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The original question was about "clean & green" sites with no PR.
One of the local SEO gurus, rejected my request for reciprocal link for my new (one week old)web site with PR 0, suggesting that it may negatively affect his PR.
My site is listed at Google but is too new to be ranked.
As I understood (and this is what I believe is true), your PR is not affected if an incoming link comes from "good" guys. Correct?
I think Herenvardo pretty much answered your question.
If you link to dodgy sites, it may cause you to be penalised, if it causes Google to think you are up to no good.
For example, it used to be that if you had a reciprocal link with a known link farm, you could be in hot water.
Linking to an unpenalised page with no PR is no different to linking to a PR10 page in penalisation terms,
Cy
Herenvardo, you say penalized sites are dumped from the index altogether? Is this generally accepted as fact?
I've been concerned that my new site has been penalized. It has had incoming links from PR5-8 pages for three months now, but is still PR0.
However, it definately does appear in the SERPs for some obscure serch terms, so does that mean it definately has NOT been penalized?
I know Google's been pretty slow with new sites lately - I hope I'm just being impatient.
Appreciate everyone's thoughts.
Herenvardo, you say penalized sites are dumped from the index altogether? Is this generally accepted as fact?
No. :)
Generally a page not in the index will show gray in the toolbar PR indicator, not a PageRank zero. A site that's been penalized with a zero or a site that has a "naturally occurring" zero (or a true PageRank low enough to appear that way) look exactly the same, and either one can be returned in response to a search query.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld.
New sites from 6 weeks back or so are all showing PR0's in the toolbar. Nothing to worry about it. I have plenty of pages that rank #1 for their keyword that are a toolbar PR0.
If you are getting traffic from google, it is not likely that you are banned. Also, check if you are getting regular googlebot's visiting that page, it likely has the PR you suspect as reflected in their visits.
Thanks for the quick replies. I'm only getting around 50 hits a week total from Googlebot, although I know for a fact that Googlebot LOVES some of the sites I'm listed on. It must ignore my link most of the time.
I guess I have a "true" PR0<1 until my backlinks are given credit.
Is safe to say that sites with higher PR get spidered more often? Anecdotal evidence (and common sense) would suggest so. Kind of a catch-22 in that case.
As the others say though, the PR values on the toolbar are pretty unreliable at the moment. There are reports of pages with PR0 scoring well in the SERPS, suggesting that the toolbar is not very accurate. If you were truly penalized, none of your pages would show (except maybe your domain name if you are in the directory)
When I search Google for my site's name, I've got more than 300 listings (read - links from other sites).
However, Google doesn't show any incoming links when I check "Backward Links" at the Google's Toolbar.
Can you explain and advise?
Does anybody know when is the next Google update?
Thanks.
Daamsie,
Could you please explain?
Thanks.
Linking to penalized sites or sites with PR0 shouldn't get you penalized at all or even make any difference to your PR!
daamsie- I must respectfully disagree.
Google has published guidelines in place that contradict what you say. Please avoid representing opinions as fact. In this case, your opinion is not correct.
A tip for everybody here: Always go to the source, go to Google and read what they say. Don't depend so heavily on what others say- get it from Google first.
Googleguy has already said that it's who you link to that can affect you. Read this thread for Googleguy's comment:
[webmasterworld.com ]
Additionally you can visit Google and read their Quality Guidelines [google.com] where it says:
...avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Google doesn't show all the backlinks in any case - only the higher ranking backlins. You could go to ATW to see how many links it sees. The Google backlinks are still out of date in any case!
PROsha: "Does anybody know when is the next Google update?"
It's happening all the time :-)
What's ATW and where can I find it?
What's ATW and where can I find it?
The search engine AllTheWeb. You can find it at alltheweb.com. :)
My Reasons for Assuming.
- I am disturbed by this. I'm starting to wonder whether I should even bother having an extensive links directory or any links directory at all. The amount of time that would go into continually checking whether anyone I linked to a year ago has started spamming would be phenomenal for a comprehensive directory!
- I can see legal grounds for suing Google for handing out a PR0 in this circumstance, because they aren't only excluding you from their index, but are also damaging your chances of getting links from other sites - hindering your business in areas that 'should' have nothing to do with Google.
- And adding to that, how does Google itself justify its own directory's PR then, considering there are many PR0'ed sites in there.
Does this 'linking to a spam site' penalty occur automatically then, or is it a prompt for a manual-check?
Those are the reasons I assumed this, obviously wrongly. Sorry for that.
On a side note, having reviewed the guidelines again - this one (right before the line martinibuster quoted) puzzles me:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank."
The advice on this forum [webmasterworld.com] has always contradicted that 'guideline'.
How many here can honestly say that they aren't participating in link schemes to increase their site's ranking? hmmmm.. First Google explains to us that we need links to rank high (no secrecy about that), then Google tells us not to gather links in order to rank highly. I'm REALLY confused about that.
EDIT: added another reason for my assumptions
