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Two weeks ago I launched a new site and yesterday Google allocated a page ranking of 0/10 to my new site. According to other Webmaster with more knowledge on Google (which is most other webmasters) this rapid ranking and initial value of Zero is most unusual.
The site does not participate in any linking schemes, has no doorway pages, is not a banner farm having only few external links (a few on each page), is rich in original content (articles written by myself) and already has a half a dozen other sites with PR4 and above linking to it.
Other new sites I have done typically receive a 1 or 2 on first spider by Google.
Some Webmasters have told me not to worry as it’s a new site and that it should be adjusted next month.
Other Webmasters believe it is most likely a penalty and the some have suggested that such a ranking is terminal and the domain can now be considered leper and should be dumped. It was explained to me that 0 x anything = 0 thus once a domain has a zero it is almost impossible for it to recover.
So you can see I have an abundance of information and opinions on the subject and now want a definitive answer on some specific questions.
Q.1 Is a Zero ranking always a penalty?
Q.2 If it is not always a penalty under what other circumstances can you receive such a ranking?
Q.3 How can I determine if it is a penalty? (in your FAQ a suggested last resort of writing to Google at search-quality@google.com - do they really answer such questions?)
Q.4 If it is determined to be a penalty how can I then find out the reason?
Q.5 If the sites does not recover next month or it can be determined that it is a penalty then is the strategy of adding a robots.txt telling Google to piss off and then waiting until Google drops the ranking going to work?
it's freshy, my site yesterday had no pr at all, just a grey bar..
i linked to it from another of my sites that actually has pr and today my new site already has a pr0..
which i am sure we could blame on freshbot.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!
Stop. No worries.
You have a new site. It has never been deep-crawled. You cannot have a PR0.
Your site appeared in the Google index as a result of the "Freshbot". Freshbot listings are temporary, and your time ran out. Google uses the freshbot to try to keep frequently-changing pages updated in their monthly index.
However, Google now knows you site is there, and will most likely deep-crawl it soon. It will then appear "permanently" in the index after the next update.
In the meantime, you may wish to try to entice the freshbot to revisit your site by keeping it updated. You can't really "call it back" but if it comes back on its own and you have new content, then it may revisit after a shorter delay the next time. Observed behaviour is that it tries to figure out your update schedule and follow it. If you never update, it rarely revisits. If you update often, if will revisit often.
Anyway, hang in there. You don't have PR0, you have NO PageRank at all - you are just not yet ranked, and the PR you saw before was only a "guess". So, the bad news is that it can take up to 59 days to get listed solidly in Google, and the good news is that you're not banned. I hope you'll decide to concentrate on the good news. :)
Googlebot: Deepbot and Freshbot FAQ and Information [webmasterworld.com]
HTH,
Jim
So I understand that “you are just not yet ranked, and the PR you saw before was only a "guess".”
This is good news but it’s not very nice of Google to make such a quick “guess”.
The day before receiving this “guess” ranking I sent an e-mail off to another high ranking site to request a link trade. Chances are they visited my new site and took one look at the ranking and quickly closed their browser for fear of being infected (that was an attempt at humour).
The “guess” ranking will curtail my ability to promote the site prior to being correctly ranked.
Is the following a possible explanation?
I did not have any links to the new domain before submitting it to google but someone has suggested to me that Google might have found the new domain via google bar on my browser. I was testing a script on the domain for a few weeks before I built the site so if it did come by there really was not much there at all.
I am also still a little curious about the answers to my questions – in particular 1 and 2.
>> Q.2 If it is not always a penalty under what other circumstances can you receive such a ranking?
New unranked page, no incoming links, fractional PR.
I think your toolbar theory is a good possibility.
You are right about not being able to effectively promote your site before being properly indexed. It is unfortunate that PR is becoming a commodity to be traded (and sold!) and this is a side effect. When requesting incoming links, be sure to mention that it is a new site and has not yet been indexed. Savvy webmasters will know that means it might show a PR0, but can check up on your site and see that it is new. If your site has decent content, they'll link to you anyway - at least some will. It only takes one link to get in.
Some solution to the above "Catch-22" of not being able to get incoming links without having incoming links will have to be found, or the link structure of the Web may collapse! If you really can't get any links, then concentrate on directory listings for now - they take awhile anyway.
HTH,
Jim
