Google Page Rank Updates- Why do some sites lose rankings?
With every page rank updates, many webmasters see their site lose rankings and such loss of rankings are not unusual. What are the reasons for it? While Google has never disclosed its algorithm of awarding page rank, we can reasonably guess the reasons for such loss. There are many reasons for such loss, major of them being duplicate content, number of unique visitors in a month visitors and ranking of main pages in the Google search results
Out of the various reasons, duplicate content is single major reason for loss of page rank. Even when you slightly paraphrase the content or alter the text here or there, you are risking being in a grey area of duplication. Today, the techniques and tools available with any search engine are quick and intelligent enough to detect plagiarism in any form. In case of multiple copies of content appearing on various sites, Search engines are also able to figure out which site could be the true owner of the content. Even if few pages of your content are duplicate, the web site could fall in the category of being a duplicate web site. search engines are in constant competition with each other to gain traffic and as such would want to deliver maximum and most relevant results, eliminating any duplicate content. Duplicate content in any case casts strain in search engines resources as well. If too many duplicate pages are detected, a search engine may block the site and would not index any page beyond the home page and eventually it may lead to blacklisting of domain as well.
Thus, considering the potential losses that may eventually lead to even disabling adsense account, that is, if you are monetizing your site through it, it may be worth while to delete the entire duplicate content. It is common knowledge that Google’s algorithm does favor the sites with older age of the domain. Therefore, if you are thinking of replacing the duplicate content with original, the sooner it is done, the better it would be; else it leads to engines penalizing the domain and you have to look around for a new domain. I don’t mean to endorse that a particular amount of duplicate content is okay, and I firmly believe in having entire content original, but having duplicate content of more than 30% is definite like playing with fire.
Another major practical hurdle here arises where some webmasters need to refer to some industry journals and quote them extensively to provide good quality content. Apart from the copyright concerns, such practices too can lead to loss of page rank and overall loss of credibility of the site.
If you are using a content management system or using a particular set of templates which have some duplicate content, some amount of text would come as duplicate content but generally such content is very insignificant in terms of overall content. In my view, still you should think of replacing the content in what ever ways, it possibly suits best.
Though there are many other reasons for your site to lose rankings, duplicate content and not updating the content regularly account for maximum damage to the rankings. It would be well done if a webmaster takes care of these issues.
