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One of my websites went from PR 3 to PR 0 overnight! Read on to find out what’s the reason and some interesting discovery I’ve found.

In early March, this website of concern suddenly went from PR 3 to PR 0. Surprised, I investigated into the reason.

The only possibility I can think of is that I sold text link on this website. It was a PR 3 website and selling text link on this site can earn me about $20 every month. (I shared with you about this link selling service before.)

I know that Google will penalize websites that sell links. That’s why I only sell text links on websites with high PR but low traffic, in order to squeeze some extra money out of these websites.

But over the years, the traffic to this website have grown and it’s fetching $100-$200 Adsense income every month. With such income, I should have stopped selling links, but I didn’t (blame on my laziness to monitor).

Ok, serve me right!

But here’s something interesting that I discover……

Although the PR has been penalized, the traffic from Google is still steady. And I’ve been monitoring for more than a month.

So Google is not that mean afterall.

While it penalized the website by dropping its PR to 0, it didn’t blacklist the website from its search result.

It’s fair if you ask me. The website does serve unique and quality contents for the benefit of the surfers. So it deserves the search engine ranking. It also deserves to have its PR dropped, since it violated their T&C.

Well, one month may not be long enough to see the full impact of having the PR penalized. I’ll continue to monitor the performance of this website and continue to promote it. Let’s see if the PR can be revived and the traffic can sustain.

I’ll keep you updated on anything interesting. Stay tuned!

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    40 Comments »

    Comment by proson
    2009-04-17 13:54:29

    Hi Kenneth,

    This is just an example of High PR doesn’t mean high search engine ranking. Google doesn’t rank a website based on the value of page rank it is really a myth.
    As I see so many web pages that have lower Page rank value that out rank pages with higher ones. Google cares more about the relevancy of the page it returned of the result rather just the value of PR.

    Think about it for a second, if High PR = high ranking than many websites like MSN, yahoo, Espn, CNN etc will rank higher than yours and my sites
    for many keywords! And yourself a question, do you want this to be happened? No. I don’t think so.
    So your site will be fine sitting there with just the PR dropped.

    Proson

    Comment by katrina kaif
    2010-06-23 01:31:15

    Interesting, and usefull to know I will be following your updates.

     
     
    2009-04-17 15:07:04

    good luck to you then..

     
    Comment by Marianne
    2009-04-17 17:30:14

    If we just pay attention to our business and traffic generation, without regard to PR, we will all do well. I recently went through a real ordeal of having my site connected to a strange IP address so when and if someone found me at Google they got directed to an Apache Control Panel page. It turned out to be a rogue .htaccess file in my server. I am so glad to have it resolved! I lost my PR through it all too, but my traffic is really increasing with out it!!

     
    Comment by Internet Business
    2009-04-17 17:59:16

    Thanks I was thinking about selling links and banners on my site. I think I’ll pass.

     
    Comment by Internet Business
    2009-04-17 18:00:37

    Do you know if you get in trouble for selling banner space?

    Comment by Kenneth Koh
    2009-04-18 07:44:32

    Selling banner space is perfectly okay.

     
     
    Comment by Kiril Kiryakov
    2009-04-17 19:26:28

    I know sites with PR7 and they are selling text links.

     
    Comment by Rowan Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-04-17 19:50:17

    Very interesting. So if the PR is 0 then
    how are people still finding the site?
    Favorites? Unique hits?

    Comment by Pierce Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-04-17 23:31:53

    Hi Rowan, in the post he says that the PR dropped to 0 but the site was still being listed on the engine for people to search for. An odd occurrence since it should have been penalized. So people are still finding the site listed in the engine but without a page rank.

    Pierce

     
     
    Comment by Gator Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-04-17 22:41:55

    Are FREE Links Okay?

    If I offer FREE links on my site with only a request for a recipricol link, is that a violation of their TOS?

    Curious minds want to know.

    Anyone need links placed? Willing to place our link on your site? Contact me.

    Comment by Kenneth Koh
    2009-04-18 07:45:15

    link exchange is okay.

     
     
    Comment by sean breslin
    2009-04-17 23:27:16

    Interesting, and usefull to know I will be following your updates. Kenneth!

     
    Comment by Pierce Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-04-17 23:29:22

    This just goes to show how much is still unknown to the search engine placement. We read and see what bots,spyders and algorithms the engines are supposedly using but then something like this goes and shows differently.
    Is the page an anomaly which just hasn’t been detected yet? or do the search engines really monitor every last detail on every single site listed? is there a percent of sites that make it through the testing and get listed that is allowed by the engine?
    I am learning about seo and it is all a crop shoot for the most part it looks like. there are some strong proven techniques to get listed and the rest is the luck of the day it seems. I have been listed in top spots and then gone, and then back up without me doing anything to my sites. ?? trial and error i suppose.

     
    Comment by Tina Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-04-17 23:37:30

    I am confused. Do all text link ads have the potential to penalize your PR? What about other ads?

    Comment by Kenneth Koh
    2009-04-18 07:49:03

    No. There is a difference between selling text links for SEO and for traffic. For SEO, the link will link directly to the url of the website. But for traffic, the link will usually be a tracking link.
    For example, take a look at Google adword ads and LeadsLeap text ads (on this blog). You can see that the url are directed to another page belonging to Google or LeadsLeap. Such links are purely for advertising purpose to gain traffic, no SEO effect.

     
     
    Comment by Bill Masson
    2009-04-18 01:31:45

    If you are earning between $100 & $200 a month then you have to be doing something right, as for PR for me its just eye candy and doesn’t reflect your SERPS or real position on the search engines. I recently launched a wp blog called billmasson.com and after the first month it gained a PR2 in Google> I put this down to timing as Google just updated the PR and probably the keywords that i use along with two great RSS plugins. The subject of the blog is hugely popular to. As for selling inline text I have not been able to profit from this yet, so perhaps i will take another look at your previous article.

    Thanks for the read

     
    Comment by Dwayne
    2009-04-18 09:13:59

    PR is very important. Google’s secret algorithm is multiplied by PR to determine search position.
    As Kenneth said, PR changed overnite. Check when the last time was that the site was crawled by Google. When page rank changes nothing will be affected in searches until the next time the page is crawled.
    My prediction is that after the next crawl your search position will change dramatically- if you even see the site show up at all in the serps/

     
    Comment by Meet The Blogger
    2009-04-18 21:16:54

    I don’t really bother much about PR all that
    matters is get useful contents to your site, generate targetted traffic and earn good money for yourself.

    If you can advertise your site on some good places you sure will get good traffic, don’t just rely on getting traffics from search engines just try to find a good audience for your website services and try to get them subscribe to your site and keep giving them good content that way you are sure of getting more out of your site even if your page rank is -1.

     
    Comment by issa
    2009-04-19 12:02:59

    this happened to my make-money-online blog & so far its PR never recovered. however, most of my visitors are still from Google so I guess PR doesn’t really matter traffic-wise. but if you do paid blog posts & sell links, PR is what advertisers look for so you’ll suffer if you’re PR0

     
    Comment by dorothy
    2009-04-20 04:30:38

    What some of the secrets about google which all members must know.

     
    Comment by online produk
    2009-04-20 11:20:17

    I’ve heard about this before, is it really cause your high traffic can dropped PR? Right now I still sell links, it’s easy money online for me, maybe someday you can posting all about the right way to sell link safely.

    Thanks Kenneth.

     
    Comment by Jun Dimaano
    2009-04-25 09:42:03

    This is really an informative article. Can somebody tell me how many days or month before you can achive at least PR3? Using only free traffic. Thanks.

     
    Comment by kshitiz Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-04-30 20:31:33

    Ya really great posts. I was also thinking of selling links. Now i think i shouldn’t.

    http://nexusfun.top20free.com
    http://nexusfun.com

     
    Comment by Gary Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-05-29 15:49:20

    One of my websites with PR3 now dropped to PR1. I am not selling text links or banner space. What could be the reasons for being penalized by google in terms of PR?

    By the way, the contents of the website is unique. I won’t say it is of quality because it is sometimes very subjective.

    Thanks for your reply.

     
    Comment by Seb Brantigan
    2009-06-08 03:30:53

    Well, all I think of when I want to get a good search engine ranking is backlinks, backlinks, and more backlinks. I’ve made a blog in an hour before and had it ranked highly (for a low search term, just for a test) in less than a month. Very important, and I don’t mean spamming them because the search engines will kick you out much, much quicker than when they indexed you.

     
    Comment by Sandeep Kanoi Subscribed to comments via email
    2009-07-02 16:15:08

    I have a website with more then 5000 unique visitors. I am now looking to sell the link on the same. Website have a PR3. Please suggest me what should I charge per link per month.

     
    Comment by NGDlover
    2009-11-03 10:59:42

    OK then, I’m waiting for article “how to sell link safely” where I can get it ? do you have it ?

     
    Comment by Gator Subscribed to comments via email
    2010-06-23 01:50:12

    Regardless of PR ranking, nothing substitutes for quality targeted advertising. Targeted to your desired audience, age group, demographics, and sometimes even gender depening on the type of site you operate.

    MSN Network still has some of the lowest cost PPC rates and I can achieve in excess of 40,000 hits per month for less then 500.00. Obviously you don’t want to spend this kind of money on advertising unless you have a product to sell that will yield high conversion rates from those hit.

    Google has become such a mass conglomerate that I don’t believe anyone really understands their logic any longer, and probably not even their own people. Just another case of one department not talking to another and everyone doing their own thing without coordinating results.

     
    2011-02-10 15:07:39

    Interesting, and usefull to know I will likely be following your updates.

     
    2011-02-18 23:13:15

    It is very hard to understand the relationship between PR and keyword ranking. Plus, I have found that sometimes PR drops and then is mysteriously back to where it was a few days later. I guess it’s just more proof that the best defense is to get people opted into your mailing list so that you are not at the mercy of anyone else for driving traffic to your site.

     
    Comment by Priyanka Chopra
    2011-05-05 08:36:17

    With recent google updates, PR is not that much matter anymore, its most about backlists now.

     
    Comment by GetoutofDebt
    2011-05-05 08:37:56

    well, you definitely should be careful if you are selling links on your site, drop down on PR status is not best thing to happen.

     
    Comment by Neon Clothing
    2011-05-05 08:39:45

    Best idea would be just building up an quality backlinks day by day making it to look harmonic for google.

     
    Comment by Shahid Kapoor
    2011-05-05 08:42:14

    Definitely PR aren’t a main factor on google ranking anymore, if you want to get high rank, you should concentrate on building backlinks from social networks, bookmark services, blogs, comments.

     
    2011-05-24 09:24:25

    I am wondering if my new sites have been penalized by ranking PR0 or is it just because they are new? I have done a good job writing content I hope and they have great quality links? Who knows I guess the mystery of google lives on and whether you are writing about Clearwater Real estate or website PR the content better be good or you chance a PR 0.

     
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