Pr0

Does PR0 = Banned?

[cabbagehead]

I have a site that was launched 6 wks ago. The first 3 wks I didn't get indexed at all because Google apparently doesn't index proprietary file types ... so 3 wks ago I I changed to index.html. Now i have a page rank of 0. I was told that pages usually begin with at least a 4 or 5 PR. Could I have gotten banned?

Two things to consider that I recently read about:

1. I have a custom error page and didn't have a robots.txt file for a while. I guess that means that it was trying to read robots.txt and was probably getting the error page instead, not realizing it because it was getting a 200 HTTP response.

2. I've been using Web Position Gold to check my status on keywords weekly. I was just told this is the quickest way to get banned (yeah, like THAT's obvious to a newcomer!).

Anyway, these things considered, am I likley banned or simply a victim of the robots.txt file issue? How would I know the difference?

Thanks!

[korkus2000]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld cabbagehead,

>> I was told that pages usually begin with at least a 4 or 5 PR

Not true. PR is based off of inbound links. I would think most new sites start out as a PR 0 or 1 because of the absence of inbound links. Yes both of the issues you have stated can cause problems, but I think your site is real new. It is highly doubtful you are banned. Have some patients and get some more inbound links. After the next update, see if your PR changes, but if you don't have quality inbound links your PR won't change.