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I'm new to the forums and have a PR question. My PR has been 7 for many moons and sometime in the last 45 days it's dropped to 0. Normally, I wouldn't care. I just post ongoing, high-quality new content every week and let SEO take care of itself. However, I've lost a sponsor because of this and I want him back, so my goal is to recover my PR 7 (PR 7 being my sponsor's threshhold for sponsorship).
* Why did I lose my ranking? Some possible clues:
- I'm still #1 in Google search results for various terms, such as <snip>
- Last month I switched from a Win2K server to a Unix server
- I had no robots.txt file (just added one tonight)
- I had a few 404s from the server switch
- I publish a weekly ezine that gets copied (with and w/o permission) across several sites and Yahoo! Groups. Did I read that Google is axing PR on sites with duplicate content? Could people copying my content cause me to lose my PR?
Those are all the factors that I can think of. Anyone spot any red flags there or see something I'm missing?
* Recovery Plan. I'd like to restore my PR by May 7th, if possible. Here are some ideas. Feedback on their merit would be wonderful.
- My ezine has 13,000 subscribers. I could ask readers to link to my site.
- I could find high PR sites in my niche and ask for links (anyone recommend a good PR search tool?)
- I could purchase links on high PR sites
- Resubmit my site to Google for another crawl (though, if I'm still in their database I'm prolly already scheduled for a crawl)
- I could ask sites to yank my content off their pages, but I'm not guaranteed to get compliance
Any other ideas?
I'd rather not start action on a recovery plan though, until I find out why my rank suddenly went to 0. I'm not sure what my analysis options are though--this is still new to me.
Revenues based on a 3rd party, such as Google's PR system, are a boon when they happen, but good things can't last forever. :) However, if there's any above-board action I can take to get my sponsor back I'll give it a whack.
Thanks for your time!
Cheers,
Johnn Four
[edited by: Marcia at 2:38 am (utc) on April 22, 2004]
[edit reason] No sigs, URLs or search terms please. [/edit]
1. I think the sever switch ~ Most probably you’ll get you PR back with next PR update.
2. Have you observed any improvement in SERPs for any of your keywords after the PR change or server switch?
When you changed servers did you change IP addresses or ISP providers? Did you do a major re-arrange of pages or content? Did you sneeze? Well, you might not get a G penalty for the sneeze, but who knows.
>>>Did I read that Google is axing PR on sites with duplicate content? Could people copying my content cause me to lose my PR?
If that is the case maybe I should rent a server in India and copy Google.com, sending them to PR 0 so they can see how it feels.
If you lost your rankings this can mean either a temporary thing due to downtime during server change, or a filter or a penalty.
1)It's not happened due to server shift.
2) Definately a google penalty.
YOu'd mentioned that you'd some sponser links on your site. It's possible that the sponser you're linking to must have been penalised by google. And since you're linking to penalised site/s you must have got penalised.
Whom you are linking to is very important.
My ezine has 13,000 subscribers. I could ask readers to link to my site.
I think this would be best option for recovery. However your time line of May 7th seems unlikely.
I'd like to restore my PR by May 7th, if possible.
Welcome the the real World John :(
Would that we could make Google meet deadlines!
Meanwhile, do a thorough safety check to make sure you're not breaking any rules and just in case, start thinking of a Plan B.
Definately a google penalty.
Why reduce his PR and leave him #1 in the SERPS though?
Not really much of a penalty?
Unless you're saying the penalty is for selling PR....?
TJ
If you find a site with e.g. PR 6 that only has backlinks from PR 4 sites apart from your link on a PR 7 page then you can show the sponsor that a link from your site is still as valid as it was before.
if you get enough links to your site.
You might also want to check internal pages for PR. If at least any of them has any PR - you are safe and good for the next update.
[edited by: WebFisher at 3:08 pm (utc) on April 22, 2004]
If there is something you aren't telling us, like you had hidden text, a page full of affiliate links, 20 'sponsored' links at the bottom, cloaking, etc then you should be more focused on finding yourself a new URL.
My URL can be found in my profile, but to answer one poster's questions...my code is legit and I didn't try any funny SEO tricks.
A couple of things did change at my site recently:
- a server switch which did include an IP switch
- a new link on all my pages in my navigation to a PR 0 site, which I did as a favour
I also notice that my old site is currently cached in Google, not the new one. I can tell because I've switched from ASP to PHP and Google's cached pages of mine are all ASP.
So, my plan now is:
- remove the PR 0 link
- wait :)
Thanks again for the help! I'll let you know if there's any change to my PR.
Cheers,
Johnn
I think, Google is viewing you as duplicate content to yourself. I did the same thing and in one month I was fine. I hope this is it.
My URL can be found in my profile
I also notice that my old site is currently cached in Google, not the new one. I can tell because I've switched from ASP to PHP and Google's cached pages of mine are all ASP.
Did your home page URL change (e.g. from h*ttp://www.yoursite.com/default.asp to h*ttp://www.yoursite.com/index.php)?
Or have you always just called it with h*ttp://www.yoursite.com/?
There's your problem. Sounds like you changed your pages to use a new file ext, ie from *.asp to *.php. Yes?
If so, all your pages are considered new by google and therefore PR0. Your SE ranking is still based on the old pages!
You better learn mod-rewrite immediately and continue calling your pages *.asp even if your script is php! Do this quick before google starts thinking your old pages do not exist anymore!
