A 3 month old site with PR 4?

How can an amateur 3 month old site get PR4

[The_Doo]

A non web-savvy friend of mine created a website which looks amateurish. Although I know that looks don't play a part in Google's ranking, the toolbar shows a ranking of PR4! I checked with the search engines and less than 5 sites link to his. How is this possible?

I have been struggling with my site for over a year and my ranking is PR0. I understand that this could mean I have been penalized, but I'm very sure I have not spammed or posted objectionable material. I have been exchanging reciprocal links with sites. Could I have inadvertently linked to a penalized site and caused my own site to get screwed? This is all very confusing. Can anyone please enlighten me? I'm going bonkers!

[trillianjedi]

Hi The_Doo and welcome to WebmasterWorld.

I don't think you understand how google PR works. It's purely based on inbound links. Nothing else.

[webmasterworld.com...]

TJ

[Lorel]

I saw the same thing with two sites I designed at the last update . They were both only a few weeks online and one got a PR 4 (with only links from my site) and the other got a PR 3 (with very few links).

[texasville]

Keep in mind, it depends on what pr is being passed to this site. If those few links it has have high pr, that would account for it. And are you saying all his pages have pr4 or just his home page?

[arran]

If you want a high PR site quickly, buy some links. For example you can get a PR6 site from a couple of decent PR7s. At this stage, the PR is pretty useless for ranking purposes but it will help you get reciprocal links - webmasters are generally more enthusiastic about linking to you if they get a link back from a PR5/6 page.

arran.

[strangerrr]

while calculating PR factor that comes into play are :

link pointing to you page,
PR of link pointing to your page,
number of outgoing links on page pointing to your page,
outgoing links on your page, maybe more ...

[buksida]

Even with a better PR it wont make much difference if the site is new. I have a five month old site that is a PR 5, over 800 pages of original content, daily updates, newsfeeds and a link popularity over 4,500 but I'm still stuck in this poxy Google sandbox.

Google seem to like punishing people that put a genuine effort into creating something. I only wish I knew why.

[Rollo]

How is this possible?

One PR 6 link can probably make another site a PR4 pretty easily other things being equal. PR in the toolbar doesn't mean much, though. Nor does the look of the site. I have some high PR sites and can make any new site start at PR6 easily, but that doesn't translate to good traffic at all. Good traffic comes from well optimized pages with relevant incoming links, a steady flow of new pages and links, and I would argue age.

[The_Doo]

hi Rollo and everyone else... thanks for your help..

i thought i understood how inbound links would affect my PR but when i saw how his site got PR4 just like that, i wondered if everything i learned was crap!

can you tell me if there's any way to know if i've been penalized by google? i'm positive i have not done anything to get myself penalized unless maybe accidenly linking to a bad site while building my reciprocal links.

by the way... if what you say is true rollo (it makes sense to me), why bother building reciprocal links with good sites anyway, when i can just but inbound links from PR6 sites or just confine my reciprocal links to PR6 sites?

the site i'm currently working on has approx 250 pages of content and one page is added every alternate day. his is a 5 page site that hasn't been updated in a month. WHY BOTHER WITH RECIPROCAL LINKS AND QUALITY CONTENT IF THERE'S A WAY TO MANIPULATE THE PR? or am i over-concerned about my silly PR0?

[Rollo]

why bother building reciprocal links with good sites anyway, when i can just but inbound links from PR6 sites or just confine my reciprocal links to PR6 sites

Well, I think you're wrongly equating good rankings with PR.

1) High PR does not equal good rankings, there used to be a strong correlation, but not any more.

2) Also, you have to bear in mind that PR is a Google concept, it has absolutely nothing to do with your rankings in Yahoo, MSN and the rest.

3) I would argue a link from a low PR "on topic" site is more valuable than a link from a high PR site that doesn't have anything to do with your subject matter.

If your site is new and you have no toolbar PR, that's nothing to worry about. Google will update you next time around. If you had PR then went to zero, say goodbye to your Google visitors.

[rfgdxm1]

>A non web-savvy friend of mine created a website which looks amateurish. Although I know that looks don't play a part in Google's ranking, the toolbar shows a ranking of PR4! I checked with the search engines and less than 5 sites link to his. How is this possible?

The Google algo favors amateur sites. A single link from a PR5 page could make the home page of another site PR4.

[The_Doo]

Well, I think you're wrongly equating good rankings with PR.

1) High PR does not equal good rankings, there used to be a strong correlation, but not any more.

----> Didn't know that.

2) Also, you have to bear in mind that PR is a Google concept, it has absolutely nothing to do with your rankings in Yahoo, MSN and the rest.

----> Yes... my site which is 3 months old is doing quite well in Yahoo! and MSN. In fact, I think it's because of my RSS feed that the bulk of my visitors are from MSN. Yahoo! places me on the 2nd and 4th page of both my chosen keywords and I'm happy with that for now. It's just that people seem to keep telling me that if you're not in Google, you're nowhere. I tend to think that Google's PR systems is not good because everyone i know is just getting reciprocal links just to see their site get a high PR but their content sucks... (just my opinion)

3) I would argue a link from a low PR "on topic" site is more valuable than a link from a high PR site that doesn't have anything to do with your subject matter.

----> Yes... many people have been pushing me to jump on the reciprocal links bandwagon... but I personally feel I want to take my time and build good quality links that are "on topic" as you say. Do you think I'm wrong?

If your site is new and you have no toolbar PR, that's nothing to worry about. Google will update you next time around. If you had PR then went to zero, say goodbye to your Google visitors.

----> My site is about 4 months old so I guess if what you say is true, then I'm ok. When I said I was struggling for more than a year, I was talking about another site that is simply lacking in traffic and NOT what people generally would find interesting. Thanks for your very informative input Rollo... cheers... will keep plugging on...