Pagerank Gone From 4 To 0 Options

[sheep44765]

Hello, my site's 2-3 years old and i had a pagerank of 4 at one point, but all of a sudden it's gone to 0. I thought you couldn't lose a pagerank. My daily hits haven't gone down so maybe it's just not giving me the right pagerank reading.

Websites like amazon.com still have their pagerank, seems to be just mine.

[Ahmed]

If your traffic and hopefully conversions haven't changed then who cares (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) A lot of people have been experiencing page rank loss over the past few months, some people say its because of "pagerank/link sellers" while others say its just a glitch while google updates the data since a lot have regained their pagerank. I personally think there's no way to know since the people who lost their pagerank gained many links by crying and bloging about it (not that it makes any sense that the links made any impact so quickly) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) so who knows and who cares about the silly green bar anyway?

Now the real pagerank (not toolbar one) is important but no one can see it unless you get hired by google to work in that department. So i wouldn't lose any sleep over this.

[sheep44765]

I do care because i have an advertiser that rates sites partly on pagerank. i can't up the charge as the pagerank goes up if it's at 0. No one will want to use my link exchange program because it'd be pointless to exchange links with a site of pagerank 0.

[Randy]

I do care because i have an advertiser that rates sites partly on pagerank. i can't up the charge as the pagerank goes up if it's at 0.

You're selling links for PageRank?

That pretty much explains it. You should be disclosing that those links are in fact paid, both to users and the search engines. Otherwise you run the risk of losing your ability to pass any PageRank.

[Jill]

Most likely that's why it's gone to 0 now. Google presumably noticed you were selling PR (which they own) so they made it appear as if you have none, so you cannot sell it anymore.

You may want to look for a new business model.

[sheep44765]

Well i have recently had a deal allowing an ad agent to put links on my site but i didn't know google didn't like this. And how do they know whether i'm selling it anyway? I also put my friends links on my site because i like their sites, not because i'm giving them a good pagerank.

Not like i have any rights anyway.

[Jill]

And how do they know whether i'm selling it anyway?

They know everything.

[Randy]

Ditto what Jill said.

With the link pattern software they've built over the years it becomes quite easy for them to see all sorts of interesting things, when they bother to look. Especially when it's a change where a third party placing the links to a relatively small set of sites, typically on multiple sites, usually all showing up about the same time. Abnormalities stand out like sore thumbs.

With as link reliant as Google has been all these years it would be foolish to think they don't have tools in place to conduct some rather intricate link relationship analysis.

[sheep44765]

ok, but i've had a link exchange app on my site for months, surely that's not allowed either.

[Randy]

Link exchange isn't the same as link selling. Making the assumption they're treated the same is very dangerous.

[Mhoram]

Google has said you can be penalized for "excessive" link exchange schemes. Whether yours is "excessive" or not is ultimately a subjective judgment by them. If they've decided your site qualifies, they aren't going to tell you why or what you need to do to make it not excessive. All you can do is change things, send them reinclusion requests, and wait a few weeks to see if anything changes.

Of course, that assumes it's not just a fluke, which is always possible with Toolbar PR. I know what you mean about losing advertising, though. You don't have to be "selling PR" to have Toolbar PR affect your advertising income. If advertisers think Toolbar PR reflects the quality of your site and the amount/quality of traffic they'll get from you, it's only natural they'd take that zero into account.

I've got a client who recently put rel="nofollow" on all link exchange links on one site, to see if that makes any difference. If it doesn't, I'm sure we'll be trying something else, although I'm personally out of ideas for that case.

[sheep44765]

Well i don't want to remove the links and lose money that way.

I wasn't even aware i was selling pagerank, i know it'd be a mammoth job for google to contact everyone who does and warn them, but it's still a bit unfair. I think they should instead stop the pagerank of the linked to website from going up.

There are sites which have almost exactly the same adverts as i do, but with a high pagerank. Seems like the rules are a bit grey.

This post has been edited by Randy: Feb 18 2008, 02:01 PM

Reason for edit: Live link removed per forum rules.

[Jill]

ok, but i've had a link exchange app on my site for months, surely that's not allowed either.

It depends. If it's clear that you're not just accepting any and all links, then it's probably fine. But if anyone that submits a website gets listed, Google would probably not want to count those as a vote for the other site, because they're not.

There are sites which have almost exactly the same adverts as i do, but with a high pagerank. Seems like the rules are a bit grey.

Yes, indeed they are.

Perhaps this might make it easier for you...

Think about the reason that Google uses links as part of their ranking algorithm, and think about how what you might be doing that could be seen as an attempt to subvert their algorithm.

As long as what you do doesn't appear to be that, you'll be fine. In other words, as long as the links you put on your site are really ones you believe will be of interest to the people who visit your site, and and as long as your advertisement links are clearly marked as such, then you shouldn't (theoretically) have any problems with Google.

Does this help?

[sheep44765]

Yes thanks. I only allowed sites related to my site to exchange links with me, so maybe google didn't mind that.

[Jill]

Yes, but beyond them being related, do you truly recommend them? Have you checked them out and found them to be useful?

If not, you shouldn't be linking to them, in my opinion.