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Is a Google penalty giving me PR0?

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copywritingjohn

hello - Is there such a thing as a google penalty that gives you a PR of 0 but doesn't affect your ranking?

i've got a few decent links to my copywriting agency website (and some not-so-decent ones), but the homepage still has a PR of 0. Is there anything obvious about it that would have annoyed google?

I realise PR doesn't really matter, and i'm doing ok on the SERPS, but i don't want to upset google any more than i have to ;)
 
Ignore it.

If your traffic is healthy and visitors are landing on your internal pages rather than your homepage then there's nothing to worry about.

A couple of suggestions though if you don't mind.

Get rid of the google ads - all they are doing is sending your visitors to your competitors. You even tell me to use somebody else!

Put a call to action on every page. There is a 'quote' link hiding down the bottom of some pages but I can see that if I'm up the top.

The lefthand navigation seems to change on every page, it's most offputting.
 
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for how long has your site been indexed by google? has it had higher PR before? if it's old and you've recently seen a dramatic decrease in PR, you could be being penalised (but in such case it would normally be your rankings that drop before your PR!). if it's new, you could be being sandboxed in which case it's just a case of waiting a few more months for your true PR to be acknowledged.
 
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Off topic but I agree with [FONT=arial,sans-serif]fisicx[/FONT] - you need to drop the Googleads. I would never buy from a site that needed adverts on the pages, it suggests that they need an extra revenue stream since business is so poor, or that they are merely an affiliate/resale site.

In this case in particular you are advertising for the competition and you might easily lose a potential £100 contract just to gain 5p on a click.
 
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thanks - the site's been indexed for abour 18 months now and it's never had a PR above 0. Maybe Google's just taking it's time...

Forgot about the ads actually cos i've got them turned off on my computer! Will get rid ASAP
 
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the PR of a site has nothing to do with how much traffic it gets or how well it ranks for certain keywords. Everyone thinks that that little green bar means more visits, well it dont. sorry to be frank but i see this in so many places.
 
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Similar story here. In fact I've got no inbound link at all to some pages but the still rank #1 for some very competitive search terms.

Content is king.
 
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Boxby said:
This isn't just all it is.

We had a page rank of 4 when we put boxby live. And it had NO incoming links.
Click to expand...

Sorry but that is impossible. Not trying to be offensive, but it is impossible for a site with no links to have PR above PR1 (as that is the value of a page when it enters the Google index).

SURE you might have THOUGHT you had no backlinks, but I can assure you that you did. Hoestly it is an absolute impossibility for a site to get PR4 without links as Pr is a measure of the value of inbound links, simple as that really :)
 
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copywritingjohn said:
hello - Is there such a thing as a google penalty that gives you a PR of 0 but doesn't affect your ranking?

i've got a few decent links to my copywriting agency website (and some not-so-decent ones), but the homepage still has a PR of 0. Is there anything obvious about it that would have annoyed google?

I realise PR doesn't really matter, and i'm doing ok on the SERPS, but i don't want to upset google any more than i have to ;)
Click to expand...

Yep, if they suspect you are selling links they will Pr zero your site or sometimes just stop your site from passing pr (as they did with PHPBB.com and some others), or worse case, grey bar you, (you know you have been nailed then).

Of late, Google are going down the 'stop pr from passing route more and more, along with wiping out PR.

I assume you have google webmaster tools, what does that tell you? if there are any quality issues, they will be flagged to you in there.

if you don't have a WMT account and verified your site, then get one now and end the speculation.
 
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I've not done anything to make Google think i've been selling links

Just had another look at my google webmaster tools and it says it's all fine - got a few "duplicate meta descriptions", but that's not likely to make google angry is it?
 
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infiniteseo said:
the PR of a site has nothing to do with how much traffic it gets or how well it ranks for certain keywords
Click to expand...

let's agree to disagree here. it's not a perfect correlation because there's so many variables but it is definitely a direct correlation. else pagerank would have no use and you would not see it on your google toolbar.
 
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Birmingham said:
else pagerank would have no use and you would not see it on your google toolbar.
Click to expand...

Turn off your google spyware bar and surf the net. It won't take you long to realise that TBPR is a complete waste of time.
 
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spyware? i thought google's privacy policy was of a very high standard.

as for TBPR, it gives me a lot of qualitative information which has to be taken with a pinch of salt but when done so it can be very useful ;)
 
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so when i land on a site with pr N/A it tells me the page either hasn't been around for long and so hasn't earnt its credibility or is not worth much PR for some other reason (lack of inlinks, involvement with bad neighbourhoods) ;)
 
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i think it's useful to see toolbar pr on technical sites to instantly give a heads up as to how trustable the site's content may be. sure, this is not very relevant to seo, but toolbar seo is still directly related to serps PR - it's just a case of taking that pinch of salt (observing the significance of the lag)
 
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Birmingham said:
i think it's useful to see toolbar pr on technical sites to instantly give a heads up as to how trustable the site's content may be. sure, this is not very relevant to seo, but toolbar seo is still directly related to serps PR - it's just a case of taking that pinch of salt (observing the significance of the lag)
Click to expand...


I don't have a clue what you are saying here :(

PR shows how trustable the content is? when you can buy a pr4 from a single pr6 link? Surely the sites backlinks are a better indicator? as for "toolbar seo is still directly related to serps PR" Cmon you know that isn't the case. INDIRECTLY then maybe as it was relevant at the time of any searh made on the day of export, but TBPR plays absolutely no part in the serps. Other than if the site is banned and has no Pr, but it is the ban doing the damage and the PR is a by-product of it.
 
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Birmingham said:
let's agree to disagree here. it's not a perfect correlation because there's so many variables but it is definitely a direct correlation. else pagerank would have no use and you would not see it on your google toolbar.
Click to expand...

take this example, visit www.google.com and search for "Search Engine"

we see the below results -

www.altavista.com/ - PR9
www.dogpile.com/ - PR8
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine - PR6
search.yahoo.com/ - PR8
www.ask.com/ - PR8
searchenginewatch.com/ - PR8
www.searchenginecolossus.com/ - PR7
www.cbc.ca/searchengine/ - PR6
www.submitexpress.com/ - PR6

Google.com has a PR10 and it lists itself in 18th place. Ok you might say it would be logical that www.google.com is not listed in first place because the user is already using www.google.com, if thats the case then why even list it in 18th place. Consider this then www.google.co.uk is in 25th place and has a PR8 so......
 
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you have to take it with a pinch of salt that comes only with experience. there are no real shocks in your example but it would be a shock if rank 1 was Pr4!
 
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Birmingham said:
which specific inlinks do you consider to have the potential to grant him PR3-4 ?
Click to expand...
Yes, I looked at the PR of his inlinks and they look like enough for minimum PR3, if not PR4. Let's face it..he should not be zero - even PR1 would be something :|

Did anyone OWN the domain name before you - or is it yours since birth?

James.
 
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My directory homepage recently dropped from 5 to 3, a lot of pr 4 internal
pages dropped to 2, and numerous other 4 and 3 pages dropped to 0.
At the same time a lot of my rankings improved and my traffic has gone up.
 
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I think now would be a good time to say something about PR and how it works. I did post this earlier today, but not sure if it was here or elsewhere, so will post it again.

PR is NOT a fixed value, it is a value directly relative to the size of the index big bigger biggest sort of thing.

To explain that statement it is essential to understand the 'how' bit of PR. pagerank is the numeric value of a page in realtion to the other pages in the index. So while your links might be enough to grant you a PR4 today, if the index enlarges, then the entire face of the link map will change, and with it the values therin.

So while the links haven't changed, and the value of those links hasn't changed, simply because od the enlargment of the index, it has become a slightly smaller fish in a slightly laerger pond. You are the same size fish, you are a big fish, but you are no longer the biggest fish so you slide down the size rankings. Whixh is why those who understand how the PR algorithm works (it is in the public domain) know that PR as a direct value is not so important as it isn't a constant.

Simple as that really :)
 
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JustOneUK said:
Yes, I looked at the PR of his inlinks and they look like enough for minimum PR3, if not PR4. Let's face it..he should not be zero - even PR1 would be something :|

Did anyone OWN the domain name before you - or is it yours since birth?

James.
Click to expand...

that's what i thought - don't know if anyone had the domain name before me.... i've got some links including a couple of PR5s from a university website, and as OWG says, you can just buy a PR6 link and become PR4.

So whether or not PR is a good guide of anything or not :)
it looks like google doesn't like something!
 
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copywritingjohn said:
i've got some links including a couple of PR5s from a university website, and as OWG says, you can just buy a PR6 link and become PR4.
Click to expand...

Yeh, I saw that.

You could simply try EMAILING Google and asking if there is a penalty on your site - just put "a web designer told you there is a penalty on your site and now you are having trouble sleeping as you are worried about your business being affected for no reason, you don't know anything about this type of thing and you are at your wits end" :p

read here for site consideration
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843

James.
 
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Birmingham said:
spyware? i thought google's privacy policy was of a very high standard.
Click to expand...

Then you didn't read the T&C when you installed the toolbar. Maybe the term spyware is a bit harsh but google freely admits that it is tracking all your internet movement - it is spying on your surfing. Furthermore there is a google patent in application whereby it will deliver personalised results based on your surfing history.

Birmingham said:
so when i land on a site with pr N/A it tells me the page either hasn't been around for long and so hasn't earnt its credibility or is not worth much PR for some other reason (lack of inlinks, involvement with bad neighbourhoods)
Click to expand...

There is no way you can correlate PR to the age of a page or it's credibility. I could show you loads of pages with no PR - for no other reason than they are very deep within a site. Most of the topics on this forum don't have any PR but they still rank rank well.

@copywritingjohn. Why are you concerned over you TBPR? It really doesn't matter as long as you are getting the traffic.
 
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I know PR doesn't matter that much, but having a decent PR can't hurt can it, and I'd prefer to keep google happy if possible.

Webmaster tools says there's no problem, so i'll try emailing them
Thanks.
 
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