Hello,

We recently introduced a new rev to our website
www.cypressindustries.com in the second week of March. Our Google Page
Rank was a 4 after doing that.  I submitted a question on how to
increase our page rank and was told that by linking to sites of 4 or
higher I could do this.  Well I spent about a week trying to find
relevant sites with ratings of 4 or higher to link to ours.  I did not
link to any of them to reduce our PR.

I probably listed our site on 15 others, paying to do some of them. 
But after doing this our Page Rank(PR) fell to 3.  This was very
frustrating as we then immediately started coming up lower in the
search engines for key phrases.

Her is my question.
1.  Do you know of any reason why we might be coming up lower now on
Googles page rank?
2.  Does it take some time for Google to process all the information
ie new pages/new backwards links?  Therefore will I hopefully see a
boost in PR in early May after Google comes around again to index our
site?
3.  Can linking to our site from pages with ranks of 4 or higher with
many other sites listed as well hurt us?  Or, should it only be able
to help us?
4.  I think I might have submitted our site to dmoz.org, but can't
remember as I was dealing with so many websites.  Is it dangerous to
submit to dmoz.org more than once, or should I wait a couple of weeks
to resubmit if it doesn't appear.

Thank you for your help

---

Request for Question Clarification by missy-ga on 16 Apr 2003 11:50 PDT

Hi Tom,

I've been looking into the issue you note, and I think I need a little
more information from you.

Would you mind telling me:

1)  What you changed on your site?
2)  Where you've been listed?

I'm wondering if you might have accidentally stumbled into a link
farm, which *would* affect your page rank.  If I can check where
you're listed, it would help in getting this sorted out for you.

--Missy

---

Clarification of Question by cypresstom-ga on 16 Apr 2003 13:30 PDT

Hi Missy,
What we did on our site was add a lot of extra pages in Products. 
Basically on the Products & Services page.  Connectors & Copper Cables
used to only go to one page.  Now they each have a lot of choices, and
drawings of the different types of connectors and cables.  We also
added the Power Supplies page, and added text to the other products
pages.  We also added Metatags to the contact us/investor
relations/news&events pages.  So the site goes much deeper now and has
more text.

Sites we submitted to(might not be all of them, missing probably 5 or
more):
dmoz.org; lycos(which should go to Inktomi, Fast and Hotbot);
business.com; electrobase.com; electronicresearcher.com;
supplyview.com

Does this help?  Not sure if I could find all of them.  I started
tracking the ones I was registering for rather late.  But, I made sure
they had high PR's and were just a listing service, not a SPAM service
from what I could tell.

What exactly is a "link farm".

Thank you,
Tom

Hello Tom!

I've spent the day poking around your site and the sites you've noted
that you've listed on.  Aceresearcher also pointed out to me that she
answered your previous question just a few days ago, so I had a look
at that too.

The first thing I can say is that I don't see anything in your site or
in the pages you've listed on that would affect your page rank. 
You've not hooked up with any link farms - that is, sites that exist
solely to link to pages in order to artificially manipulate page rank
(those are very bad, and Google frowns on them.  But not to worry,
you're OK in that department!).  Your site is clean and easy to
navigate, you don't cloak or use Frames, Flash or JavaScript
extensively (all of which cause the Googlebot to cry and run home when
it sees these, because it can't read them!), so there isn't anything
readily apparent that would be hurting your ranking.

The second thing I can say is to make like Douglas Adams and "Don't
Panic!".  You're experiencing the phenomenon known as The Google Dance
- the once a month update of the Google index, where listings shimmy
and shake and change on a daily basis while new pages are added, old
pages and dead links are discarded, and the final index for the month
is synchronized over all of Google's more than 10,000 servers.

The new Google Dance *just* started on April 11th.

Before I explain that, let me address your questions in order:

1)  There isn't anything that I've been able to find that would affect
your Page Rank outside of The Google Dance.  This effect is temporary
- your Page Rank may fluctuate daily until the Dance is done.

2)  The Googlebot crawls the web every four weeks or so for an update.
 Depending on when changes were made and when new links were
established in relation to the most recent crawl, it can take anywhere
from a couple weeks to a couple months for all information to be
processed.

Ace answered for you on the 9th, and the Google Dance started on the
11th.  It's most likely that your links will show up *next* month. 
Information is not processed instantaneously for the index, nor is it
done in just a few days.  You've put your new information up at just
the right time to be included in the next update.

3)  Linking to sites with a PR of 4 or higher, with many other sites
listed, *might* hurt you. It might not.  It actually depends on
whether *their* Page Ranks change:

"We update our index every four weeks. Each time we update our
database of web pages, our index invariably shifts: We find new sites,
we lose some sites, and sites ranking may change. Your rank naturally
will be affected by changes in the ranking of other sites. You can be
assured that no one at Google has hand adjusted the results to boost
the ranking of a site. Google's order of results is automatically
determined by several factors, including our PageRank algorithm.
Please check out our "Why Use Google" page for more information on how
this works."

Why does my page's rank keep changing?
://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html#A2

The web is a fluid and ever changing creature - Page Rank is as well. 
There is no way to *guarantee* that you're going to get the Page Rank
you want, you can only do your best to achieve it.  Your site looks
terrific, it's not filled with extraneous junk, and you have actual
content on your pages.  That's the most important part!

4) No, it's not "dangerous" to submit to DMOZ more than once, but it's
definitely frowned upon.  DMOZ suggests that if your site hasn't
appeared in the directory within three weeks after submitting your
URL, to contact the Editor for the section for which you submitted:

"An ODP editor will review your submission to determine whether to
include it in the directory.  Depending on factors such as the volume
of submissions to the particular category, it may take several weeks
or more before your submission is reviewed.  Please only submit a URL
to the Open Directory once.  Again, multiple submissions of the same
or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those
and all affiliated sites.  Disguising your submission and submitting
the same URL more than once is not permitted.  If a site you submitted
has not been listed after three weeks, you may submit it again or you
may send an e-mail to an editor of the category for which the site was
submitted."

Procedure After Your Site is Submitted
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Still with me?  Good!  Let's talk about the Google Dance now.

The Google Dance is the period of time after a crawl in which the new
index for the month is built, discarding dead pages and adding newly
found pages.  Getting all of this data to line up across all of
Google's servers is an interesting task - there is so much information
on so many servers that there is no way that the update can take place
all at once.  Fluctuating listings and PRs are indicators that the
latest Dance is in progress.

There are a number of interesting articles explaining the Google
Dance, as well as SearchEngineWorld's Update History:

Google Update History
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2657.htm

"The Google search engine pulls its results from more than 10,000
servers which are simple Linux PCs that are used by Google for reasons
of cost. Naturally, an index update cannot be proceeded on all those
servers at the same time. One server after the other has to be updated
with the new index."

Google Dance - The Index Update of the Google Search Engine
http://www.miswebdesign.com/resources/articles/google-dance.html

"The best time to put new pages online is during the Google-Dance. If
you let too much time lapse between the completion of the update, and
the publication of new content, you may reduce the amount of new
content that will be included in the next update."
 
Google Update - The Google Dance 
http://www.linktree.info/googleupdate.php 
 
For a great explanation of the Google Dance, Page Rank, and how
those factors affect listings, James Kendall at SEO today offers an
explanation:
 
It's All About Google - SEO Today, February 26, 2002  
http://www.seotoday.com/browse.php/category/articles/id/173/index.php

Additionally, to keep up with the latest Google Dance across all of
Google's servers, try the Google Dance Machine, which tracks how the
index looks on each of Google's servers worldwide:
 
Google Dance Machine  
http://google-dance.miniunternehmen.de/ 

I hope this has helped ease your mind a bit, Tom!  If there is
anything else I can do to help, please just ask for clarification. 
I'll gladly explain anything that I might have missed.

--Missy

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Request for Answer Clarification by cypresstom-ga on 17 Apr 2003 06:16 PDT

Hi Missy,
Thank you so much for your help!  I guess I'm just a little paranoid,
but hopefully in the next couple of months our PR will continue to
increase.  If not I'll look into it more.

Just one last question.  Do you think it would be beneficial to add
more text to some of the pages that don't have as much.  Some of our
Connectors sub-pages and say pages like RF Cables under copper cables.
 If I add keyword rich text will that have any way of adversly
affecting our rating?

Thanks,
Tom

---

Clarification of Answer by missy-ga on 17 Apr 2003 21:09 PDT

Hi Tom!

I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, it's been frantic here
today!

Looking at the pages you mention, I don't see anything I would
personally change.  The text you have describes the products pictured,
which is exactly what it should do.  I don't think adding anything
additional on these sub-pages is going to do much for your page rank
either way.

(Just as an aside, to make you smile:  I didn't even *know* my own
site's PR until I researched this for you and looked out of curiosity.
 As an example of how odd PR is - my sister, whose page I host, has a
higher PR than mine!  But if you search on a particular keyword, my
domain grabs the first hit in the results!  How's that for strange
results?)

Don't fret.  You've got a terrific site, and people are sure to be
able to find you!


--Missy

Helped me out quite a bit.  Just what I needed.