How many here have a PR8 link or higher?

Only honest or humorous answers need apply...

[FleaPit]

No need to write names, urls or anything, just interested to see how "popular" a PR8 link is.

Oh and by the way, if you do have one how much do you earn :)?

[FleaPit]

I'll take that as nobody...

[tristan]

I had one, but my dog ate it.

[SEO practioner]

It was part of my divorce settlement :-(

[Shak]

I lost mine on the way to the Dance

Shak

[killroy]

Can I add them up?

;)

[dougs]

:) maybe, maybe not :)

[BGumble]

It's from a site in Canada. You wouldn't know it, we linked up over the summer.

[hooloovoo22]

i would if i could give one of my big fat pr0's a belt

...so sorry

kids numbers jokes, always a good time.

i'd rather have a PR7. why? because 7 ate 9.

...so sorry again...is it friday yet?

[brendan]

We got a client internal PR8 and then they didn't pay us this month so now the site is gone and we have just left a blank index page. Along with all the links and adverts we have helped them get. It is a total tragedy and google will hopefully spot it soon and take it our of the SERPS to avoid users finding a dead site but we pulled it today and it is a funny site to see a PR8 with nothing on it. Shame about the client though but there are plenty more fish in the sea and the product wasn't that great anyway.

Thought I'd share that with you all :)

Brendan

[BGumble]

Oh sure, that was an innocent post ;) Here come the stickies with offers! LOL

[brendan]

As for how much this site earned not very much because although the site was amazing and I mean amazing the product was not. In fact it was far from it less than a few k a month in sales.

It almost makes me want to cry, but I am pretty happy we are not working on it any more. It was a good learning experience and as a result I have now postponed my plans for an ice cream van chain in Alaska.... :P

[FleaPit]

Brendan, are you telling me you haven't sneaked a little link in there with a cute little anchor pointing to all your lovely sites. Cuz if you haven't I got a site that well... sticky me

[brendan]

no stickies yet :) but I wouldn't bother the site should hopefully be out of the Google / any other index quickly.

Pulled it from dmoz today and all the links we controlled have been removed and requests sent to the others so it won't be relevant for long be interesting to see how long it takes though to be erased from existance I was thinking today this must be one of very few fairly high PR sites that has just been pulled off the web. I'll keep yu all posted if anything interesting happens.

[FleaPit]

One question Brendan: Why?

[brendan]

Fleapit, that was suggested today that we link it in to another relevant site but there is no real benefit we are always looking for the long term building up valuable sites that stick around if we want PR8 link then we make sure it is on topic and either pay for an advert or do a deal or build the site ourselves if you build a decent site PR8 should be fairly acheieveable in most areas with 6 months hard work and once you have a good site then its the best feeling in the world :)

[FleaPit]

I hear ya, but still, letting a PR8 slip through the net when it's just begging to be anchored with some juicy tag. Geeeees, some people get all the luck!

[brendan]

The site in question had a few hundred pages of relevant content lots of links from relevant areas and from our other relevant sites so why would we/they continue to link to a site which no longer has any content? other than to fool a search engine into thinking it was relevant which would ultimately put us in a crap position by first spamming the results and second giving them a reason to treat us with caution.

We have always tried to be ethical and super clean about everything by building good sites and not linking things if there is no purpose other than to pass PR etc we hope that we keep ourselves in the SE's good books and more importantly we make sure visitors to any of our sites find what they wanted instead of coming looking for something we don't sell.

At the end of the day you make money by being the best and getting yourself seen we think getting seen is a concequence of building good advertising realtionships and having a good product people want to link to which is where we focus our efforts. Trust me I don't kill sites like this everyday but we gave it a lot of thought before we did it so that we would cause minimum disruption and a sneaky link would not really be of much benefit since Google will realise pretty quick the site is not there any more and it is all 404's a blank pages.

[FleaPit]

I take my hat of to you Brendan, not many people in your position could pass up a gift like that.

[EliteWeb]

Before this update I had a PR8, now its PR7 :D I think someone was mad I made it to PR8 so the site was brought down this update.. hehehe time to move it back up to 8 :D

[Pegasus]

My two cents

Make it a blank page with a little link at the bottom, saying "designed by [brendan's company]"

Wasting that PR8 is heresy! :)

[BGumble]

Great way to set an example brendan. (claps)

[AhmedF]

lost it on this update ... hoped to have added enough links to hit it up again :)

[pixel_juice]

>>We got a client internal PR8 and then they didn't pay us this month so now the site is gone and we have just left a blank index page

I'd never hire you...

[brendan]

Sorry that was not quite the situation pixel_juice it was an on going project we had worked on together they provided the product we built and helped to promote the site, things didn't work out because they didn't want to pay their dues into the pot and we had better things to do anyway and didn't really want to be working a product we had lost faith in anyway.

For the record we don't get hired; we choose our clients so you're right you would never hire us. I think it is a bit rash to make a statement like that without all the facts anyway but if that quote was the whole story i could see your point.

[pixel_juice]

I think it is a bit rash to make a statement like that without all the facts

OK Brendan, sorry.

I made a comment based on a few sentences of what you said, which is not particularly fair.

If it wasn't something you wanted to do then fair enough. When I read the post it seemed to me like a hell of a waste of a good resource.

[brendan]

Thanks for replying, I agree it is a hell of a waste but sometimes you have to loose to learn. This is the first time anything has really gone wrong for us lets hope it doesn't happen again too soon :)

[Clovis]

good for you brendan, tough choice to make but the right thing to do.

btw, you in SEO or design? just curious. sticky me if you'd rather not post.

[brendan]

It was a very tough choice Clovis but I'm glad it's made now as for me I am an Internet Architect attempting to make the web a better place to be since 1998 so I guess I do both of the things you mention and more.

[stuntdubl]

Good ethics sometimes get you someplace a lot slower, but they will keep you there a lot longer. Kudos.

It's nice to see an idealist standing by his views.

What type of firm do you run Brenden?

Do you do strictly IA? Webdesign? SEO?