Google: No backward links

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Google: No backward links

A link from a site with PR6 doesn't show up

Good_Vibes

8:04 pm on Jan 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

I have a site with over 2000 backlinks (found using alltheweb's link checker: link:http://www.yourdomain.com).

I have 2 questions:

1) Why doesn't the link from a PR6 nor a PR5 site show up in the Google backward links?

2) Since GoogleGuy has stated (in different words) that "you cannot be penalized for someone linking to you, only when you link to someone", how could my site have a PR of 2 when every single site I link to has at least a PR of 4 (with only 2 exceptions or PR 2)? Most are actually PR6 or more!

I am not looking for answers to my problems (though that would be nice ;) I actually want to open the floor to answers to these questions.

Fiver

8:09 pm on Jan 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

1)? maybe it's too new a link.

you cannot be penalized for someone linking to you

No, but you can benefit from it. Are your outgoing PR6 links reciprocated?

Good_Vibes

9:58 pm on Jan 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

1) The PR 6 link has been there for at least 6 months.

Are your outgoing PR6 links reciprocated?

No, but my concern is not with a lack of PR bonuses, but with any penalties that exist.

question 1) deals with the bonuses not counting
question 2) deals with penalties that might exist

heini

10:06 pm on Jan 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Hmm, any chance we are talking a network of sites here?

Sorry if I misunderstood you though.

Fiver

10:13 pm on Jan 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

1)When you said the incoming links are from sites with a PR5 or 6, do you mean their index page? What's important is the page that you have the link from specifically. If the PR of that page is below 4, it's possible the link wont show up in google's link check.

I know thats a basic answer, but I can't tell from your question if thats obviously not the problem.

2)Has your site always had a PR2? or is this something thats come along recently?

I wouldn't presume that a page rank of 2 means you've been penalized (unless, like I ask, you recently went down from a higher PR)

Is your question 'how can i possibly have a PR of 2 with 2k links?'
or is it 'do I have a penalty?'

Dante_Maure

2:58 am on Jan 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

how could my site have a PR of 2 when every single site I link to has at least a PR of 4 (with only 2 exceptions or PR 2)? Most are actually PR6 or more!

The PR of your site has nothing to do with the PR of the pages you are linking to... it is based entirely on the PR of the pages that are linking to you.

Good_Vibes

5:21 pm on Jan 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Fiver
1) Yes it is their index page, and the page has a PR of 6 (and the other one is also the index page)

2) I didn't track PR before so I don't know if it went up or down.

My question is both.
2a) How can I possibly have a PR of 2 with 2k links (these are not door pages, not anything even close)

2b) Do I have a penalty (with a PR of 2 I figure I must have one, but what the H*ll could it be?)

Dante_Maure:
From my interpretation of GoogleGuy's comments:
- Your PR can only go up from who links to you (never down)
- Your PR can only go down from who you link to (never up)

Susanne

11:58 am on Jan 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

How many pages of content do you have, and how many of those pages are indexed in Google?

Yidaki

12:09 pm on Jan 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

Good_Vibes, sorry if this is a dumb question but are you sure that the sites linking to you don't disallow google to follow their outgoing links (robots.txt)?

Susanne

12:29 pm on Jan 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

Good point Yidaki!
Maybe the pages are blocked with the META noindex, nofollow as well?

vitaplease

12:30 pm on Jan 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

(found using alltheweb's link checker: link:http://www.yourdomain.com)

Alltheweb will show all links it has in its index linking to your whole site (also the internal pages of your site) if you do a backlink check of your index page.

It could be that the PR6 page is linking to an internal page of your site..

Good_Vibes

11:27 pm on Jan 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

Suzanne:
There are over 20 pages of original content and they all seem to be in there.

Yidaki:
Yup, I checked and the robots tag says
<META NAME="robots" content="index,follow">
There is no robots.txt

Vitaplease:
The PR6 page is an index page, and it links to my index page.

vitaplease

6:43 am on Jan 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

Very strange to have 2000 backlinks (in ATW) and a PR of 2 for your index page.

-Another thing to check is, in general, what the Pagerank is of those 2000 pages linking to you.

- Also that PR6 page linking to you, how many links on that page? and does it have javascript links or other type of redirects towards your page?

Does feel like it is some kind of penalty.

Susanne

8:51 am on Jan 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

This is such a mystery and I'm getting really curious about this site! Good_Vibes, could you put the site in your profile please? Is the URL and old one that's been in the Google index before and might have been punished? You can check the history of your URL by going to web dot archive dot org.

Good_Vibes

3:01 pm on Jan 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

The site is in my profile.
This was an old site that I took over.

The PR 6 page is a fantasy art site, and the link to me is a regular html link. Not a java link.

Xiaoliao

5:27 am on Jan 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

Google is not the Lord, he is getting older and older, too many jobs and too many bugs to handle, if google try to calculate and detect everything, what do you think google would be?
If everybody get more and more backlinks, let's say for now, you get 10 PR5 backlinks and your site get PR5, maybe 6 months later, your site would only get PR3, the new site is hard to get high PR.
So, maybe 2 or 3 years later, every website stuff with thousands links, google just lead the internet world to the hell.
Then, google will be dead!

Susanne

11:36 am on Jan 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

Good_Vibes,
Your site in the profile can't be seen. I think it will show after you've reached a certain number of posts in WebmasterWorld. Not sure if you should post the link here in the thread. Maybe the moderators can advice?

ciml

12:27 pm on Jan 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

Susanne, it's better to discuss the principles involved rather than perform site reviews.

Xiaoliao, that's a rather negative view of the future IMO. As the Web grows, the number of independent authorities able to recommend authoritative sources grows too. PageRank works better on larger datasets.

Fiver

5:19 pm on Jan 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

From my interpretation of GoogleGuy's comments:
- Your PR can only go up from who links to you (never down)
- Your PR can only go down from who you link to (never up)

I would say that your PR is dependent upon whom and how you link out of your page, in combination with how others link to you.

I agree that since you have no control over incoming links, that they could not affect you negatively. But that does not logically lead to the conclusion that outgoing links can't affect you positively. If you're linking to authorities of value related to your subject, google is going to notice. If an authority on a subject links to your page on a subject, google is going to notice. If you're both linking back and forth, google is going to notice.

I'd ramble on, but it's been done. [webmasterworld.com...]

Good_Vibes

2:49 pm on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

Ciml said:

it's better to discuss the principles involved rather than perform site reviews.

I agree. As I mentioned in post #1, I'm not looking for personal help, but answers to the problems. :)

How can a site with no penalizing outbound links and many many inbound links (including a PR6) have a PR of only 2?

Susanne

10:17 am on Jan 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

Good_Vibes,
Are you in a very competitive business? And, on your 20 pages of content, how much text is there on each page? 50 words? 250? You said that your pages all SEEM to be in Google's index. Have you checked using allinurl:www.yoursite.com site:www.yoursite.com

Yes, of course we shouldn't do site reviews, but I think this case is very intriguing and I'm still very curious! ;)

You also said it's an old site that you've taken over. Maybe the site USED to link to a whole bunch of bad sites and was punished for that. Then maybe the previous owners removed those links but the penalty is still on? Have you checked the older version/s of the site in web dot archive dot org? maybe you can see some old pages that have dirty links on them or something.

jonrichd

10:55 am on Jan 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

Seems to me that we are comparing apples and oranges. Just because there are 2000 links on ATW doesn't mean that Google has found all the same links.

IMHO, ATW is better at spidering cgi type links that are sometimes used in directories than Google is.

Susanne

2:18 pm on Jan 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

Good_Vibes,
Sorry, I couldn't edit my post. It is supposd to read:
allinurl:www.yoursite.com site:www.yoursite.com
all on one line...

Good_Vibes

3:45 pm on Jan 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

Suzanne:
There are over 250 words of original text on each page.
I used allinurl:www.yoursite.com site:www.yoursite.com and found all my pages.

Yes it's competitive, but I am not looking at by rank on the serps, only at PageRank.

I took over the site in May 2002, so the old site penalties should have been removed since then.

awoyo

4:26 pm on Jan 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

Based on my small amount of experience with google and what happened with one of my sites I would say it sounds like penalty. I had only 60+ links to my site and a number one spot for my keywords before the Great Google Debacle of a while back, when so many site's PR just seemed to disappear for no apparent reason. Now I have twice the number of links as reported by alltheweb, and little, if no PR, no backward links reported by google, no nothing. And no answers to my questions about what, if anything, I did to cause this. To be honest, I don't think even google knows the answer. I think they say they "won't tell" to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit someone "pushed the wrong button", and screwed up a whole bunch of web sites, and the businesses of those that run them.