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However, I have recently been working with a neighbour who has in the past used 2 SEO companies. The first got a brief flush of success for him, which then withered, the second did nothing.
When you look at his site now, it has PR 2, the pages in the google database are all at least 2 months old, some were removed last November, there are no links into the site (according to google backward links).
However it is in the Google Directory (DMOZ), and has been listed in Yahoo for 2 years I believe. Alltheweb shows 50 links or so.
New links have been added 8 weeks ago to help boost him, with some paid for Shopping Sites to no avail. Googlebot has not followed any of them.
It is clear that the people he employed last year got his site in trouble, with pages like:
www.mydomain.co.uk/se_ink/inkjet_cartridge_h.html
The site is now clean, but having emailed Google twice on his behalf, (he has less idea than me of where to go!)Google have so far ignored me.
Anyone else had this problem? I was thinking he is best off setting up a new domain, new yahoo listing etc. Probably cheaper and quicker, but a shame. For the last month or so he has been trying adwords (a balance of paid/free listings is always prefereable!)
Thoughts appreciated!
George
People have reported quite a few months of PR penalty after cleaning their site. My guess is that Google like to keep us all aware of their deterrant.
He has links from PR 4 pages, (DMOZ is PR3 Yahoo is Grey ?!?) Can Yahoo be grey? Kinda waste of paying for listing in some fields if that is true.
And there are no backward links acording to Google!!! Also from pages i know Googlebot visited agaes ago.
If it is a penalty, (Yea, i think it is!) :
How long does he wait? Or Does he give up with that Domain, on the basis that he has been clean for over two months now, it will be 6 months before a new site can be expected to be really rolling?
A new Yahoo listing might not be Grey Pagerank :)!
George
www.mydomain.co.uk/se_ink/inkjet_cartridge_h.html"
Do you mean that the URL itself got him in trouble? How's that work?
Well if he has a pr2, then there is no ban at all.
Perhaps not a ban, but it could be a penalty of the PR0/low-PR type. Whether the site is deserving of only PR2 or should be higher can be determined only by knowing the past performance of the site or by an accurate link tally and analysis. Google's current odd link reporting makes this difficult, although an analysis of known links (e.g. reciprocals) or links found by other SEs would be a start.
Which indicacates it was a folder full of pages for Inktomi. There would be another /se_av/ and /se_goo/. The company set up doorway pages specific for each engine, and a robots TXT to direct the robot.
Usually the problem was that the s/e did not always read the robots txt, or it was written incorrectly so they did not understand it. Next thing you know you are dropped from the database.
rogerd,
I cannot give you the URL, but can assure you there are several pages linking to it, that google seems to be ignoring. Which would indicate a penalty. To make matters worse, the site was defaced when the server was attacked last year, so there are all sorts of spurious sites pointing to it as well. Could this be relevent?
I had not considered until now they might have a detrimental effect.
So in summary:
DMOZ PR2
Yahoo grey ???? (Come upon this before?)
many other links ignored
Previous bad SEO tactics
about 20 (?) mirror sites with links to it saying " xxxxx defaced this site"
I feel like starting again, This does me in!
Thanks for your thoughts!
George
