Why a pagerank of zero?

zero pagerank in google

[jinlynn]

I have created four town websites for four towns in my area. They are laid out similarly but each contains information unique to that town (history, photos, classifieds, local business links, calendar of events, etc). Right after listing my first town website, I was coming up #4 in the google listing. I eventually added two more town sites ( all with distinct urls: www."city""state".com). The two new sites were included in the index, but not high. Then about two updates ago, all three sites dropped ranking for no apparent reason. I have a graybar for Google pagerank, and, while my sites are in the index, they are so far down it doesn't matter. I have since added a fourth town site about a month ago. It has not even been included in the index at all. I can't see what I did wrong with these sites. I worked on getting some quality backlinks (from the sites that ranked above mine). I improved my pages and titles and page information (more text now than originally). I did everything I thought was "right", but my ranking only went down. I'm not sure where to go from here?

[takagi]

Did you have a lot of links between the sites? Like on every page 3 links to the other 3 city-sites? Did you get some links from other pages?

[lazerzubb]

Maybe there is an answer in the 3820 other threads about it:
PageRank 0 [google.com]

And if they appear in the index, and not at the last page, and they get indexed, you probably don't have a PR 0, or banned.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld

[edited by: lazerzubb at 3:44 pm (utc) on May 16, 2003]

[jinlynn]

The sites don't link between each other at all. However, they have some of the same outgoing links to external sites (for example state government sites). And some totally external sites backlink to all four of these sites.

They are all hosted from the same server, if that makes any difference.

[DaveN]

Did you get any external links to your site.

and a grey toolbar means you not in googles index at all.

DaveN

[jinlynn]

I definitely have grey toolbars for all four sites. However, for the first three sites I can search Google for "city""state".com and my site will come up. So it's sort of in the index I guess. The last website won't come up at all.

Yes, I have external links to my site. Not a whole lot. Mostly from school districts, other local businesses, some sites with links for city web pages have included my sites as the "official" town webpages.

I have a website for my design company, and have links to all of the four sites on my portfolio page. Would that hurt pagerank? It hasn't seemed to affect any of the other sites in my portfolio.

[jinlynn]

Just noticed something. There is a variation. The three sites that rank poorly have a "white" pagerank bar. The one that has never been included in the index has a "gray" pagerank bar. Just don't understand why the rank is so low. I have more backlinks to these sites, and better optimization, than I do for some other sites of mine which manage to have better pagerank.

It just seems strange that the only sites I'm having trouble with are these.

[clarksc3]

Many sites right now are going grey then back to the right PR. I think it has something to do with the current Update settling in.

I have over 250 City based websites. many are linked to each other "regional" i.e. New York and Boston

I have had these sites for over 2 years with no problems. They have a PR of 4 to 5 and still going strong. Linking between sites is fine if you do not have duplicate content. I even have all 250+ site on the same server and same IP.