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Any Ideas? Penalty Strange PageRank 0 Pages

Main site with lots of high pagerank pages and now several pagerank 0 pages

         

Chef_Brian

4:06 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello Everyone,

This month has been kinda rough, after just quiting my day job and now I am starting to see some pagerank 0 pages on my main site?

Anyone that would like to have a look just check the site in my profile. I have been very careful not too cross link any of my sites. However I have have linked out from this main site and it is starting to worry me.

Two of my other sites that last month were pagerank 5 sites now have a grey bar and now I am seeing pagerank 0 pages?

I just to add new content to my older site about 2 or 3 weeks ago and I don't think it would have made this update but now these pages are a pagerank 0.

Check the "cookware" page in my navagational bar near the top.

Should I worry now or later?

Brian

Chef_Brian

4:08 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



All of the newer pages I added about three weeks ago are showing the pagerank 0?

Other pages that are commercial in nature have rankings of 5 and 6's?

What to do?

Brian

ikbenhet1

4:24 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



You have an awful lot of javascript on the beginning of your page and also alot in the middle and bottom. I have read somewhere in this forum that ain't a smart thing to do so much at the beginning as it might confuse the bot.

do you use frontpage? i see all kinds of tags you could remove. al those mstheme's.

and it would be smart to go external script in the head it just too much.

ow, your site should start with <HTML> not with <head>.
might wanna add </HTML> on the end.

Did you add that popup recently like within 2 months ago? if so, then it's defentely the script for the popup in the head.

I would suggest: Go external with the javascript, or else remove the javascript and replace with html.

Chef_Brian

4:40 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I will remove the newsletter pop up right away, yes I use frontpage and understand that it creates a ton of extra code that is not optimal.

Just seams kinda wierd though, no problems for nearly 2 years and then all of the sudden ..... 0

The bot had no problem with my other pages and seams strange to have pagerank 6 pages next to pagerank 0 pages.

Brian

[edited by: Marcia at 5:32 pm (utc) on Jan. 4, 2003]

ikbenhet1

4:53 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member




The problem can only be in the new code you added last time.
So, figure out what you added last time, and remove it.

So if you already had that popup when you had the pr5 then that's not the problem.

aek

4:54 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



It seems although the cookware page has pagerank 0, that page still comes up number 4 for discount cookware. So it doesn't seem to have affected your rankings which is strange.

Chef_Brian

5:00 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have had one pop up code on my site for fastclick, for over a year. However I just added a pop up code that used javascript in december to build my newsletter.

I am guessing it was this code, I am hopping anyway!

I have removed the code and will keep my fingers crossed. Any other ideas?

Brian

P.S.

Thanks everyone for helping ... after quiting my job this is kinda (ok really!) scary.

Brian

europeforvisitors

5:15 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)



I've had a similar experience with this month's update. I recently wrote four articles on a German resort:

1) The resort town.
2) A local gorge.
3) A hotel review.
4) The resort's famous mountain.

The articles are based on my standard editorial template, are interlinked, and have been featured on my home page at one time or another over the last month. The first of the articles to be published (#4) was picked up in the early December crawl, and the others were picked up by Google's Freshbot. All were showing an estimated PageRank with the "Category" icon until the update, whereupon articles 1, 2, and 3 got a PageRank of 0 on every page while article 4 has a PageRank of 5.

The only factor that the articles don't have in common is timing: Article #4 (the one about the mountain) was published in time for the early December crawl, while articles 1, 2, and 3 missed that crawl and were picked up by the Freshbot. This looks like a GoogleGlitch to me.

(Note: You can see the articles by clicking the URL in my profile and looking for the name of the German resort (and, in the annotation, the local mountain) on the home page.)

Marcia

5:42 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



What it seems like is being described is that pages had "guesswork PR" until the update. The ones that made it into the last big crawl got regular PR this update, while with the PR0 pages the guesstimated PR was temporary and then blanked out.

It sounds like even though the others were picked up Fresh after the last crawl, it could take the current regular crawl to assign accurate PR. If that's what's happening the PR0 pages should reflect actual PR in the January update.

Make sense?

ciml

5:51 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



That makes a lot of sense, Marcia. At this time of the cycle, strange looking things are common.

I'd be inclined to wait a couple of days and see what happens with Fresh listings.

kaz

6:05 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have one page with the same situation. Good PR site, new page -- PR0 for only that new page.

I also agree with Marcia's theory. It doesn't seem like a penalty to me, particularly because the page still comes up within searches.

Yidaki

6:08 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yep, i wouldn't change anything now, except the javascript mess. Putting all the JS code into a external script doesn't hurt and is allways worth. But i definitely wouldn't change more. Don't be too worried - it's the wrong moment - i would wait like ciml said.

BTW: Don't you think, the googler's may love gourmet cooking sites!? You know how these yuppies are ... i don't think, they penalize you! ;)

europeforvisitors

7:19 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)



I agree with Marcia that Google has probably just been slow to calculate PageRank for those Freshbot-crawled pages in the index. Who knows? Maybe PR won't get calculated until the next update.

One interesting thing: My article on the gorge (see my previous post) comes up #1 on the SERP for its English-language keyphrase even with a PR of 0, which suggests that either:

1) PageRank may not be as important as a lot of us think, or (perhaps more likely)...

2) The PR in the toolbar doesn't reflect the actual PageRank of the Freshbot-spidered pages that are showing PR0 at the moment.

Idaho

7:42 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello, I have a similar experience that I just posted a new topic for...then I notice this thread. Sorry - not trying to spam the boards.

Your comments are helpful as I think they relate to my PR0 page (just added towards the end of December). This page has a white bar.

Europeforvisitors, are your 3 pages white bar or grey bar?

Idaho

Here is my post inadvertantly posted as a new topic:

<small>I have a site with 25 to 30 pages. The site had two pages with PR5 and all the rest were PR4 with a few PR3s.

The last update was very helpful. Most of my pages are now showing PR5 and my main keyword phrases moved in the SERP from positions 9 and 10 to 3 and 4. I had one term jump from around 90ish to 10 on a search term with about 80K results. My traffic has doubled in the last two days. Thank you everybody who posts here.

My question is:
Sometime in about the 3rd week of December, I added a new page and linked to it (internal links)from a couple of places on my site. I also linked to it from two other site's link pages (external links). The new page was quickly indexed and showed fresh dates several times toward to last week in December. It showed up in SERP position 2 for its theme for a day or so. I think it had a PR of 3 or 4.

Then it disappeared, presumably due to everflux. Then it showed up again for a day or two and then disappeared again. Now, it doesn't show up on an "allinurl" check. It is also showing a PR0 with a white bar. :0

Is this still everflux or do I have a penalty? I can't think of a reason I would be penalized. Any ideas?</small>

ciml

7:50 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



> 3rd week of December

I wouldn't worry Idaho. Normally it takes up to two updates for full listings with proper PageRank calculations. So any changes from November 27 to December 31 should hopefully appear in the next update at the latest.

The Fresh listings are a nice bonus, but you shouldn't rely on their stability.

europeforvisitors

8:02 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)



Idaho wrote:

Europeforvisitors, are your 3 pages white bar or grey bar?

White bar. (And it isn't just three pages--it's three articles with more than a dozen white-barred pages.)

BTW, I've noticed something else that may be related to what we're seeing: When I publish a new article, the article will frequently rank #2 or #3 for its major keyphrase after Google's next update. It may then jump into the #1 position with the second update after publication even though it doesn't have any new backlinks (from me or from anyone else). This suggests that it may take more than one update for a new page's PR to be calculated accurately--and the PR0's that we're seeing now may simply be unusually extreme versions of the "delayed full PageRank calculation" phenomenon.

ciml

8:13 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I wouldn't say unusually extreme, europeforvisitors. It should take one or two updates, depending on which point in the cycle the changes are made.

To be honest, the Freshbot is so good now that for new pages I don't think it matters. (It still matters for new links to existing pages.)

Eric Schmidt said [webmasterworld.com] they wanted to be more current; less than a year later we're taking it for granted.

europeforvisitors

9:53 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)



I wouldn't say unusually extreme, europeforvisitors

Well, I said "unusually extreme" because I'd never seen Freshbot-crawled pages in the index display PR0 after a Google update. Normally I'd expect to see PR4 or PR5 on such pages after the update.

SlyOldDog

10:48 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Just one more piece of evidence. One of our recently crawled new pages has pagerank zero, but is #1 for search on keywords.

One other new page is pagerank 5. Both have links form our home page.

It really looks like a common problem.

SOD

born2drv

11:00 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I once added JS code that refreshed the page, depending if the screen size changed or not, to center something.

I thought it was so cool, till it got me PR0 and dropped. So if you added some JS code since last update, get rid of it. If its the same code as always, it wouldn't hurt to load it externally.

Learn basic HTML coding and start cleaning up your code too, don't be too dependant on frontpage. I was the same way with dreamweaver when i first started, now it's much less cluttered. If you haven't converted to using CSS, its a great way to clean up your site too, I suggest you learn it, and load a JS file and CSS file both externally.

Also make sure the page is not too similar to a page on another site (like a links page that you may use at both sites?).... or even similar within your site. I've seen high PR sites that are in their own little network with all their links pages all PR0.

I've also seen some people make pages specifically for certain search engines packed with keywords, get PR0 even though the site was high PR, so don't make these heavily optimized doorway pages.

europeforvisitors

11:06 pm on Jan 4, 2003 (gmt 0)



I don't think the symptom that we're discussing here has anything to do with JavaScript, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, keyword stuffing, etc. In the case of my own articles, all are based on the same editorial template, so the only variables are (1) the text and photos and (2) when they were published.

SlyOldDog

2:36 pm on Jan 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Europeforvisitors

Agreed. Our page which is PR0 is also the same as all our other pages, just a different language.