Google Toolbar Pagerank Update Mistake : Redirection Change Effect
Google updated their Toolbar Pagerank a few days ago. Usually, I don't pay much attention to that, but this particular time there was something very interesting happening. One of the domains I have filination.com dropped from PR5 to PR2 and this was due to a Google mistake on how I redirected. While I explain the story, you'll notice that after a quick redirection Google automatically fixed the Pagerank without going through an entire update and without me filing for a reconsideration.
Story is that filination.com initially had two subdirectories:
- /blog/ - my personal blog
- /tech/ - my tech blog
For reasons I can't recall, I did a 301 redirect from filination.com to the /tech/ subdirectory, which results in a merge in the Google SERP. There was no filination.com/tech/ on the search results page, just filination.com . While the pagerank for /blog/ was PR5, the pagerank for filination.com or filination.com/tech was PR2.
Sometime last month, I moved filination.com/tech to a new domain teqsnacks.com and switched the redirection of filination.com to filination.com/blog/ . It took a while for Google to update the SERPs so that filination.com and filination.com/blog were merged, but that finally happened after a while. Interestingly, when the Google Toolbar Pagerank update occurred a few days later filination.com and filination.com/blog both received the Pagerank of the previous filination.com/tech - PR2.
Seeing this, I decided to experiment a bit and removed the redirection from filintion.com to filination.com/blog and only posted a short link. It took 2 days for Google to restore filination.com/blog pagerank to PR5 and - oddly enough - a few days later to set filination.com to PR5 as well.
I think there are some interesting conclusions to be made from this case-study. What do you think?
