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A new site is always going to start with a gray toolbar, and depending upon when the site went "live" it may or may not appear that month or the next. Once you have quality incomming links with decent pr the bots will find you and if the quality is there - both content and HTML validation (or as close as you can get becaue some pages just won't validate to your liking) you should soon there-after get a positive pr (in theory)
The time to be concerned about a gray toolbar is after you had positive pr and then lost it? Check your server first to see that it wasn't down. Now if the server was up when the bot did its deepcrawl and you got a gray toolbar I'd throw the flag and say "penalty - the ref's at google have to figure out how many months you lose (and even if you've been ejected for good) On the hand, if the server was down I'd let my site ride the next couple of dances hoping it popped back into the index. Trying to think the way Google does (damn, I'm really going crazy now):)In my line of work, more than 3 consecutive cycles of a pr gray toolbar and I'd be starting over or if not really watching my logs. I really believe that Google does "totally ban" sites for reason of their own accord, but again, you really did it to yourself (and you know what you did, admit it or not)
A pr0 site in my eyes is a bit harder to understand. Perhaps some of the rules apply above, but the Google in me is telling me that a pr0 site is one of two things. A site that is new with little if no incoming links (if this is your case its time to spend 24/7 getting something up for the bot to come back for or you could be a long time waiting. I'd almost think Google cache's pr0 pages and gives them a chance to get some ranking but again, I think the time frame involved is small. Fix that pr0 problem quick and I think google will be more forgiving, throw the same crap at the bot each time it shows up - well, its like eating garbage. The bot says I've had enough of that and "sticky notes" itself, I'm not going back to BRETT's House again. Again, watch the bot activity on your logs and keep those fingers crossed the bots gets directed your way. In both situations, should the bot not show up within a few weeks I'd be looking for a new domain and FIXING WHAT I SCREWED UP- Google didn't do it, u did it yourself.
My Bottom line on PR0 and Pr (gray) is thus: You got what you asked for so just stop asking am I banned or penalized and think to yourself what you can do to make your (NEW)page better. Again, the google do's and don't will keep you out of trouble but if you are not interested in learning the rules and more importantly playing by the rules then : just don't play at all.
I don't run Google but the ratio of phd's to non-phd employees surely indicates to me they have the people they need to get the job done right. How many web sites have a DO'S AND DON'Ts page? Sure, I think they could make a few of their stances a bit clearer but I'm sure once they did that the lawsuits would start from similiar companies such as WPG and (other we could all mention).
It's a "seller's beware world" when you post a website. The buyer is Google and the other search engines, but face it if you lose Google you are going to be pinching yourself.
Google doesn't owe you anything. A small staff of highly intelligent people could not begin to put a dent into the email they must get each day. Personally I'd rather have them doing what they are doing - testing and tweaking the ALGO's, providing a mintier fresh WWW and keeping those machines up and running. Just imagine the panic if we all woke up one day to all gray toolbars? Could it happen? These days anything is possible. I can see Googleguy laughing because someone pressed the yellow button (don't think i've heard about that one yet if I have my colors correct) and if you don't have one yet Google please don't put one in :)
This has probably been said a thousand differnt ways which I've yet to read and I'm sure that I'll get my share of disagreements, but I don't mind. It's all learning to me.
One can only learn while one is listening :) - Scott
I tend to put news and current events on the home page - to make it more interesting for regulars, and for a few days news and events was blank because we had no news to report.
If this is a reason for giving a ranking of PR0 then Google need a reasonable system of linking instead of an unfair system. Googlebot is still spidering the site, and has been there over the last two days - is this good / bad / irrelevant?!
Now I need to know how to get back in - is the ranking manual or automatic, do I have to wait to get back in, can I speak to anyone? Who knows?
As a leading search engine, Google should be more responsible and certainly more accountable - they could close people down! Luckily we are still linked to by hundreds of sites Google has not chosen to delete.
The PR0 is now understood by me, but is neither reasonable or fair! I have no idea what most of the spam and cloaking techniques are about, let alone know how to implement them!
The same penalty applied to a PR5 home page would wipe it out completely.
PR0 only means that the page has a PR of less than 1. With penalties it could even be a negative number.
Many of the pages on my site that are buried the deepest are PR0. And some of them even come up #1 on some searches, above PR4 pages. It's not a penalty, but my top level PR hasn't filtered down that far yet, and they are in directories where I have not gotten any outside deep links yet.
Grey Toolbar means that you are not listed at all. This would normally indicate a server problem or that you've not been crawled because no pages with PR link to you. It could also be due to the URL returning 404 not found, or in rare cases a complete ban.
White Toolbar means that you have no PageRank (or very low PageRank). This is because no URL with good PR links to you, but in rare cases it is due to a penalty causing backlinks to be ignored. There have been other reasons, such as strange behavior due to redirects and last December even duplicates.
A penalty that allows a page to have PageRank, but not pass it on, was also discovered this year. You could end up with PR0 just because that link no longer counts and you don't have any other links. This is far less common than the situation where the link that gave you your PageRank was removed, or the page it was on couldn't be fetched by Google due to some temporary hosting problem.
Just like those night-time crime documentaries, I feel I should point out that these bans and penalties are quite rare among the 3 billion or so URLs in Google. Please don't have nightmares.
Since then, Googlebot has not come back to my site. It's like they totally lost my URL from their crawl database, or are ignoring my URL. There is nothing that I have done to get banned, and I am listed in Yahoo, Zeal, MSN and have at least 15 other PR4-5 incoming links. I keep thinking that I will show up, and even manually add my URL to Google's addurl page, but no matter what happens, they appear to overlook my site.
I just can't figure out why this is happening. Has anyone else had this happen to them? If so, has anyone recovered from it?
(used to be PR7).There is nothing that I have done to get banned, and I am listed in Yahoo, Zeal, MSN and have at least 15 other PR4-5 incoming links.
Unless that Yahoo page has a PR of 7-8, I can't see how you could possibly of had a legitimate PR7 with only 15 PR4-5 inbounds.
Sharing a few more details might lend some insight as to why you could have received a penalty.
I'd also recommend checking out this thread:
Thou Shalt Not V.2002 [webmasterworld.com]
Many people that believe they have "done nothing to get banned" have actually made transgressions that they were unaware of. While this may not be the case for you... it's worth reading up on to be certain.
Thanks for the comments. The Yahoo link was PR8, and three of the four zeal links were PR7.
Also, I am aware of the "Though Shall Not" and have not broken any of those rules. In fact, there were no real changes to the site for a few months before being dropped. It seems like other people on this forum have a hard time believing that Google drops listings for no obvious reason.
It seems like other people on this forum have a hard time believing that Google drops listings for no obvious reason.
The key phrase there is "no obvious reason".
There's always some reason... a number of which can be due to no fault of the webmaster themself.
With over 3 Billion indexed pages in Google, it's inevitable that some sites will fall through the cracks without a clear cause and effect.
I'm sorry to hear that your own site falls into this mysterious category.
