There is a discussion going on in WebMasterWorld.com that some sites are seeing a drop in their page rank (PR).

I am seeing this too across many websites. Nobody knows whats going on inside Google, but something is surely happening.

Luckily my websites have not lost their page ranks

Let me remind you what Matt Cutts of Google once wrote in his blog that in reality Google maintains two page ranks. One that we see in the toolbar and the other a real floating-point number that Google keeps for internal search ranking.

Heres what he said:

It’s more accurate to think of it as a floating-point number. Certainly our internal PageRank computations have many more degrees of resolution than the 0-10 values shown in the toolbar.

If you are seeing Google page rank drop in any of your websites, don’t panic. There can be a lot of reasons.

One  – Some engineers in Google are doing (read testing) something, so the “virtual” page rank that you see has lost its green bar. What I mean is it can be temporary.

Two – If the site has not lost its rankings why panic in the first place? Afterall your visitors don’t see page rank and buy stuff from you.

Three – The page rank drop can be a software glitch in Google.

Four – Check your internet connection. Sometimes the internet speed is so slow that page rank doesn’t seem to download for ages. Refresh the page; you might see the page rank. If in doubt you can even visit an internet café / friend’s house / or check in any other computer to confirm the page rank drop.

Five – (very rare) Your Google Toolbar got corrupted. Download the latest version here and install.

Bottom line – DON’T do anything silly to increase page rank if you see a sudden drop. Since page rank is Google’s property and you don’t have any control over it, its better to create and keep building a good site, your page rank will improve with time.