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Recently GoogleGuy commented here that this update would see a number of sites' penalities lifted. Well, none of mine have come off despite a (cross-linking) penalty period of 9+ months.
Anyone else get the magic healing?
Despite having hundreds of valid links from quality PR4+ sites, ODP, Yahoo, etc. a link search on Google for our site still yields a big fat "0". It has been this way for the better part of 2002.
We were hit with PR0 last December, "rebounded" to the worthless PR3 in April.
Considering the latest index, I'm about ready to completely write off Google.
<added>my sites were not really cross-linked. only a subdomain stuff I've used, focused on better user navigation. But from Google point of view, in fact, my [deleted] stuff was cross-linking :( </added>
cminblues
[edited by: cminblues at 6:29 am (utc) on Sep. 29, 2002]
I didn't have cross-linking, linking out to bad sites, all the usual stuff discussed here, etc. I'm going to redesign the whole thing. It is possible that it is over-optimized and I just can't see the forest for the trees.
There's an interesting thread around here that someone posted about putting up an exclusionary robots.txt on a couple of his banned sites. He removed it after a couple months, googlebot returned and the site was indexed. The other sites did not get spidered. So he did it to those sites, and it worked.
Seems raw to have a good site banned for nine months. Unless you're married to the domain name, and your site is squeaky clean, might as well scrap the domain name, buy another one for 9 bux and start anew.
This is a big difference. If I remember, there was a devaluation that happened a few months ago, everyone's PR dropped, but that's just a calculation anyway.
I'm trying to get away from the PR0, which places my site in oblivion no matter what search term there is; and very noticeable when you type in the company name in quotes to narrow the results down to about 100-150. This site will then be ranked #149.
He-he, kind of funny now. I can remember when people refused to believe that there was any kind of penalty: (Oh it's just an algo change, or something like that). PR0 is like the plague, difficult to overcome, but better than the death penalty. (PR-Gray - you gone. Don't come back.)
We were PR5, then hit with the PR0 plague starting in Dec. 2001 and lasting for five months until "rebounding" to PR3 in April 2002.
Thing is, no inbound links were returned with the PR3, so in essence the penalty has remained in regards to our ranks. We've been buried in Google since December 2001.
It only *felt* better to again see the green bar, yet it did no good for us whatsoever. Lots of others reported the same thing at the time. "PR3=the new PR0" comes to mind as a thread title on the issue from here or the other SEO board.
I'm not gonna dump the URL. We've invested deep in it (blood, sweat, tears, time & $$$) for over 6 years to create a content rich, well known destination in our field. We have a secondary, related one, but lack the time/funds to develop it just to please the "all wise" Google gods...
[edited by: Shoestring at 7:27 am (utc) on Sep. 29, 2002]
It has not helped one bit.
I'm of the belief that nothing will change until they lift the penalty, which in our case seems to be the non-recognition of all incoming links to our site.
But I have some PR3 sites that rank highly for certain terms. (Not really competitive, but good to have)
And maybe you're in a set of competition that a PR5-6 is required to keep from being buried. So I can see how you have the perception that you do.
It's the all white pixels that really bothers me. If you're dropped to 3, looks like you have a lot more hope than the 0 that I'm on. But maybe it's all relative anyway, in which case the PR0 is not really a PR0, but a PR-minus-4 or something similar.
If you were around in July 2001, you'll remember the +20 penalty. Your PR didn't change, google just put you 20 places or so back in the SERP. Didn't last long. After that you got PR0.
Rambling...
chiyo: Yes, I'm mostly back.
I did have one site left with that nasty pagerank of 0. However, this month it's lifted to 1/10. I have this theory of ranks, penalities and water levels. But it's rather crazy. In simple terms - I think if you have a good set of links from 6/10 or 7/10 pageranked sites it will allow your pagerank to crawl back up and break free from the usual 2/10 or 3/10 penalty recovery stage (and 0/10 on the internal pages.) Of course, I could be talking a load of pants.
My tip? If you can, put your URL in your profile.
+20? You bet I remember it. Followed by the PR0 just as you mention it.
Our current PR3 isn't a "legit" PR3, is what I'm trying to say. If our incoming links were returned and factored in, I have no doubt that our ranks would too. A PR3 with good linkage from ODP, Yahoo, etc. will certainly rank well on targeted keys. I agree 100%. Our links are ignored and we show up on page 5 for low competition terms that we should (and did) rank #1 for across the web. Actually, we still do rank top 5 on these terms everywhere EXCEPT Google.
Rambling? Yeah, me too. I know. It is very frustrating.
*Post note: 99% of our internal pages are PR0
nutsandbolts is right; if you never put a site in your profile, I certainly can't check to see if a site is clean now. But I respect people's choice if they don't want to list sites.
Any help is much appreciated.
Doesn't look like your site finally found a new cat until 23/Sep/2002 18:56:25 PDT
Still, I don't see how this could explain our total lack of backlinks being recognized in Google for the better part of a year. We have hundreds of valid links from decent to great PR sites, including Yahoo, Looksmart, etc. going back forever in web time.
EliteWeb
I don't think this has any major bearing on our site links not being recognized by Google for the past 9 months, but obviously it IS a rather important link in the big scheme of things.
Strange that on the very same day I list our URL in our profile here seeking help, as I was urged to do, just the opposite is what actually happened to us with the DMOZ link vanishing hours later...
It must be mere coincidence, but adding insult to injury is the pits.
We deserve much better treatment.
My client had a web site who’s previous SEO had hidden text all over the site. I believe you had implied you would include it back in the index if I cleaned it up. I must have missed something in my clean up, because it is still not there. Is there anyway you can tell me exactly what I missed?
Thanks,
Anyone else get the magic healing?
I did! I did! (Waving BOTH hands and smiling broadly!) I've had PR Zeros lifted on other sites over the summer but one site that was ignored... I finally just accepted it. And just as GG promised, it was restored in this last update!
EliteWeb, I was talking about sites uncovered while investigating spam complaints about spam violations. I doubt you need to worry.
In regards to the topic of this thread, my site has been penalized for about 10 months, and I feel your pain, all my PR0 brothers and sisters. No luck this update.
I'm starting to feel like I should either redo the whole thing or get a new domain name, but both entail so much work at this point that it's daunting. If nothing happens in the next update, I'll have to take some action.
