Strange Google problem

[MovIefreaKE]

I co-run a movie-related website with a google PR of 5.

Whenever we alter any code on our pages, Google gets really mad and abruptly drops us for weeks or months at a time. This is a problem because a LOT of our traffic comes from Google Image Search results (on a number of celebrities we're on the front page of the results, or near the top).

It seems like ANY change to the code causes Google to shun us. For example, I added an "Addthis" button on our news article pages, and suddenly it was like we had disappeared in the eyes of Google.

Is this just web development 101 and I'm missing something obvious?

[WebJoel]

I don't apply too close of attention of Google's PageRank numbering system... this is arbitrary. That is like counting how many cars are in the drive-thru queue at Tim Horton's donuts & coffee shop... Assuming 1 car = 1 customer, that is imho, "pagerank". But, if each car has an average of 4.5 coffee-drinking donut-hungry customers in it, THAT is what you want to know, your actual customer-use base, not reflected in pagerank... Adding more content is like ...a bigger menu and maybe, a second drive-thru.. Weird analogy I know...

I might wonder about the how the content is indexed, and the code is marked-up. Generally, adding almost any content is considered 'change' and Google loves websites that add new content. It tends to cause the G'bot to return oftener, re-index sooner. Without seeing your code or URL, it's a guess but I can imagine that the code could use some improving (semantic use of tags, etc.)