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!
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
Interesting, and usefull to know I will be following your updates.
good luck to you then..
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!!
Thanks I was thinking about selling links and banners on my site. I think I’ll pass.
Do you know if you get in trouble for selling banner space?
Selling banner space is perfectly okay.
I know sites with PR7 and they are selling text links.
Very interesting. So if the PR is 0 then
how are people still finding the site?
Favorites? Unique hits?
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
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.
link exchange is okay.
Interesting, and usefull to know I will be following your updates. Kenneth!
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.
I am confused. Do all text link ads have the potential to penalize your PR? What about other ads?
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.
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
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/
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.
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
What some of the secrets about google which all members must know.
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.
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.
Ya really great posts. I was also thinking of selling links. Now i think i shouldn’t.
http://nexusfun.top20free.com
http://nexusfun.com
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.
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.
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.
OK then, I’m waiting for article “how to sell link safely” where I can get it ? do you have it ?
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.
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.
With recent google updates, PR is not that much matter anymore, its most about backlists now.
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.
Best idea would be just building up an quality backlinks day by day making it to look harmonic for google.
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.
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.
Now Google wont provide PR, we can look at MOZ DA