Beachboy - 7:59 pm on Aug 23, 2002 (gmt 0)

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Paying a search engine for a keyword won't have a negative effect on your positioning at Google. I don't know what Probot is, but if it's they who have a lot of pages indexed at Google, then they would not be considered a bad neighborhood, otherwise they would not be in Google. Popups don't affect Google placement. If places your site links to are suffering a PR0 penalty, then get rid of those links. I assume by PR0, you have a white toolbar, not a gray one, right? If you have been in the Google index for about a month total, then don't get excited. The PR calculations for the update underway now won't settle down for a few days yet, you might see PR when it's done. And do you have links into your site from other sites that have PR?