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I'm new to this, so please forgive if I'm asking sth which is clear to everyone - I couldn't find the answer to my problem in the posts.
I've read that showing a PR0 means that one has been penalised, is that true? I added my site to Google about a few weeks ago, and now it's changing between PR0 and gray. I've checked all the spam-guidelines, but couldn't find anything that I've could done wrong. Can anyone please help me? Many thanks!
It's common to see different numbers in your toolbar during the update, my advice is to sit back and wait a couple of days until the update has been stable on www, for a couple of days, and then view your ranking.
A good way to increase your PageRank is by collecting inbound links, and sometimes Google will display a white line in the PageRank field, that's often when they have indexed your page via the "fresh bot", and that means that the site doesn't have a stable position in the index, and that's it's only indexed temporaraly.
But if you've had your site in the index for a couple of month this shouldn't happen.
If you're new to the update, the GOogle update faq [webmasterworld.com] may help.
a PR0 (all white bar) is not always a penalty.
If you have a relatively small web site and no links from other sites you will have no PageRank, so an all white bar will appear. PageRank is valued by incoming links so you will need to develop this area.
Tip: Dmoz.org listing is a very good place to start.
Excluding the fact that you have indeed actually done something that Google does not like (e.g. - spamming technics; and this tends to be very, very blatant to get on Google's radar)...
... you may have inadvertently linked to some other site that does have a penalty. In this case Google preceives that you are voting this penalized site as a benefit to Google users (which Google itself has determined it's not) therefore Google is warning you of this fact.
In this instance, finding the offending link and removing it can easily get you back into Google's good graces.
I would tend to believe my first conclusion though is the right one. :)
Bad advice. Last I checked, the DMOZ had 1.4 *million* sites backlogged in the queue. Not that he shouldn't submit to the DMOZ, but no guarantee he'll get in for months. His best place to start is to beg a friend with a personal site with decent PR such as 4 or 5. His mistake was not doing this early. Unless he get a decent PR link pronto, he may be PR0 in the next update too. And, he already may be too late if the Googlebot deep crawler is already prowling.
With even a few backlinks in Google (at least PR4 or above) your page that these point to should have should PR, even if PR1. Unless the PR4 page (or more) link to your has many links to other sites on the same page.
Is your main page PR0, and all other pages that have a link to it PR0?
still PR0 or gray at the moment
Is your Google bar all gray or all white, or is it jumping back and forth?
[edited by: fathom at 5:30 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2002]
Don't panic.
During the dance and the lead in period all sorts of factors drive us to drink. This period is very unstable and twitchy.
If you are showing a PR0 (not greyed out PR) 3 or 4 days after the dance has DEFINITELY settled, then you have a problem. To make sure, you should then cross your fingers and wait until the next update is complete and settled (plus about 3 days).
During this wait, you should watch your logs looking for Googlebot to visit (or not as the case may be).
If at this point you are still PR0 (not greyed out PR) and you have not been crawled by Googlebot, then the domain name is possibly a write off for an indefinite period, 3 months, 6 months or even longer who knows.
If that is the case, you should set up a new domain name.
By this time, with the help you will get on this forum, you should be aware of what caused it so that the new domain is put up squeeky clean.
However only time and patience will reveal what's what.
I've been there with sites inherited from cowboy SEO's and even after you make a site sqeeky clean, Google can be very unforgiving and in its arrogance makes no allowance for the innocent (most times) site owner who could be facing bankruptcy through no fault of there own.
I wish you well.
btw: is the dance over? there are stable results for
link:www.yahoo.com
link:www.amazon.com etc.
