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My first post here...thought I'd open it with an attempt at humor ;-)
First and foremost, wow! What a resource...REALLY wish I had found this site a few months ago. I've spent the past couple weeks reading and have gleened quite a bit of information, but am hopeful that some of the kind folks here may be able to shed some additional light in a couple areas :)
On to the meat of the matter. While I did open with my feeble attempt at humor, the subject is quite genuine. I'm in the biz that's against this site's TOS to discuss so I'll just leave it at that...the nick probably gives it away :) That said, I'm just an honest businessman ;-)
Several months ago in an attempt to get into Google, I did a link exchange with a fellow webmaster. I have 45 sites, he has 35...so we decided to do one links page on each of our sites. All these links pages were nearly identical and in my case, I linked to that page from every page of every site. Yep...Cross linking...BIG! This was done through ignorance, not any desire to manipulate Google.
While some of my sites are templates, they do all contain different content and target different keywords/terms. And all the sites are relevant to the keywords/terms targetted. About half my sites are in Yahoo and DMOZ. All sites are hosted on 2 dedicated servers...each site with a unique ip...spread across various class C's.
Well, immediately after the link exchange...I started seeing Google traffic...Woohoo! Very short-lived traffic though...within a couple weeks, the traffic nearly stopped. I had no idea why and the webmaster I had exchanged links with said that it was just a matter of time. Well, the traffic never returned...
A few weeks back, I installed the Googlebar and realized that half my sites were PR0. The sites that are in Yahoo/DMOZ are mostly PR1, with the remaining sites being PR2 or PR3. This was when I realized there must be a problem and started researching...eventually finding this site...and realizing that I had been cross-linking...and that was a BAD thing.
About a week ago, my fellow wembaster and myself started re-vamping all the sites...removing the cross links. And instead, linking to one links page on one site...with that page then linking back to all the other sites. The hub and spokes approach I read about here :)
As of this update, about a dozen sites are no longer PR0...they are now just a gray bar...not a good thing. And actually, my most recent site...approved by Yahoo just last week...is also showing the dreaded gray bar. This site was launched after knowing about cross-linking and is not cross linked...ouch!
Okay, enough rambling...to my questions.
Firstly, am I understanding the hub/spokes approach correctly? All sites are linked to a page on one hub site that still has PR3 (even though the index of this site is PR0). That links page then lists all the sites. Also, each page of each site links to the links page...and each page of each site links back to it's own index page with an appropriate keyword/term text link.
Secondly, is there any consensus as to whether linking to these PR0 and/or No PR sites will in fact penalize the sites that still have PR?
And lastly, has anyone had success with the method of blocking Googlebot via robots.txt for 60 days on these penalized sites? Then, allowing him back after the sites are fully re-vamped?
My sincere apologies for the length of this post. I really thought the background info was necessary to facilitate any informed opinions.
And in closing...thanks for any and all feedback offered. As I become more familiar with these boards and any knowledge shared/learned, I will do all I can to reciprocate :)
I just wanted to say the longer/precise posts for me are the best, we all know where you are coming from now instead of the 20 questions game beforehand ;)
The crux of it seems to be whether you have a penalty or not for the history of your sites. I would check the sites in question using AlltheWeb to see how many backlinks your sites have.
If they are significantly higher than what you see in Google, then chances are (since google is a bigger index), that they have applied some sort of penalty/PR penalty/whatever that's causing you to get less traffic than you normally would.
Otherwise, it seems only "real" webmasters (as they say) get a PR0 / penalty, you are not alone here ;) Someone can hopefully share a similar story.
I think your best best is comparing what you have in google to alltheweb.
>>>the nick probably gives it away<<<
MrYum, honestly when I saw the membername in the title I thought for sure you'd be a manufacturer of handcrafted personalized candy wrappers for bridal and baby shower favors. ;)
No, you don't want to link from a site that's doing OK to sites that are penalized. "You are who you link to" and linking to penalized sites is identifying with what Google calls bad neighborhoods.
There have been a small number of recoveries reported over time, but the chances of coming back after a PR0 penalty are slim at best. And if sites have been removed, it's time to move on and start reconstructing.
You won't want to miss reading through the Google Knowledge Base [webmasterworld.com], it's the most comprehensive tutorial guide to Google you can possibly find.
Try the site search at the top left, second line of the upper site navigation, you'll find lots of good past threads if you do a search for PR0 (that's zero), cross linking and hub and spokes.
Here's a discussion that pretty well describes the linking relationship with spokes, and also covers the issue of duplicate content, which in some cases is a related issue:
[webmasterworld.com...]
The library also has some choice threads chosen
[webmasterworld.com...]
Those should give a good start.
Thanks much for the welcome :)
I spent some time this afternoon looking at PR on all the sites. Out of the 45 sites, 12 are showing the dreaded gray, 10 more are PR0. The rest are all PR1 to PR3 so the backlinks won't show on Google anyway.
Having never looked at ATW, I'm still figuring out how to look at backlinks there...so far, it appears as though none of my sites are in that db. Over the weekend, I paid for 12 domains to be listed in the FAST db via my account at PT. Hopefully, that'll get some of these sites into ATW. Oh, and the 12 sites are not the ones being hit with PR0 or the dreaded gray bar.
I suppose there's a certain amount of truth to the old adage that misery loves company, but I wouldn't wish these penalties on any honest webmaster. That said, I do realize that Google does these things for a reason and I have no one to blame but myself for getting into trouble through my own ignorance.
Marcia...
Lol...I'm glad you got a chuckle out of my handle :) It was given to me years ago by a girlfriend (we won't even go into the reason). And when I got into this biz...it just seemed appropriate...lol. Though at this point in time...the candy biz is looking pretty good!
Thanks for the advice on linking to 'bad neighborhoods'. I suspected this was the case from the various searches and threads I've already read here on this board. And re-reading the links you provided also helped to drill this into my rather hard head.
That said, some of these sites are really smokin on Alta. Admittedly Alta certainly isn't what it used to be, but it's traffic and b/w is pretty inexpensive. That, and some of these really are pretty good domain names. Think what I'll do is pull out the sites that still have PR and build a new hub with those...leaving these penalized sites out of the loop. Who knows, maybe someday Google will like em again...and if not, they certainly don't take up much space on my servers and only cost me the domain renewal fees.
At this point, none of my sites are doing anything with Google...even the ones that do have some PR. That's why I asked the question about linking to the 'bad' sites. I'm hopeful that by pulling the good sites out of the 'bad neighborhood', they'll finally start ranking better with Google...I hope.
Again, thanks much for the input...greatly appreciated :)
Out of the 45 sites, 12 are showing the dreaded gray, 10 more are PR0
If I were you, I'd dread the PR0 more than the grey.
Grey simply means your site is not in the index, which can be for any number of reasons.
PR0 means Google has found your site an penalised it (assuming that is that it should have a bigger PR - i.e. it has high PR links to it.) Much nastier in my experience.
Cy
Ya know...I hadn't really considered that. One of my servers has been rather persnickity lately...it's entirely possible Googlebot hit those particular sites when the server was having problems. However, all but one of the sites were PR0 before going grey. That's why I assumed Google just dumped em. Come to think of it, all this is kinda making me go grey too...LOL!
The one site that was not PR0 before is a brand new site...approved by Yahoo early last week. I'm hoping Google just hasn't ranked this one yet...hence the grey bar. The biggest concern on this site is that stupid me launched a 'Coming Soon' page a few weeks ago and cross linked it too. That was all corrected when the site was fully developed and launched to Yahoo a couple weeks ago.
I've always been an eternal optimist. I've got nothing to lose but some time to re-vamp all the sites in question and remove the cross linking. And either someday Google will like em...or not. In either case, they're fully developed sites and soon will have no cross-linking :) And in the mean time, I'll build more sites using the existing non-penalized sites as hubs.
Thanks for the suggestion...it is entirely possible the grey bar is due to some server issues.
Excellent advice and I'm pretty sure that's the plan at this point :)
I've got a handful of sites across various niches that still have PR2 or PR3. I'll pull those out of the existing loop and use them as hubs for several smaller clusters of sites. Again, hoping that once these sites are removed from the bad neighborhood...they'll rank better and make viable hubs for future sites.
My only question would be...why exclude Googlebot? As long as he's hitting the sites, isn't there a chance that someday the penalties will be removed? Or, are you thinking to exclude Googlebot for a few months...then allow him again and see what happens?
Woohoo! Time to go domain shopping again...always fun!
Thanks again to one and all :)
