Deep linking to an external suppliers database.

Does this "drain" PR?

[lufc1955]

I am trying to figure out why our website has dropped from pr6 to pr0 and lost all its hundreds of high ranked listings. A couple of weeks ago I deep linked about 10 of our products to an external suppliers database. I did not realise that Googlebot may follow the links within this database. Is it possible that Google has followed all the links within this suppliers database and Google thinks we are adding thousands of external links to our site. Could this cause the pr to reduce to zero and for us to be reduced to no listings in the index? I have since blocked the crawler from following the deep links.

[WebGuerrilla]

If you linked 10 products to the database, then you have only added 10 external links. What Google does when it leaves your site and gets to the database has no impact on your PR.

[diamondgrl]

Is the supplier site PR0?

[lufc1955]

Diamondgirl

Yes, the supplier site is pr0.

[diamondgrl]

Depending on why the supplier is PR0, that could absolutely be the reason. If it's because they are new, probably there's no issue. But if they got banned by Google, that's bad.

It's one thing to link to a site that Google deems to be a spammer or otherwise unworthy site. To deep link to them many times is the kiss of death.

So unless I hear other details, this would be my leading theory.

[lufc1955]

Diamondgrl

I don't know why the site I have linked to is a PR0. They have no reason to spam as they don't sell on the web directly. Their database is only used by the trade. If I presume you are correct that I am linking to a "bad site" is it enough to stop the Googlebot following the links like I have already done now, and do you know whether it would be a permanent penalty?

[diamondgrl]

It would probably be permanent, yes. You could appeal to Google to explain and hope that works.

Before you do anything else, you need to better understand the problem. For example, do other sites that link to this supplier have PR0 on all their pages? If not, do they use the "noindex" metatag on pages that link to this supplier?

Have you done anything else, such as engage in any link exchange programs? Did you use any SEO software that might abuse Google?

There are other things you need to explore first.