Should I trash my site? I can't get PR

Going no where with 3 months of work.

[Charlie_N]

I have been manually getting link partners and adding on content to my site.... but results are not good.

I have PR0 after 4 months, but at the same time, I have 157 backlinks pointed to my site from PR4 and above (checked using a link popularity check tool). For some reason, Google is not picking me up... or maybe I'm banned (for unknown reasons).

1. How would I know if I was banned? (hoping it wasnt complaint from competitor)

2. If I was banned, can I get unbanned?

3. Should I trash my domain?

[suggy]

Hi Charlie

You surely must be banned or penalised in some way. You have plenty of links, it seems.

I have a site that's alos been around about four months, only has a handful of backlinks - just a couple at PR 4 and above and was awared a PR4 rank itself in the April update.

Are you spamming?

Cheers,

Suggy

[Marcia]

Charlie, just out of curiousity, you say the site is 4 months old. Is that how long you have the domain name, and was it an expired domain?

I wouldn't give up just yet, there are too many changes going on now for us to know what the picture will be a couple of months down the road.

[edited by: Marcia at 8:00 pm (utc) on May 7, 2003]

[trillianjedi]

(hoping it wasnt complaint from competitor)

Hmmm.... seems you're worried about something?

If you gave them reason to get you banned, that's probably the answer. Can you tell us (and be honest) what you think it might be, then I'm sure we can either confirm or deny.

Did you buy your domain name "fresh" or buy it 2nd hand off someone else?

TJ

[rfgdxm1]

Marcia may be on to something. With all those backlinks, there is no excuse for being a PR0. If it isn't the domain name, then unless Google is seriously broken you must have a penalty.

[WebGuerrilla]

It sounds like a dirty domain to me.

[soapystar]

after 4 months of being indexed? or 4 months of getting links?

[Charlie_N]

To clarify things:

1. My site is mostly static. I just add stuff to it.

2. I'm not good at meta tags, so I keep that to a minimum.

3. It's been indexed for about 4 months, and the domain is fresh. Its not old at all.

4. I busted my butt off finding backlinks manually and found only good links. I do not participate in ANY link farms and contact each webmaster directly.

My backlinks are the only ones giving me traffic right now... google, none. Its not a dirty site, no javascript or anything, just HTML. No poppups either.

[stever]

Google thinks you are who you link to...are all yours to good neighbourhoods?

[BigDave]

I have 157 backlinks pointed to my site from PR4 and above (checked using a link popularity check tool).

Um, what tool would that be? Did you happen to run this tool from the same IP as your site? Did you use this tool to help generate any of your pages?

[dvduval]

Clearly a penalized site. To answer the original question, I would start working on a second domain. I don't there is a need to trash this one, but I think it would be good have a second domain. In about two months you can decide if you want to focus all of your energy on the new domain or stick with the old one. If you are using a reseller hosting account, it'll only cost you about $9 for the domain name and nothing for the hosting. Why not?

You might also send a note to Google letting them know you are the new owner of this domain and don't understand the penalty. Who know? it might work.

[GoogleGuy]

dvduval's advice is good--it wouldn't hurt to send in a reinclusion request. However, I looked up the site in your profile and didn't see any penalties. It may simply be that you need to wait for us to bring in more backlinks over time. Have you gotten links from sites such as the Open Directory and Yahoo?

[trillianjedi]

There you go, answer from the horses mouth (no offence GG!).

TJ

[whatson]

Is there some where we can all go to look up site penalties?

[trillianjedi]

Is there some where we can all go to look up site penalties?

No. But as I understand it, if you're concerned, send in a reinclusion request anyway.

TJ

[ncsuk]

4 months and no PR is fine. If the bar is white then Google probably hasnt figured out a PR for it yet. My site took 3 months to get one so dont worry. Maybe you will get one after the next update.

[Charlie_N]

Thanks for the advice guys. I've been combing through google's database of questions and answers and concluded to add more content.

This is a little stressing considering I'm putting up a few more sites. I'll be patient and consider a new domain.

[EliteWeb]

If you do decide to get a new domain ill take your dirty one off your hand for you ;) hehee links. Google has had funky backlink stuff going on its hard to say if a site will get PR right away. Does the bot come to your site? The sites that link you are any of them high PR sites or just average?

[Charlie_N]

the sites that link to me are all PR4 and above. You can go into my profile and check my site, and under the links section, I have reciprocal links. The other half of the links that visit my site are no reciprocal.

BTW, my hosting company is really shabby... their downtime is rediculously high, and they go down for minutes at a time very often. On top of that, they started supporting adult content on their shared servers... Should I "NEED" to change my hosting?

[EliteWeb]

Change your hosting if they are down often, doesnt matter much about adult sites just if they are down and do not offer you compensation for down time :D If my sites are down more than 1% of the month I get the month free. But then again if its that one bit where the bot trys to go to it and it cant then i just lost tons more money ;)

[jrobbio]

trillianjedi
I've been waiting for the use the GG - Horse opportunity for ages and now I've gone and missed it. You can draw a GG to questions, but you can't make him answer.

[john316]

Just in case anyone is reading along and wondering if they have recently purchased and developed a penalized domain, you can check the domain at the wayback machine and take a look at what once was for an indication.

It won't tell you if the domain is penalized, but you should be able to spot spammy stuff, or how the prior owner developed it.

[teeceo]

HEY GOOGLEGUY:

"It may simply be that you need to wait for us to bring in more backlinks over time." are you talking "this" update or weeks or month? What kind of time frame are we looking at?

teeceo.

[Blue Gravity]

Ban or trash a site because of no pr?
That's just silly.
If it's your dominant domain, make a new one, switch the data over to that one, and use it. With the old no pr one, there are other engines around that may be of use to you.