Forum Moderators: open
Obviously I have been trying to figure out what happened as one of those affected is a client of mine.
I've noticed one common thread amongst the sites that have been banished from the kingdom, a quality site that has an overall PageRank of 6 has a directory page which is being fed by DMOZ, this page has a PR of 0. Same story exactly on another site but the overall rank is 6 and the directory page in question is 1. These PR 0 pages link to most of the sites that have dropped significantly in ranking recently.
How could a page on a reputable PR6 site have a PR of 0 when it only displaying DMOZ info? Is Google mistaking this for some kind of illegal mirror site?
I feel the life of this Google PR/BackLink ranking system is not long for this world, it is simply to open for corruption and sets Google up for too much litigation. I have noticed recently that links from PR 0 sites are mysteriously showing up, these sites usually have no way to contact them (the ones I've found so far) to get the link removed. Google has no way of knowing that this link was not placed by the site owner and places a penalty on that site, a few of these and the site can quickly sink into oblivion.
An unscrupulous individual or company can quite easily destroy the ranking of another site and there is simply no way Google can prevent this (unless they modify the algo they have been using for the last 6 months). They will have no choice but to downplay this PR/BaclLink thing in the future (it's kind of stupid anyway and always had a very limited life as more people learn how to manipulate it).
There is virtually nothing another site can do to affect your specific ranking... penalties are cause by the site's maintainer doing something wrong (whether that something is known or unknown )to the maintainer. A PR0 category will not affect you (at all - positively or negatively).
If ranks have decreased rapidly the likelihood:
1. the site has linked to a penalized site/page.
2. Google has detected some form of undesireable content like: hidden links, keyword stuffing, duplication, heavy crosslinking between owned sites, etc., all of which are under your control.
3. A spam report was submitted to google and google determined that a penalty was warranted.
4. A rapid increase in more optimized web sites being added on your topics
5. An algo change where the characteristics of your site is less relevant to the topics than other sites.
6. your host has possibly been penalized which may affect all sites in the IP block.
7. a google burp
8. the site was new and as "new" listed well until google determined that it was not that relevant when compared to others sites of similar topics.
If I missed any - I'm sure other members will posted.
...I have noticed recently that links from PR 0 sites are mysteriously showing up, these sites usually have no way to contact them (the ones I've found so far) to get the link removed. Google has no way of knowing that this link was not placed by the site owner and places a penalty on that site, a few of these and the site can quickly sink into oblivion.
Completely unfounded evidence. An example: DMOZ offers RDF dumps to thousands of clone sites many of which are PR0. One listing in DMOZ in turn will provide thousands of PR0 links.
I currently have a client with 50 DMOZ listings thus those same PR0 links would be 50 fold... their ranks and PageRank are quite fine.
