Google PR dropped from 5 to 0!?! - HELP

[aboujouj83]

I put this thread here because I guess it has to do with a web design issue. My forum qnhl dot come had PR 5 for almost a year, but then google dropped it to 3 then 0 in less than 2 weeks. I had some "Sponsor Ads", which I convert them to "Recommended links", but the PR hasn't gone up for a month now. I heard about google penalizing sites...I guess mine was one of them. But why taking to PR 0. What is needed now to get it back? Note that the site SERP is still strong. Just google "NHL talk" or "NHL Forums".

Any advice is highly appreciated and NPs will be left for helpful answers.

Thanks,
Aboujouj

 

[domainer50]

How much advertising did you put into the site? What are your backlinks like? Some sites get a PR5 right off the bat and fall becuase of poor linking, etc. So my best advice would be to buy as many backlinks as possible, and submit yourself to as many directories and search engines as possible.

 

[mhdoc]

It sounds like some of the sites linking to yours lost most of their PR so they no longer pass it to yours.

If you still have your SERP positions what difference does it make

 

[aboujouj83]

NPs donated to Domainer50. My PR was not built quickly, it took almost a year to climb it from 0 to 5. The site is submitted to many directories and have many backlinks. On iwebtool, it predicts a PR 4 for next google update. Is iwebtool trustful?

Mhdoc, PR is important when you are trying to sell links.

Please keep your advice coming. Thanks.

Aboujouj

 

[whitebark]

It was the buying and/or selling of the links that got you in trouble in the first place.

 

[aboujouj83]

Thanks Whitebark. So are you implying that is not the ideal method to monetize a forum? Many established sites do sell links, and I don't totally see why google penalizes it that much.

It was the buying and/or selling of the links that got you in trouble in the first place.

 

[domainer50]

It depends how many links youve sold. You dont want to turn into a link farm. How many outgoing links did you have on there?

 

[DotUSDomains]

Remember 10 on topic links are better then 1000 off topic links (no matter which way you put it)

Directories are good but you must be carefull, submitt to only high quality directories that have been in google for a long time,

Try and get your links away from: Sponsors/Partners/Links pages (etc etc..)

concentrate on SERP's Not PR

Alot of companies now no pr is not as important as it use to be, if your selling links let them know how many users/visitors you have, tell them your SERP's Info and if they ask about pr tell them it's not the ideal way to base a links price on.

Pr links are good but not that good you need to worry about them.

 

[aboujouj83]

Thanks virusdetails, NP added. I had around 25 links on my main page. I reduced them to 18 right now. Is it too high?

Thanks,
Aboujouj

 

[domainer50]

Thanks virusdetails, NP added. I had around 25 links on my main page. I reduced them to 18 right now. Is it too high?

Thanks,
Aboujouj

No I dont think so. Another thing that i didnt think of. Sometimes the Google PR system can go a bit screwy during an update. Maybe thats the case?

 

[aboujouj83]

No I dont think so. Another thing that i didnt think of. Sometimes the Google PR system can go a bit screwy during an update. Maybe thats the case?

I hope what is saying is right. Here is the prediction of iwebtool. It says it should be back to 5 in the next update:
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction?domain=www.qnhl.com

Aboujouj

 

[netfleet]

Pretty sure selling links is the problem here.

Think of it this way - Google judges a link to a site as a 'vote' for that site and being democratic, the more votes a site has, the higher it will appear in the SERPS.

This is so quality sites which other independent sites have voted for finish higher.

Over the years though sites have bought links to artificially increase their link popularity. It's akin to buying votes.

Recently Google has been cracking down on paid links and where possible negating any SEO benefit from these links. Google has also made it hard for link sellers by reducing their toolbar PR.

The fact that your positions in the SERPS have remained also supports this (ie your real PR is still high but has just been visually reduced to stop you selling ANY links)

Your PR will not come back (on the toolbar) until you can prove to google you're only selling links for traffic (which is fine - standard advertising) not PR link juice. Add "nofollow"tags to your links (if the advertisers cop that) and resubmit to Google (via sitemaps)

Good luck

 

[food_consult]

Ouch that sucks!!! hope you guys recover! We had a similar issue and it turned out to be because of stupid Hosting company!

 

[aboujouj83]

thansk netfleet. NPs added.

 

[aboujouj83]

If I create a new sitemap, and submit it to google (hoping that my PR gets update it), is there a risk to lose my already indexed pages? I'm doing very well in SERP.

Thanks,
Aboujouj

 

[shockie]

submitting a sitemap will neither increase your pr, nor update it any sooner.

 

[Xombie]

If I create a new sitemap, and submit it to google (hoping that my PR gets update it), is there a risk to lose my already indexed pages? I'm doing very well in SERP.

Thanks,
Aboujouj

Usually a sitemap is a supplementary source to crawl for Google, if you continue to be linked and have relevant content, you will do well in SERPs.

Usually the result shown by iwebtool can be used as an indicator of the region that your PR will go to in the next update. But if you are really being penalised for selling/buying links, then Google may be mean and keep your PR at zero.

 

[domainer50]

I would not worry about this. My domain is showing a 0, but some sites are showing it at a 2, so google must be doing an update of some sort.

 

[shockie]

this last round of december "updates" aren't like previous ones, and seems to be more of an update for punishing those who try to manipulate their pr. i haven't heard of anyone getting a higher pr so far from this "update".

 

[dman_2007]

You know you can get your PR back before the next PR update, all you have to do is either remove all the paid links or put rel="nofollow" in the all the paid links. After that submit a reconsideration request from google's webmasters tool, accepting that you used to sell links and now you don't. Many others sites who lost their PR did this and got their PR back.

Also, remember there is no gurantee that you'll regain your PR in the next PR update even you build lots of new backlinks as the current change in your PR is not algorithmically calculated, it is hand tweaked and did you see the pattern, first it reduced to 3 then 0, i think if you keep continuing this way you can lose your serp rankings as well. Not trying to scare you just warning you, i've this happening to other people.