20,000 backlinks but only PR 1 -- why?

[en21]

I have a site which has over 20,000 backlinks and most of this site that links to my site has PR3+ I am not sure why on this update my site stays at PR1....

anyone has the same exp?

[Quadrille]

It's a matter of quality, not quantity; with that many links, I'm amazed your site has not already been banned.

One of my sites has fewer than 10 links, is less than a year old, and has GPR=4. And I never chased those links; I just built a good site, and submitted it to four quality directories. The rest just happened. ;)

[g1smd]

Maybe you tried too hard?

If Google thinks you bought those links, or they are from sites that are not on-topic with yours, then those links will not count toward your score...

As an example, a site I dealt with a while ago was at #3 with 52 inbound links, about 20 to 25 of which were the "authority" sites on the topic, while the #8 result was a site in India with more than 5 000 inbound links from all sorts of random sites, blogs and forums, obviously spammed by a bot.

[trillianjedi]

Run of site links perhaps?

Purchased?

Toolbar glitch?

There are a number of explanations - some background info about how you obtained those links and the quality of them may help clarify.

[BigDave]

with that many links, I'm amazed your site has not already been banned.

I wouldn't go that far. I've got one that has around 24k incoming links, gained naturally over 4 years.

I think it all depends on how trustworthy the links are. With the blogosphere out there, I suspect that a lot of pages can pick up thousands of independent links overnight.

If Google has already figured out that most of those 20k links on en21's site are worthless and they filter them out, why should they bother with banning.

[Wlauzon]

One of our sites has about 5 links from university and government research centers, like Sandia Labs.

I would guess that those 5 links add more PR than 20,000 non related ones.

[cabbie]

I suggest you look at the hisory of the site in wayback machine.
Sounds like an expired domain penalty to me.Perhaps you send a reinclusion request to [e-mail]