google apps were reporting errors recently as a result of changes in the datacenter Google uses to server up public PageRank values.

It seems to me like the real page rank of my homepage is 3 or 4 and the reason for my shop page page having a page rank 2 is it has received enough internal link juice. It cannot be because the page rank is out of date, since the page rank of my home page should have been higher than my shop page right from the start. Could it simply be that Google has reported the wrong page rank by mistake?

There have been errors in Google Webmaster Central before. It may be reporting backlinks incorrectly. Also, see above.

Another thing, am I OK to include a link to my forum in my signature if I don't use "poker" in the anchor text. I could put "games forum" or "gaming forum". Would that be OK?

No, sorry, we don't allow links to those sites in any form. However, if you send me the link vbia PM I can look at my PR indicators and see if they concur with yours.

 

[Dan277]

Thanks a lot for your help. I appreciate it. I will PM you the link to my site now.

 

[djbaxter]

OK. Just going out for about 30 minutes. Will check later.

 

[Daniel Wilson]

This must have happen due to link purchases or link exchanges. At least that was a cause of one of my PR subpages.