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I am new to this board and I have never paid any particular attention to PR and things like that so I must say I am learning a lot!
However I became interested in these things when the trafic on my site decreased quite a lot aroud the 25-26 of October ... and that Google disappeared from the referers...
My site used to have a PR7... The site has been up and running for more than two years and has enjoyed relative success for more than one.
It is still updated every week and nothing major has changed...
Yet it now does not have a page rank anymore and the pages are not cached in google anymore.
So what's up?! Has this happened to others? What can I do?!
Cheers
cedric
The PR7 I got from I do not where... Is it not possible to get it from myself as the site has been up for a long time?
How can I know whether I am listed on dmoz? I know I used to be but I do not remember how to check...
Thanks
Cedric
First some maybe obvious questions.
1. Did you check to see if your in the index by searching for your url. i.e. are you just dropped drastically for a main or only keyword or are you completely gone.
2. Does your site use frames? This shouldn't affect your being indexed but I've seen it play havoc with the cache.
3. Has your server been down for any extended period recently, especially combined with frame cache problem.
4. If you don't follow pr, how do you manage to get a seven?;)
Thanks !
>1. Did you check to see if your in the index by searching for your url. i.e. are you just dropped drastically for a main or only keyword or are you completely gone.
Well yes, I search for the url and nothing comes back !
(on images.google.com a lot of results though...)
I used to have virtually all my pages listed !
>2. Does your site use frames? This shouldn't affect your being indexed but I've seen it play havoc with the cache.
No it does not and it never has. (the site I am talking about is in my profile)
>3. Has your server been down for any extended period recently, especially combined with frame cache problem.
Well the site has been dows for maybe 3-4 hours a day due to bandwith restrictions which result in a 503 error.
>4. If you don't follow pr, how do you manage to get a seven?
:) I have no idea :)
Am I allowed to post the url in question here?
Thanks for your time
cedric
First it's great to see a site obtain a PageRank 7 without knowing about PageRank.
It proves a simple truth that you don't need to manipulate links to receive it.
Sorry to hear of the recent drop from Google, hopefully WebmasterWorld can help identify the root cause.
A few things to check for:
1. first this could just be a Google hiccup, it does happen, and not much you can do the resolve it. Patience is best, if nothing else is wrong.
2. It is still updated every week and nothing major has changed...
Changes you make to your site can take months, 2 or 3 updates or more to affect your site.
Do you see a grey googlebar or white?
3. It is possible that that you have accidentially linked out to another site that is penalized by Google. In this case you will see a white bar indictating PR0.
You will need to identify this site (also white bar and remove the link.
If grey bar present (or unrated) this is possibly a hiccup.
4. You have accidently incorporated spam tactics in your site. Keyword stuffing (same word over and over) many 1x1 pixel links.
5. coding problems - Googlebot can't resolve. Heavy Javascript use may cause this. (very unlikely though)
6. Site's host down during recent crawl. Google currently does an "Everflux" which are minor periodic updates the caught rapidly change content/pages. Since the last major update was a month ago the Everflux is a good possibllity.
[edited by: fathom at 9:04 am (utc) on Oct. 28, 2002]
Hi cedricR
Welcome to WebmasterWorld.
You'll find details of our Usage Agreement [webmasterworld.com] and the forum charter [webmasterworld.com] here which explains what you can and cannot post.
Well the site has been dows for maybe 3-4 hours a day due to bandwith restrictions which result in a 503 error.
This would be the most likely cause, and will work itself out.
However, you may want to increase your bandwidth restrictions or move to a new host.
If visitors find your site down alot (periodically) it may come to a time when they just bypass your google listings simply because your site is alway down (when they visit).
<added> as CrazyFool points out... Googlebot may stop visiting as well.</added>
[edited by: fathom at 9:18 am (utc) on Oct. 28, 2002]
once you've got your bandwidth problems sorted out, watch for googlebot to spider your site and hopefully your site should reappear in google a few weeks later.
There is a grey bar in the google toolbar. I think it is stating that the page is not ranked or indexed or something like that. And if I click on the "show google cache of this page", google answers with "no cache available" ...
>3. It is possible that that you have accidentially linked out to another site that is penalized by Google. In this case you will see a white bar indictating PR0.
>You will need to identify this site (also white bar and remove the link.
Bar is grey so I do not think this is the case
>If grey bar present (or unrated) this is possibly a hiccup.
>4. You have accidently incorporated spam tactics in your site. Keyword stuffing (same word over and over) many 1x1 pixel links.
No, I do not do anything... I mean nothing at all regarding the search engines. I do have a link exchange but all links have a lower PR than mine (and always have).
> 5. coding problems - Googlebot can't resolve. Heavy Javascript use may cause this. (very unlikely though)
No change there either (in the last months)...
I guess it must be a hiccup...
Or as you say in your last message it may be due to the 503 error...
But, although the site receives a decent amount of trafic, it does NOT generate enough money for me to be able to pay for the needed bandwith so I can not do anything about it.
[edited by: heini at 9:57 am (utc) on Oct. 28, 2002]
[edit reason] Sorry, we don't do site reviews [/edit]
An awful lot of the pages dropped from the cache though.. Oh well it must be for the same reason...
Hopefully it will sort itself out in a while.
Cheers
cedric
It definitely feels to me like it's a "downtime" issue, though who knows...
G.
I worried last month when it did something similar, yet it finally stabilized at a PR that was up one from the previous month. This month I'll just wait and see.
Thanks for your help and advice guys!
cedric
However as Grumpus says, if I serach for <snip> then there are 2150 results with the top ones going to my site....
Weird weird weird.. The good thing is that it means (hopefully) that it will be corrected later..
[edited by: Marcia at 6:29 pm (utc) on Oct. 28, 2002]
[edit reason] sorry, no individual site reviews per TOS [/edit]
definitely look into getting that bandwidth error resolved ;)
[edited by: Marcia at 6:30 pm (utc) on Oct. 28, 2002]
[edit reason] edited to reflect generic sitename [/edit]
