Forum Moderators: open
I don't know what the deal is. My sites were ranked fairly well, all had PR3's & 4's. I was working on linking to other good sites, and to generally increase my rankings. Now they are all PR0. Some of these sites have absolutely nothing to do with one another. I have no spam, no links to questionable sites, no weirdness at all. For some reason I've been handed the google web site death sentence and I have absolutely no reason as to why. The only thing I can think of is that they are all on the same commercial host. Would google PR0 all of my sites if they don't like my host?
Any ideas? Advice? Anything?
Since no-one has answered, here's my take. If nothing else, maybe it'll give your post
a bump...
I don't know about penalties per hosting company, but that just doesn't sound fair -
GoogleGuy has said several times and in several ways that their algorithm is designed so
that a site's webmaster controls its fate with respect to penalties, and not some outside
source.
That said, I would recommend you chase down where your site is getting its major
PageRank contributions, i.e. ODP, Yahoo Directory, other sites, etc. and make sure that
there are no surprises there. If your major PR contributors have suddenly dropped in
rank themselves, or if they have dropped their link to you, then you could find yourself
with suddenly-vanished PR.
Assuming that the site in your profile is one of the subject sites, I would guess that
the JS links will not pass any PR to the pages they link to... All, is this still true?
And... the index still hasn't settled, so who knows?
Good luck!
Jim
P.S. I also noted that the site in your profile does not declare a DOCTYPE. Probably
has nothing to do with it, but just noted.
Maybe the dance going on. I'd wait for things to settle first. How do you rank on www2 and www3 now?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I was beginning to wonder.
Anyway, the people linking to me all seem to be fine. So, I don't think that's it. The site in my profile is fairly representative of my sites, it has no spam and neither do my other sites. I really am at a loss as to what has happened. I can tell you that I put a lot work into these sites and am feeling confused, disappointed and frustrated. I would really like to know what I've done wrong.
I'm not sure about the Java Script, but PR was passing to the pages they were linked to.
Thanks for the DOCTYPE tip.
Yes, I've noticed that. My old PR was 3 and I too think it's the dance causing the PR3 to pop up. I think it may depend on which google server dished the search. However, Im nowhere in www2 or 3, and I mean nowhere. I can only surmise, because 2/3 are supposed to be the pre-index, that this means that my actual PR is 0.
For the site in your profile, I did this search, including the quotations marks:
"Discount Golf Shoes" models
That puts you at #10 out of 152 results. Since mine is always on the last page, my first conclusion is that you have no penalty. But then again, maybe you have a PR0.9, truncated to PR0, where mine is a PR0.006 ;)
[added]
this search was on www3
Hmmm... O.K., I'll try some more search criteria. I guess the question I have is, why do all my sites show a PR of 0? Can you get a PR of 0 without a penalty having been given?
OTOH, I would be very concerned at this point anyway.
Can you get a PR of 0 without a penalty having been given?
There's been some discussion about this, whether a site actually has a PR0.5 but it displays truncated - You really can't tell because of the resolution of the toolbar, it's only integers. So I guess that it's possible. But my concern would be the drop from PR4 or PR3 to something approaching PR0. That's pretty drastic. And what happened to my PR5 site.
Don't sweat it yet. That could just be a toolbar anomoly. Anyway, what would you do about it right now?
Yes, of course you can. I try to stay away from talking about individual site, but if your site is the one listed in your profile, we have no penalties for it. I can't speak as to whether anything is causing problems on your host, etc., but it's definitely no "google web site death sentence."
That's one myth that I wish I could dispel (PR0 paranoia). Sometimes we make changes to the way that we crawl, and you have to expect some variation. If you don't see the same results as last month, it's much more likely to be a change in the crawl, or maybe limited resources, than some penalty.
Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but hope this helps anyway.
GoogleGuy
Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.
GoogleGuy,
Thanks for the information. Perhaps it is "PR0 paranoia". However, right or wrong, google has a reputation for handing out exceedingly stiff penalties without much explanation.
I understand that the algorithm must change, and I would expect some variation, but when you go from 1rst or 2nd page to not being able to find your site, plus your PR is now 0 ... a person tends to get a little paranoid. Especially when it's all of your sites. I guess we'll see what shakes out.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, and maybe "google web site death sentence" was a little over the top. Unfortunately, that's how it feels.
I would add more content to the site myself but you also need to tred very carefully with it as it is an affiliate based site and getting *quality* link exchanges can sometimes be a problem. You may find it hard getting a DMOZ listing too as they prefer a bigger content to affiliate ratio.
I'll just have to see what happens. So far my sites have disappeared. I was ranking first and second page for several keywords. Now, using the same keywords to search, I'm not in the first 1000 listings. This isn't for just one site, but for all of my sites. Seems very strange to me.
Thanks
The big question for me is "is your host the problem?"
Recently there was news about google banning ip's and innocent people getting caught up in it. From what I understand, it was something to do with someone using dodgy software and google could not identify exactly who, so they banned the whole ip and everyone on it. This only lasted a few hours and was resolved, but it has put the fear of god (or google) in all of us!
So, can Googleguy dispell another myth? Google claim no outsider can influeunce your ranking.... but if they ban ip's which are shared this will happen.
Fact or fiction? If we are to help google maintain the quality of it's index with our high quality sites ;), perhaps they should advise us how not to get an unfair ban.
In fact, I searched on the new Google index and couldn't find ANY links from ANY other sites going to yours.. Did you have links in previous months? That may be why you had some sort of good rank in the past...
Whatever - work over the next week to get some good quality links, add a bit of content and you should be back in the next update.
The site in my profile was newly in the index. My other sites do have links, but not a whole lot and are somewhat older.
I guess I'm confused. Last month the site in my profile, and my other sites, were ranked fairly well just as they exist today. Now, this month the algorithm changes. I was expecting some fluctuation, but nothing like this! My confusion stems from the fact that all was well last month and now my sites are showing PR0 and I'm gone. Googleguy says I have no penalty applied, at least to the site in my profile, yet I'm PR0 and gone.
I'll take your advice, and I'm grateful for it, but am disappointed by the disaster this index has been for me.
Regards
1. Not 1 of my PR3 sites survived this indexing. All are PR0 now.
2. Googleguy says that the site in my profile, PR3 last index and on page 1 and 2 for crucial keywords, is not suffering any penalty. Yet it too has a PR0.
3. Any site that was new to the index, and had PR last month was given a PR0.
4. None of the incoming links to these websites can be seen. Probably because the PR of those sites was decreased by this indexing.
Thats odd.. Last month my site was a PR1 - first month in google - being it just just got opened and this month it is a PR4
For some odd reason though google didnt go to deep into my site.. I have like 5 tiers and it went like one tier into the site.. Hoping at the end of next month it picks up my yahoo and some other links I have gotten and hope that helps me out.. I got to much riding on this to not get a boost...
Hmmm... that puts a little wrinkle in my theory. Well, looks like I'll have to keep digging.
5 tiers? How many pages is that? How deep does your new PR4 get shared?
Several months ago, I had several domains disappear from Google's index overnight because of "technical" problems with my host. It wasn't just me, it was every customer on every one of the host's servers. My host was good enough to contact Google and solve the problem. Within two days, my domains were back.
I don't know the technical aspect of how it got fixed but it did. I have a feeling that if this "technical" problem had taken place during the crawl or update, my domains would not be indexed until the following update - thus showing a PR0 until all the domains were re-indexed and backwards links showed up.
Then again - if you have a true PR0 penalty - you might never know exactly why(unless Googleguy gives you a hint).
My advice
if you have PR0 as a penalty - Get a new domain and change the way you do business.
If you have PR0 because of your host - Call you host and deal with them. They can deal with Google. If they won't then find a new host. I've learned that hosting companies need you more than you need them. Hosting companies a dime a dozen.
I hope my site still can become its PR in this uodate because 70% of my visits come from Google, so it hurts big time.
zeus
zeus
This is mainly due to linking structure. I'd be willing to bet that those pages at deeper levels that have higher PR are linked from the PR4 or PR3 pages. Those that have PR1 or PR0 have very few internal links coming to them.
The other thing to keep in mind is that it takes a few crawls for Google to get really deep into the site, or at least that has been my experience. If you do not provide a path for Googlebot to get there quickly, it could take longer. I've found that having common navigation at each level helps to spread the PR and allows indexing spiders a cleaner route to the content.
An example...
Level I
Navigation at Level I includes links to pages at Levels II, III, IV and V that are set up like a small site map. Not only does this help indexing spiders get to the content, but it is a big plus with users who are looking for specifics. Don't make them wade through 3, 4 or 5 links to get to the content.
Level II
Navigation at Level II includes links to pages at Level II and also links to each of the Site Maps for Levels I, III, IV and V.
Level III
Navigation at Level III includes links to pages at Level III and also links to each of the Site Maps for Levels I, II, IV and V.
Level IV
Navigation at Level IV includes links to pages at Level IV and also links to each of the Site Maps for Levels I, II, III and V
Level V
Navigation at Level V includes links to pages at Level V and also links to each of the Site Maps for Levels I, II, III and IV.
The Site Map can also be referred to as an Index of Contents, similar to a book. If you are working with that much content, organization and structure are extremely important in transferring PR throughout the various levels. The deeper you go, the more difficult it becomes.
Make sure you are placing content at those lower levels that people want to link to. If not, you'll need to work extra hard in the navigation area so that PR transfers where appropriate.
I found that by doing it this way you pick up the plural words on the items. for example not only did you pick up the term canon xpr-320 cases (by having the section of cases) but by being on the product page itself you picked up the singular phrase xpr-320 case.
The only thing is the PR has travel through level 1 and onto level 2 - the actual camera accessories page you are looking for and PR is like a PR1 at that point. It isnt traveling much past that except in some cases it has made it to the actual product page. It is not in a logical pattern that I can see...
Do I need to bring the frontpage PR up higher to have it make its way throughout the site or is it just going to take a few more crawls to PR all the pages? I am not 100 percent sure either way...but see it did PR rank more pages this last crawl
So, is it just that my site doesn't have a lot of external links? Maybe it's too small at only 20 or so pages? I guess I'm asking you your opinion of why I suddenly ended up with PR0.
I'm new to the game, but have invested a lot and time and energy, like all of you, and don't want to repeat any mistake I could have made.
Check out the site in my profile and let me know what you think.
