Reach for your copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and press the DON’T PANIC! button; the problem with some sites seeing a zero PageRank after Google’s latest update should be corrected by now.
The weather report regarding Google’s latest quarterly infrastructure update for many sites likely read this way: mostly clear and warm, with some patchy clouds. A handful of sites briefly had a much grimmer forecast: nuclear detonation with thermal pulse, neutrons, x- and gamma-rays, radiation, electromagnetic pulse, and ionization of the upper atmosphere.
To put it more briefly, that disaster can be summed up as PageRank 0 in Google’s index.
Vanishing from Google can virtually be equated with dropping off the Internet in general. Such is life when one search engine dominates the environment and the habits of millions of Web surfers around the world.
‘The Fear’ doesn’t even begin to describe watching one’s site get unranked for reasons unknown. Fortunately Google has a couple of great people who communicate this kind of information. Adam Lasnik is one, and may be seen on Google’s webmaster help group.
The other is Matt Cutts, and he recently updated his infrastructure status post to clear up the dread PR 0 some sites observed:
A few people were seeing PageRank 0 for their site. There was a small auxiliary push that needed to happen to complement the PageRank push, and that push happened a few hours ago (i.e. Jan 11, 2007). If you were getting stressed, you might want to re-check now. If you never even noticed, well, good for you.
In general, Cutts commented that this latest update should not cause any “major infrastructure-related upheavals to our rankings.” He also discussed supplemental results in some depth in his blog post.
“There were some situations where site: would show supplemental results ahead of regular results,” he wrote. “I believe we’ve changed that so that regular results will usually show ahead of supplemental results for site: queries.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
