Blocking Googlebot to cure pr0?

[Alec Doggone]

Going back a couple of months I seem to recall one or two people trialling a method of curing pr0. The theory was to block Googlebot for a month, so the site would totally fall out of the index, then allow it to be crawled again with the hope of a 'clean' listing next time?

Did it work?

[startup]

I haven't removed the robot file yet so, there is nothing I can let you know. If I remember correctly your company ventured into an industry that gives google alot of trouble. Rebuild and keep going.

[Alec Doggone]

startup, you recall right. Some of the sites actually regained PR and fully recovered, which was unexpected. Others remain at zero...

[startup]

Alec, is there anything unique about the ones that didn't recover? Links, inbound or outbound, pages about link exchanges, use of tracking or ranking software, different server or whois data.
The lifting of penalities does not seem to be uniform.

[Alec Doggone]

Nope. Nothing unique, really. I'm 99.99% sure the original pr0 penalities applied to the sites was caused by excessive cross-linking. As I say, some of those have now recovered. Others not. There's really no logical reason to lift the penalty on half of them but not the others.

[kneelsit]

Interesting idea Alec and certainly one worth trying in my case since I have been penalised by G for 10 months now despite cleaning everything up back in March and numerous emails to G with only
auto-response replies.

As I get virtually NO TRAFFIC from G at all where previously it used to comprise about 35% of my hits it seems I would have nothing to lose by excluding G altogether for a month.

[wasmith]

This may not apply to anybody posting but ...

If the prior PR was the result of ill gotten gains, those gains will not return.

For example if you had 5 domains all interlinked and all having a PR6 but only 3 of the domains had incoming links from outside of your network. Then after removing the feedback PR you would be left with 2 near PR0 (or PR1, or whatever the fair value would be if the sites were not in the network) and 3 sites which may be nearly at the same PR value.

It would not be logical that Unlinking and relinking would return the PR value. Just as it would not be logical that people who had used guestbooks to increase their PR would be able to continue using _other_ guestbooks to increase their PR value.

Some people may be confusing a recovery that does not include prior ill gotten gains with a continued penalty.

[kneelsit]

The points you make are quite valid Wasmith as a general observation. In my own case, however, I am still listed #1 to #3 in other major SEs. Not sure what caused the Google penalty in the first place - could have been mirror sites (since all removed in March), but more likely a muck-up by my original Host/ISP who switched machines and left me off for a time. Google still shows the old indexed page (meta-refreshed to my main site) as #1 for major keyword phrase. Until the last crawl they were also showing that "/~widget"
page as BEING the main cached page for my ".com" site - crazy*!*.

New host/server now since June but no joy on re-instatement. Emails get only auto-response. A couple of pros from another forum seemed to think it was a "glitch" in google search filters. So you see why I am seriously considering the exclusion thingy as a possible cure.

Alec can you mail me any details please??