New PR Penalty

PRO and Directory Deletion

[conor]

Hopefully this post justifies a new thread, if not I apolagies to the mods in advance, and hope that this doesnt get lost in the Noise of the Update thread, as I feel a new Penalty or filter has been added to the algorithm.

The Google update this Month is ofcourse still under way, but a disturbing penalty has been inflicted on many sites that I am sure will not go away after the dance has finished, and is nothing like I have seen before.

I have noticed several optimised but not spammy sites that now all have:

Large amounts of back links Showing( significantly more than pre-update)
Zero PR ( Previously between PR5 and PR7 )
Do not appear anywhere in the Index ( previously extremly high rankings )

AND MOST WORRYING OF ALL --- HAVE ALL BEEN REMOVED FROM THE GOOGLE DIRECTORY.

Is this new PRZERO, a new penalty or maybe even a manual intervention?

[Nick_W]

Very worrying, not heard of it before...

What do all these sites have in common besides their fate?

Nick

[Beachboy]

Doesn't sound like a penalty to me. I would guess the sites were offline when both ODP's Robozilla (link checker) and Googlebot went to visit, neither could find the site, and the sites got dumped from both Google and the ODP/Google directory. These several sites you refer to, are they all in the same kind of business? This could be the work of one editor who cleaned them out if he/she could not find them after Robozilla reported them.

[conor]

All are optimised, but on the clean side. There is certainly linkage between but not all reciprocal and not closed circle. Others are not affected.

The removal from The directory I have never seen before, correct me if I am wrong but the last PRO penalty dropped sites to the bottom of the directory listings, but this is as if they have been banned completely!

[conor]

Beachboy, All sites are still in DMOZ! This is the part I cant understand!

[Beachboy]

Are these sites also missing from the ODP directory? If they are, I want you to sticky mail me the URLs of those sites, along with the text of your last post. If they are not missing from the ODP directory, then it would appear to be the work of Google itself, which would be extremely odd.

[edited by: Beachboy at 11:42 am (utc) on Sep. 27, 2002]

[Grumpus]

Are they definitely not in the category in the directory? Or are they just not showing up for searches? I've ALWAYS had trouble finding my pages in the directory by searching for them. One (and on some months 2) are all that will show up. They seem to need a certain PR to show up in the directory search results. Going to the category, though, they appear.

Now, if what you say is true - that they've been PR0'd, then they won't show up in a search. And, that's why I'm asking if you actually hit the category, or are just searching.

G.

[conor]

Grumpus, They are not in the catagory at all, and I am talking about 20 odd sites.

[hmpphf]

Speculation: it's not something to do with GG's ominous comments throughout this thread is it? [webmasterworld.com...]

[SEOPTI]

Conor, did you buy expired dmoz domains to promote your niche?

[conor]

No expired domains were purchased , I have never done it and doubt I ever will.

Mostly a year or two old but one more more than 7 years old and all have done well in Google from the start.

[Markus]

I've just taken a look at the new directory and the "normal" PR0ed domains are still at the bottom of the list without a bar next to them. Sounds really odd.

[Grumpus]

Actually, the ones at the bottom of the directory with no bar aren't necessarily PR0'd - it just means that they have no PR. I've got several pages listed in the DMOZ that haven't ever been crawled by the Googlebot, and of course, they are down there at the bottom of the list with no bar. I guess it has something to do with the PR of the category at DMOZ and the fact that DMOZ is the only site linking to that page?

G.

[conor]

The wierd thing is that allthough the sites have been removed from all the google indexes and directory they are still showing back links. Eg:one site has 126 back links pre-update and PR5 now 756 and grey TB

[starec]

I also see it and it is rather limited.

My guess is some glitch caused Google to work with only a subset of ODP data when building this index.

[Dino_M]

have not read this thread Soz if this post is pointless, will read post monday am

I have seen four of my sites vanish out of Dmoz whille the dance was on. they still list in www www2 www3.

[Grumpus]

and grey TB

Doh! Conor - Grey PR and PR0 are not the same thing and it happens all the time during the dance. Wait a bit. It'll all sort itself out.

G.

[conor]

Grumpus,

Its not just grey TB : sites gone from index on all wws's and directory! but still in DMOZ but still showing back links.