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I am afraid that the penalties that these sites have received that caused their PR to drop will propagate to my site and that my PR will decrease as well. My gut feeling is to remove these links immediately but I don't want to over react and start losing incoming links.
Thanks!
thanks
Linking to a site will never harm your own site...
except :
- when the link is broken
- when linking to a site that got a penalty. That will be seen as if you want to promote that site.
Keep in mind that the quality site that's a mere PR3 today and gives you a good link may get more links itself and develop into a PR6 site... I think telling someone, "I can't exchange links with you because your PR is too low" is shortsighted.
Having said that, of course, I DO recommend watching out for sites that might be penalized. One or two links to such sites probably won't kill you, but if you avoid knowingly linking to such sites you'll have a bit of a cushion if a few of your "good" links go bad.
The gray PR site might be penalized, or it might just have dropped (e.g., it might have been down when Google tried to spider). You should check the site out and use your judgment as to whether linking to them is a good idea. If it's a great resource for your visitors, I'd keep it. If it's an exchange for convenience, link pop, or traffic reasons, I might send that link on vacation for a month or two.
Belgian_guy,
I had about 5 outgoing links that WERE PR5 or PR6. Now they are PR2 or PR3. The decrease tells me they were hit with some sort of penalty. The sites with grey toolbar HAD PR5 or PR6 last month. How could they can they just be "not ranked" if they were last month. I am not really sure how to explain the grey toolbar but the decrease in PR from 5 to 3 seems scary. Their penalties could propagate to me. I should probably just remove the links.
I personally do not believe in reciprocal links. In some cases it does make sense to link back if the site is one that really fits my topic. But in many cases I link to sites related to my topics and sites linked to me are directories or people who just happen to like my sites.
I don't think we want Google to ruin the whole point of the Internet as an information source with links from source to related source. Hopefully they won't have to in order to stop the cheaters.
Anne
I agree with you. And the cheaters are the very ones I am afraid of. I add links to my site to complement my content, and then when I see the PR of those links fall I start to think they are somehow getting caught cheating and being penalized. In the end it will hurt me and defeat the purpose of all the honest, hard work that I have done.
I was worried about one of my sites yesterday when I noticed that had been greyed out.
For some reason I clicked on the bar and it turned pure white.
I went round investigating and noticed this on a number of sites.
I also found grey bars which were grey even after I clicked it.
Is there therefore a difference between a clicked bar and a non clicked bar I now ask myself!
Fiver.
My linking policy is that I NEVER link to a site with a PR lower than 4.
That's an unfortunate policy. The idea of linking isn't merely to generate reciprocal links; its real purpose is to provide added value (in the form of useful information) for the reader.
There are many excellent pages that have a PageRank of less than 4, and ignoring them is a disservice to both your readers and the Web.
Unfortunate it may be, but I have been denied many times by webmasters who have high page rank and understandably so. If "page rank" is Google's best guess of a site's quality, then it seems to reason that linking to sites that Google regards as low quality might be dangerous. It's not a risk I have been willing to take. My content does not suffer by refusing to add PR2 sites. Incidentally, the purpose of this post was to solicit opinions/ideas that may help me refine that policy. So as unfortunate as it may seem, I am trying to determine if it is actually a GOOD policy and I am trying to determine if I should remove the links on my site that have suffered page rank penalties.
I'm not so certain that is the correct approach to take based on these last two Google updates. PR has been dropping globally for many. It does not mean that they are being penalized.
I replied to another post where I stated I believe Google has been making adjustments to PR since the August update. I've seen quite a few PR8 sites drop to PR6. I've seen quite a few PR6 sites drop to PR4. And then there are those who were at PR4 and are now at PR3/2. Those sites are still authoritative resources and as mentioned above, its all about relevant content.
PR is a factor, but only in cases where there is a penalty involved which is usually PR0 or PR3/2/1 home and PR0 internal. There are other scenarios. Who knows, next update, those PR3's could jump to PR6's and where would you be then? Scrambling to get the links back up! ;)
It's not just what you receive -- it's what you give and receive in return.
If a page (on another site) that you have linked to was PR4 and now PR2 obviously your link was not worth that much more than the one you believe you are getting now.
So let's look at this in reverse.
I have a page of content (excellent stuff) a site owner finds it, believes that content is a benefit to the his site visitors and links.
Yippee! I got a "free" PR2 link. Hmmm... can I make this link better, well I have a some "on theme" pages PR6's (no other outbound links on them) if I link to that page... More Yippee! A new PR5 or PR6.
How much better is that new PR6 than PR2 to my page.
What have I given up - well IMHO PageRank is really "useless" as long as it remains inside your site. Natural PageRank is the only thing that matters. (caution -- a radical observation)
If internally transferred PageRank actual did matter a whole bunch we could all have orphan sites just internally linking.
The key: every single web page that does not have a natural inbound link has no natural PageRank... and these are the pages that can help develop more natural PageRank by making inbound PR1's, 2's, 3's, 4's and so on, more valuable.
In turn pages that people normally link to; are seen as higher PR so that those individuals who know something of PR will want to exchange links rather than "My gut feeling is to remove these links immediately but I don't want to over react and start losing incoming links".
If there is value in cross visitation, and/or search engine traffic develop the linkage... the onus is generally on you since most people have no comprehension of PageRank what-so-ever and this is also a big advantage.
I replied to another post where I stated I believe Google has been making adjustments to PR since the August update. I've seen quite a few PR8 sites drop to PR6. I've seen quite a few PR6 sites drop to PR4. And then there are those who were at PR4 and are now at PR3/2. Those sites are still authoritative resources and as mentioned above, its all about relevant content.
Actually I think an additional 1/2 billion pages in Google (almost 1/5th of Google's previous self) automatically makes PageRank of yesturday much less, and a more likely cause to massive drops (but not all) than an algo tweak.
If we do not link at least at the rate Google realizes new pages eventually you will be PR0 and no penalty applied.
One thing I have to keep in mind is that I earned my PR naturally.
Interesting perspective.
I had a page which dropped in PR in the last update for some reason, going from 4 to 3. But it still ranks well in the SERPs, the same or better than before, and traffic has nearly doubled due to all the new pages picked up in the last update. Should all the people linking to that page drop their link because it's PR dropped? I think basing decisions just on PR is too simplistic.
There are many reason why a page may drop out of the index for a month giving the grey toolbar and my reading here has lead me to believe it's not that uncommon. The server may have been down when googlebot was crawling, or the webmaster may have broken the html at just the wrong time (I did this once, I'm more careful now). A simple grey bar for a month isn't necessarily indicative of a penalty. Also if everyone drops their link during the month the page is out then it will possibly come back in with a lower PR. This may lead some people to think they were right to drop the link (well it's lower now so it must have been penalised) and also put the page into the trap I mentioned in my first paragraph.
I track all of my reciprocal links in a db and note the PR of the page every time I verify my link is still there. You would be suprised how many sites steadily move up in PR.
And so what if PR drops worldwide. Isn't it all relative?
I would also like to say I can't recommend more strongly setting up a db to monitor links from the beginning. Its so much easier to keep track when you have the sites index, linking page, PR, email, etc...
One thing I have to keep in mind is that I earned my PR naturally. Maybe by tinkering with things on my site will screw it all up. I should probably leave well enough alone, huh? LOL
Could be. The less artificial your linking patterns look, the less likely you are to get into trouble with Google!
Just to reassure folks who are nervous about external linking, let me say that I've got a site with thousands of outbound links that were selected solely on the basis of content. (I never even look at a site's PR when linking to it.) My home page has a PR of 6 (occasionally bouncing up to 7 for a short while), and so do a number of my internal pages. (And I haven't spent much time looking for inbound links, either--though I probably should!) I'm certain that many of the sites that I link to have a PR of 2 or lower, since--let's face it--John Doe's personal travelogue, or a farm in Switzerland that offers "sleep on straw" accommodations isn't likely to get too many quality inbound links. Linking to such sites doesn't seem to have hurt me.
(Mind you, I don't link to "link farms" or affiliate sites, which are more likely to be considerd "bad neighborhoods" by Google than Jaggi's Schlafen im Stroh page is.)
One thing I have to keep in mind is that I earned my PR naturally. Maybe by tinkering with things on my site will screw it all up. I should probably leave well enough alone, huh? LOL
Could be. The less artificial your linking patterns look, the less likely you are to get into trouble with Google!
Just to reassure folks who are nervous about external linking, let me say that I've got a site with thousands of outbound links that were selected solely on the basis of content. (I never even look at a site's PR when linking to it.) My home page has a PR of 6 (occasionally bouncing up to 7 for a short while), and so do a number of my internal pages. (And I haven't spent much time looking for inbound links, either--though I probably should!) I'm certain that many of the sites that I link to have a PR of 2 or lower, since--let's face it--John Doe's personal travelogue, or a farm in Switzerland that offers "sleep on straw" accommodations isn't likely to get too many quality inbound links. Linking to such sites doesn't seem to have hurt me.
(Mind you, I don't link to "link farms" or affiliate sites, which are more likely to be considerd "bad neighborhoods" by Google than Jaggi's Schlafen im Stroh page is.)
I just added pages on topics that interested me and linked to sites that enhanced my own pages. When I first started putting some affiliate stuff on some of my sites and installed the Google toolbar for the first time, I found that my site was a PR8.
After I started paying attention, it went down to PR7 and, on the last update, PR6, yet I'm getting more traffic now than I ever was.
I've noticed my PR has dropped a little over the last few months and also wonder if it's just a trend. I touched that magical PR7 oh so briefly then dropped back to 6 on my homepages. But in my topic that is pretty good so I'm not complaining.
Anne
The bad neighborhood penalty that many sites got back in january were from links to PR0 sites. the sites were also easy to spot because the index page and sub pages all had PR0. normally a new site who got a PR of 0 for the index page would have grey for all the other pages. And, the penalized sites normally had many pages listed in google but only by URL, the cache was dropped, all rated at PRO.
The effect of the penalty was a drop in PR for the _page_ that had the link to the bad neighborhood. Often the penalty was enough to bring that page to PR0 but I never saw it PR0 a complete site because of one link.
When i saw the penalties and i had a brush with them myself i became concerned and looked at everysite i could find that had a penalty to understand what the penalty was about. All PR0 sites had a involvement with the neighborhood (to the extent of even having the same content) but often the involvement was fairly innocent (in one case a person had moved a site and the origonal had a PR0 and a few referances grouped the sites, of cource the new site had copies of the PR0 sites content).
Pages that linked to the PR0 pages had a drop in PR for that page _not site_ that links to (in january i belive 1 was enough) or more PR0 sites.
I have never seen any PR loss from linking to a PR1 or better site. While i can not say it will always be OK to link to pages that have a penalty because they linked to a PR0 site I have not yet seen any evidence such a link drains PR from the 2nd removed page that leads to the PR0 penalty. So i think because of lack of facts and lots of speculation (and what ifs) fuel a fear of PR0.
But on the other hand canceling a link exchange aggreement with another webmaster will likely for that webmaster create a bad image of your site if he/she discovers it. People have longer memories than bots. If next month the PR goes up for that site that webmaster may not be so interested in a renewed link exchange aggreement (in fact i would link to the competition without requiring a return link if it were me). Not speculation but human nature! Cancel the agreement if they are down and out, but if they are not out you are working against yourself.
Anyways...
Thanks again.
except those with PR0
crobb305 it would be interesting to know if your web page actually linking to these are a PR0 as well.
If not there is just insuffiecient PR being transferred to that page to register.
I highly, highly recommend:
1. don't break the link.
2. add a couple of other links from other site pages that currently have no outbound links.
3. If you have no pages open for this -- develop a couple and place on your site adjacent to pages that have high PR, and link out from here.
You would be surprise at how much PR you can transfer and then get back from a number of current PR0.
