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1) A site which at one time ranked well (PR5) in the Google Directory now has a PR0. When I do a search for the URL "www.that_site.com", I get:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.whatever_site.com
However, when you do a search for the products they sell, they still come up high in the SERPS, but with no Google category listing under the main site URL. The site is still listed in the category, but no PR appears.
Why do they still come up in the SERPS, yet have been given a PR0 and their category listing has been removed?
(BTW - They are guilty of using a lot of hidden text which explains the PR0)
2) Another site (which is guilty of the exact same offense) and was PR0 last month, now has a PR2. It has the Google category listing under the URL, but when I click on their "links" I get:
"Your search - link:-0dHMJXbc4QC:www.second-example.com/ - did not match any documents."
This doesn't make sense to me? Can anyone explain why there are 2 different penalties? What is the difference?
They had the penalty because of doorway pages. When we deleted the doorway pages the penalty got lifted in the Google index almost immediately. After that, when we searched for the company name in Google, the company home page came up first in the SERPs before any of the individual store or product pages.
It took a few months more of good behavior before their penalty got lifted from the Google directory, though. Interestingly, now their home page is near the top of their category in the Google directory with a nice green bar, and one of their major competitors, a very big Fortune 500 hundred type company with thousands of stores in the U.S., is now at the bottom of the directory without a green bar.
We've been wondering if their former SEO firm, the one that made the doorway pages which got them the penalty, had found a new client. :)
Is Google messing up? Are there some filters which aren't working or are these penalties done by people and therefore, perhaps human error comes into play?
1) PR is page based, not site based.
Your homepage can have a PR0 while your internal pages can have a different PR.
2) The link: command only displays links from pages that have a PR of 4 or greater.
2) Another site (which is guilty of the exact same offense) and was PR0 last month, now has a PR2. It has the Google category listing under the URL, but when I click on their "links" I get:"Your search - link:-0dHMJXbc4QC:www.second-example.com/ - did not match any documents."
What was the PR of the page before it went PR0?
With a PR of 2 it is very unlikely that any of your inbound links are greater than PR4 and therefore will not be displayed.
Liane, your description doesn't particularly sound like a penalty. Could the URL for their home page in the SERPs be slightly different from the URL in the directory?
Nope ... same url.
Your homepage can have a PR0 while your internal pages can have a different PR.
Yes, I realize that, however, it is their index page which is coming up high in the SERPS and which also has the PRO
The link: command only displays links from pages that have a PR of 4 or greater.
That may explain it ... partially. However, I know they have links of at least PR5 because one of my sites links to them with a PR5.
What was the PR of the page before it went PR0?
Both index pages were PR5.
A number of others have also been reporting no results using the link: command, and as of yet I've not seen a clear explanation for it.
