Does a PR0 mean a penalty on a long established site?

[theyellowfrog]

Hi,
i have a site that is 6 years old. It was formerly no1 for a competitive term. I then sold the site. have jsut bought the domain back and it has a pr0 though it still hs alot of backlinks. It only has 6 pages now which are all indexed but it doesnt rank anywhere.

How can i tell if the site has some sort of penalty and does a pr0 under these circumstances mean a penalty is there?

Thanks

Robert

[tedster]

You'll need top figure out what happened while someone else owned the domain, it looks like. Apparently the content changed - did this include changing all the internal urls? If so, did any of the previous backlinks point to urls that no longer resolve?

I would suggest (as I usually do) that you open a Webmaster Tools account for the domain and see what that feedback tells you. Sometimes a low ranking is just a low ranking - and sometimes it can be a penalty. You may need to gather a good bit of information before you can make a jugement as to whether the interim owner violated an guidelines.

[ecmedia]

You definitely have a penalty. Does this website have any paid links?

[glengara]

"I would suggest (as I usually do) that you open a Webmaster Tools account.."

I've noticed that, have to say I don't use them, but would I be correct in believing they're unlikely to point out a linkage based penalty?

[theyellowfrog]

Well, in webmastertools there are no visible problems with the site, content etc. Im pretty sure it has a linkage based penalty though. When i have altered the site, how do i go about a reinclusion request and with the millions of google webmasters, how efficient are they at dealing with reinclusion requests?

Lastly, is it a reinclusion request that i need as my site IS all indexed it just has a pr0 now where t used to have a pr5.

Thanks

Rob

[tedster]

would I be correct in believing they're unlikely to point out a linkage based penalty?

Yes, most likely that won't happen. But you can learn about a number of problems related to spidering, robots.txt, near-duplicate content and so on - and sometimes that kind of problem can look like a penalty.

The good thing about Webmaster Tools is that Google already has this data about the domain anyway - so you might as well see it. You don't need to install Google Analytics, or use an xml sitemap or anything extra.

is it a reinclusion request that i need as my site IS all indexed it just has a pr0 now where t used to have a pr5.

They call it a "reconsideration request" these days. You can submit it from the Dashboard of your Webmaster Tools account.

The important thing is first to clean up any violations that the previous owner commited on the site. Once you've got a penalty, many people feel that the hand check involved will be more exacting than any algorithm can ever be. Still, recovery is possible. Sometimes in a few weeks, sometimes a gradual or stepwise return of rankings.

In fact, there is such a thing as an automated or algorithmic removal of some penalties - and that is most often gradual.

In your case, I would definitely try to discover what happened and fix it first - especially if there has been any attempt to game links and PageRank. The in your request you can explain that you just bought the site, and this is what you discovered the previous owner did, and what you did to clean it up.

[Marcia]

You might want to check the Internet Archive for source code and outbound links during the interim period. Additionally, in case it wasn't archived during the time the OP owned it and you always allowed archiving, you've got somewhat of a small clue right there about something being amiss.