Internal PR stripped

Why is one site affected and not the others

[Whitey]

We have a set of three domains with different regional extensions. The home page of each is PR 5 , 6 & 6

On one, we have all the internal pages stripped of their PR ie just a white bar. Interestingly it is the site which has the most pages indexed [ approx 100k of 200k ].

Overall, we have good and long established IBL's from quality sites, like .edu & .gov plus authority sites. Using the backlink tool, none of the "internal" pages show any IBL's - however, the front page does have them displayed with the BL tool.

It's possible that we have some SPAM links pointing to those internal pages. Will these cause offence to G and have our PR stripped?

[tedster]

Whitey, if the internal, inbound links were coming from domains that Google just now identified as problematic, then they could have just now placed a "does not pass PR" penalty on those links. PR is only circulated around the web through links, after all. However, in that scenario I would expect a PR drop, but not a total wipe out.

However, if Google can pin down that you are somehow complicitous in those "spam links" then just they might nail you with a penalty of some kind.

However, we're seeing reports right now that toolbar PR is currently unstable. And if something is buggy at Google, it is also a major holiday in the US. So I would not panic just yet. But if you know of any "shady" links that you have intentionally placed, then I'd say do what you can to clean that up.

In 2006, link quality means a lot more than link quantity. And every element in the algorithm seems to have some kind of aging factor attached to it as well.

[Whitey]

What we did do was play with a linking network that had "theme relevant" quality links into the now affected site. About 1 link from the network would point to 1 of our internal pages - so nothing too dramatic.

Although this linking match was broad, [ I'd estimate around 20% of pages ] and shallow in terms of the number of network links compared to others on the site, the relevant referring network became polluted and un disciplined with non related links. e.g. like an education site with lingerie links on it - a complete "no - no" for G. But only around 25% of the links fell into this flaw.

It was not the intention to have non related links pointing to us.

Interestingly, some of the big sites that i observe in this network are powering along on Yahoo and MSN.

Two things have potentially emerged from this experiment.

1. Previously, on another thread [webmasterworld.com...] , I reported that sites that have OBL [ outbound links - SPAM links were being penalised with the pages dropped from the index.

2. Potentially, when a particular pattern can be established by Google, of "SPAM" links and link networks through some form of tracing, it looks like it may penalise the receiving site, which may have part of it's effect on the PR.

Can anyone report a pattern of penalisation for receiving such links, and how does Google ascertain this, I wonder.

If this observation is accurate it may be fair to say that IBL's can effect a site - but i don't know how "SPAM BOMBERS" which site owners have no control over can be differentiated - and we are regularily bombed unfortunately, probably like most sites.

Tedster - I think your observation of the ageing factor may be most important ie the age of the site , the age of the link , coupled with the theme relevance, authority , build up, disbursment anything of a common sense approach to natural, quality popularity.

Somehow, i think PR might be caught up in this.