PageRank gray bar after domain transfer and new content

[newborn]

Hello I located 5 great domain names for my business. They all had between a PR3 to PR4 and these were valid. All the links remained intact with their existing PR as well.

These domains I bought at auction. While creating the content I went ahead and added Wordpress and redirected two. The other 3 are still where they were parked.

Up to a week ago the PR was intact then when checking today all the sites are Gray Bar. I am wondering what is going on. After I uploaded the new site I added my Google WMT and it showed that no pages were indexed.

I wanted to know if the links that existed would ever have the same effect and move my site back to its previous page rank - or - is that old PR lost forever?

[aakk9999]

It was said that Google tends to reset authority, trust and PR when the domain change hands, even more so if the content is not the same as it was before, and this is despite existing links going to domains.

Not sure if this would also happen if you have restored these domains' content from webarchive so that you end up having domains with the same content as they had before when they were operational, i.e. would in such case PR etc stay intact.

[Lame_Wolf]

I had a PR6 site and I altered the name of the owner. It dropped to PR3 and never recovered (PR wise). SERPS were okay though.

[indyank]

I had a PR6 site and I altered the name of the owner. It dropped to PR3 and never recovered (PR wise). SERPS were okay though.

I have not experienced this.Where was this name altered? Is it in GWT? Was the domain transferred to the new owner?

[tedster]

indyank, I'm pretty sure Lame_Wolf must be talking about the Whois record.

[newborn]

I certainly hope this is not the case....
If the whois record changes - I think I probably waited too long to upload content to the site and had it sitting there as a parked domain for too long.

[Lame_Wolf]

indyank, it was a domain transfer. I am not saying that it is the reason why I droppped, but as no other changes were made (to the site as well as the records) I can only assume that there is/was a connection.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I very much doubt that a change of ownership alone would affect rankings. Businesses change hands every day and there would be no reason for the search engines to penalise them for this alone.

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[Lame_Wolf]

I very much doubt that a change of ownership alone would affect rankings. Businesses change hands every day and there would be no reason for the search engines to penalise them for this alone.

I totally agree with you. But for some unknown reason, Google decided to drop 3 PR points on the next update, and that happened over 2 years ago. Stayed on PR3 ever since, even though i've had many more IBL's since then. (.gov .edu etc).

The site was PR6 for some period of time and nothing had changed on the site.
White hat, don't sell links, all above board.

[tedster]

I very much doubt that a change of ownership alone would affect rankings.

Agreed. It's the combination of a change in ownership AND a change of content/purpose that causes a reset.

However, going from a PR3 from a PR5 seems not to be a reset to me. I wonder if there is a combination effect going on in this case:

1. The two redirects are not passing link equity (maybe they're not 'trusted' because the previous content does not exist at the redirected address)

2. A recent PageRank update occurred (it did)

[indyank]

Redirection is always a tricky game unless you know how to play it. The best way to push a new site is to feed it directly.

[tedster]

Agreed - and I can see why two recently acquired domains now redirecting to another recently acquired domain would not be allowed to pass link juice - even if the actual content was now on the new target domain.

[newborn]

So is it that a reset never comes back ..... So should I expect that I will never get back any of these Page Ranks - The sites are in the same theme as they were before I bought them, just new content.

[tedster]

Yes, I'd say the power of those legacy backlinks is now dead to you. But you do have a PR3, not gray bar or zero, so it's not a complete reset, at least not yet. Maybe only some of your domains have been reset right now.

There's little you can do at this point, anyway - just roll up your sleeves and build the best site you can. At least you have a record of many good backlinking domains. If you give them some good content to link to, they may well respond positively. That should be easier than link building from absolute zero.