Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I am running a larger community page since about 5 years. That site has plenty of related and always fresh content. To support AdSense Revenue related payed links have been soled in a very visible area right next to the content. The spot was previously a good performing AdSense Spot but has been converted to payed links due to a way better revenue per pixel.
After beeing on PR 6 for about 3 years the site has droped on the last PR update in Oktober to PR 3. Obviously google does not like to have things like this as it is a conflict of interest with it's AdSense programm (Hello .. federal monopoly regulation anywhere?), so I was forced like many many others to add NoFollow tags and to pay back many clients.
Links are still soled through the page, as the links are very visible and not for example hidden in the footer. They have been anyway in their early beginning be designed to help the members and not the search engines. The price of cource is much lower these days on PR3 and with NoFollow.
My big hope to get back to PR6 have as of today not become true. Still a PR3 and there seems no way out. I was reading in a brand new post this morning that a new PR update is just on the way, however my site is still on all data centers on PR3, no changes.
Do you have any advice for me? Shall I drop even the nofollow links? I can't believe that the site is on PR3 which is almost an embarrassment while looking on the competitors pages, considering the quality of content and quantity of content. There must be something seriously wrong but I can not figure out what it is. My only guess are the nofollow links. I am still listed in some link selling sites (but not active). Do you believe that this might also be a cause? Perhaps google is screening those pages and putting the publishers on a red list or so?!
Thank you for any advice.
Best regards,
Merlin
[edited by: tedster at 3:16 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2008]
It does sound like your visible PR is still under the "paid links" shadow. That demotion is part of Google's "social engineering" project in the SEO community, so they may keep the lowered PR visible for however long it suits their purposes.
We've had several discussions around here on how the paid links PR demotion didn't always seem to affect the power of links to affect rankings - at not least in every case. How is it for you? Do your outbound links still seem to carry the same strength?
At any rate, getting your domain off those link seller directories where you are not active might be a good idea. You might also try a "Reconsideration request" from within Goole Webmaster Tools. This would at least show good faith on your part in relation to Google's stated guidelines.
However, I assume Google will keep the PR demotions in place for however long they decide, according to their own agenda - they will remove them only when they see fit. Some other Google penalties are also kept alive for a period of time after the problem is fixed - and in some cases things only return to previous levels step-wise and very slowly (if at all).
