Does my site have a penalty

Am I penalized by Google?

[petertdavis]

This site is up for several months now, close to six months. It is listed in the ODP, the Google directory, and I have it linked from other sites with PR 5.

But, I have a PR 0 on this site. How do I tell if this site has a Google penalty? I assume it's a mistake if it has a penalty, as the site is very legit, nothing spammy about it.

[conor]

Was the domain previosly registered?

Check out your domain at archive.org . If it features before you owned it, the previous registrant may have incurred a penalty,( you may be able to see why ) and you could have inherited this. In which case you are probably better off ditching the domain and registering a clean new one.

Other factors could be in play but this is what I would check first.

[petertdavis]

Well, there was a site there in 1997, which consisted of a couple of static html pages. As far as I can tell, there was nothing there for four years before I got the domain. After getting a listing in ODP, I'd be reluctant to just give up on it.

[chubba]

Sorry to be such a n00b. What does Google deem as a penalty and how would you find if a previous domain had been penalised? I had a seach but could find nothing relevant...

[WebGuerrilla]

Welcome chubba,

I would suggest you start by searching for expired domain penalty [searchengineworld.com].

You can also find plenty of past threads by searching for PR0 penalty [searchengineworld.com]

[chubba]

Thanks WebGuerrilla, much appreciated.