PR0 Help/advise needed

[Harwich]

Greetings,

I will start with the basic information.
Site has been live since 01/26/2003.
Submitted to google at that time.
Not in Yahoo directory submitted to DMOZ(waiting).
This is a new domain no possiblility of lingering penalties.
I have probably a dozen links to my site from other related sites. None of these show up on Google as backlinks but it is my understanding that my PR0 will keep them from showing. A few of them show if you do a search for sites including my.domain.com.

Here are the things I know I have done wrong.

1. For awhile I had hidden links to the rest of the site on the index page. These were for the spiders because my navigation is via a javascript menu. I removed these several months ago. I will be adding a seperate site map page that will be linked from all pages to deal with this.

2.I worked with an SEO company, many of their techniques are things that I now know could have got me penalized. Hidden text via CSS file etc. I removed these around the time of the last crawl.

3. I had been using web position gold to check rankings including the URL check. I just found out that this can cause an issue. My IP has not been blocked but I guess it is possible that I have been penalized for it.

I don't believe I have been banned because a search for www.mysite.com does pull it up plus if I do a search for my top KW and then do a search in the results for www.mysite.com it pulls there as well. I do however think that it is highly likely that I have some severe penalties.
I used to see some activity from freshbot but the last activity on my site was from deepbot on 04/26/03 and it was certainly not a deep crawl.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions? I will gladly welcome all.
(sorry it's so long)

[ncsuk]

Do I know you the CSS thing sounds familiar :)

Other than that it is possible that you willl gain a PR at the next update or at least a PR of 0. If you have rankings then you obviously are not banned it may just be a question of waiting and seeing what happens.

If all else fails you could contact google and see what they have to say for themselves.

[takagi]

Few remarks

1. GoogleGuy wrote that a visit by deepbot is a good sign if you fear a penalty (see 2nd update [webmasterworld.com] thread message 214)
2. PageRank is recalculated with the data spidered before an update. Usually there was some 10 days between deepbot stops crawling and the start of Google dance. Last update was April 11 so most of the data was collected in March. Links added later will not have been used in the PageRank now displayed.
3. Google will remove a page from the index if there are no links to it. So don't wait too long to add the site map otherwise the sub pages will disappear in the SERPs. Maybe that is why deep bot didn't go deep last time ("last activity on my site was from deepbot on 04/26/03 and it was certainly not a deep crawl").

[Harwich]

Thank You Ncsuk and Takagi,

I actually already have a PR0, I have a white bar not a grey one. I am considering a re-submission request even though I don't think I have actually been banned.

I guess part of my concern is that the last crawl didn't go deep because that is when the penalty was applied. I will most likely have the site map added over the weekend. However on my front page there are always 4 links to random sub-cats, each of these will have at least 9 links to products and most of them will have 1 or 2 links to another page with 9 more products plus there are 4 product links on my front page as well as some fixed links like contact info, privacy policy etc. The deepcrawl hit a couple of the product links and that was all. These are all standard html links generated with server side scripting.

Thanks again for your comments.

[ncsuk]

Dont worry if its white then you will most likely pick up a PR value this dance. It can take 2-6 months for one to appear and in some cases even longer.

One of my sites had PR 0 for tow months before it went up to 4.

[Harwich]

ncsuk,

Thanks again for your comments. I hope you are right. I would be thrilled with a PR4 at this point.

[BigDave]

You don't mention when you got your links and what their PR is.

Freshbot often comes to new pages, but once they are in the index, they have to have a high enough PR to have freshbot continue to visit.

I will echo the others, make sure your site is clean and wait.

[Harwich]

BigDave,

Thanks for the input.

The links have been an ongoing process. A few every week or so. The PR scores for my links are from PR3 to PR5, which is fairly decent for the field I am in. The Keywords and keyword phrases I am targeting are dominated by PR 4 and 5 ranked sites. I think I have cleaned everything off that might even be remotely questionable.
I will try to be patient.

Thanks again.

[Harwich]

I just wanted to post an update. I am finally showing up in the SERP's. Until recently the only way I could find my site was by searching for www.mysite.com. Now I can find my site for about a dozen different KW phrases. The rankings are still absolutely terrible but I am there and that is a major improvement. I am working on adding a significant amount of VISIBLE KW rich text to my front page with standard HTML links to the rest of the site. Hopefully That and continuing to beg for links to my site will help me start moving my rankings up. I still show a PR0 but I read somewhere that people weren't sure the new PR's had been figured yet. I will keep waiting, I feel better now that I am showing in the SERP's. Thank you to everyone who gave their comments and advise.

[ramitheweb]

I have 7 sites:
1 site (half year old) has PR6 current and on SJ/FI but heavy drop with back links (900 links lost) and lost in good positions.
6 sites (2 months old) (current PR7, and on SJ/FI - PR0), no back links, was at least 20-30 back links. New sites takes good positions #1..#3 (even with PR0) very strange.
All sites cross linked on all pages. All sites near 10K pages.

From my feel current dance (SJ/FI) made from corrupted data.
Last time freshcrawl visited (all PR0) sites 15-May 8:xx am (EST), but my current PR6 site freshcrawl visited hour ago.

[suggy]

Hi ramitheweb

I share the same problem as you - though not the same degree of original success! PR7 in two months - good work!

Anyhow, my PR4 - which only got its first PR in April update - shows PR0 on one server only (I pressume SJ/FI)

I've gone up in the SERPS too!

I'm figuring this is the old PR and won't be the final outcome of this update? What do you think?

Cheers,

Suggy

[ramitheweb]

suggy: I think current FI/SJ data simple corrupted.
btw: www-cw back as most data centers.