Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Recently, I added an Alpha Index, linked to by my front page. This Index contained all the blogs in my site.
Because my users' blog addressess are [*.example.com,...] where * is their usernames, I believe that Google may be penalizing me for a sudden surge of outbound links.
As such, my rankings have dropped from #1-#2 for a couple of terms to page 10-15 of the SERPs.
However, a search for www.example.com/alpha.php shows no results (i.e. Google seems not to have indexed my Alpha Index).
If I have indeed been penalized, is there any way I can remove the penalization?
[edited by: ciml at 12:53 pm (utc) on May 17, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]
My wild guess is that you just exported your PR.
But if that's true, then why don't all directory sites have PRs of 0?
Assuming that I remove the subdomains and modify all links to www.example.com/blog.php?username=username.
Am I still going to get a PR drain? My main intention for the Alpha Index was to get blogs indexed, but apparently it seems I can't do that without adversely affecting my site.
By the way, Google is still freshly scanning my site each day, so it may indeed not be a penalization after all.
On top of that, I have moved to page 14 (from page 15 previously) for the term 'free blog'.
However, if you were to search allinanchor: free blog [google.com.sg], I notice my site at a very high position on the 1st page. While I understand that allinanchor positions do not accurately represent the SERPs, but the allinanchor page [google.com.sg] does accurately represent the SERP for the term 'free blog' just before my site was dropped.
Moreover, my site is still having a pagerank of 6. Unless, of course, Google is not updating its PageRank in the toolbar.
Finally, I have heard that PageRank does not adversely affect the SERPs (at least not to a large extent). For such a large drop (page 1 to page 15), do you think it is still a PR drain, or do you think it points to a penalization?
To be honest, I can't see a correlation between the two.
My guess is, if you have any other potential links schemes in play, this Alpha index may have tipped your linkage pattern into disrepute.
Using sub-domains may have it seen as an artificial attempt to Big-up the site.
Either I have been penalized, or perhaps I'm in the sandbox for adding too many links.
Anyhow, Google refuses to reply to my email.
