Penalties

rbaker · 03-05-2008, 04:07 AM

Hi,

I have had a long search into this but am having trouble finding any concrete answers:

Do any of you know of a place where you can effectively guage any penalties that have been placed on your site - other than noticing a drop in PR?

What would be a good way to find out how to correct something once you find it?

Does anyone know how long a pentalty would last?

impius · 03-05-2008, 04:28 AM

There is no direct way of finding out why other than investingating...How far did your PR fall? PR can fall as the number of pages on the web increase, so this is normal. If you had a drastic decrease it could be something else. Typically Google will rank a penalized site 0 not just decrease by 1.

This is a good resource for investigating further...
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/4584.htm

rbaker · 03-05-2008, 04:32 AM

ah i see,

Yes the page rank went down by only 1.

A very marked point I am also interested in is that a specific term seems to have plummeted, listing around 8 in google around two months ago, now is over 30.

Can just a term be penalised - or would it be the whole site?

Thank you for the link btw - it was very useful

mit · 03-05-2008, 04:36 AM

Reason could be the buying / selling the links. Have you done something like that?

rbaker · 03-05-2008, 04:40 AM

Yes. We are currently in the middle of a link building program, and links are being purchased

Am I right in thinking that a penalty (if any) will affect the SE ranking for the entire site - as opposed to specific pages or keywords?

impius · 03-05-2008, 04:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mit

Reason could be the buying / selling the links. Have you done something like that?

And PR has no relation with SE rankings.

PR has direct relation to search engine ranking. It is one of the ways google uses to return search results...From google...

"Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search."

To the original question...I don't believe you have penalized, Google penalties are usually very dramatic. It is more likely that there is increased competition for your specific keyword. I would recommend looking at who links to those sites listed above you and try to get links from those sites.

mit · 03-05-2008, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbaker

Yes. We are currently in the middle of a link building program, and links are being purchased

What's your PR before this updation?

Even, Matt Cutts said that the toolbar update was intended to reduce visible PR based on sites selling or buying links.

**Cricket** · 03-05-2008, 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mit

Reason could be the buying / selling the links. Have you done something like that?

And PR has no relation with SE rankings.

With all due respect, if you work with an SEO company, yet claim that PR has no relationship to SERPS I highly recommend you spend time studying what Google has to say in regards to PageRank because that comment is about as ignorant as it gets.

Quote:

PageRank

A Google feature that helps determine the rank of a site in our search results. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your searches. http://www.google.com/support/webmas...k&topic=&type=

Quote:

Serving results

When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site's PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content. http://www.google.com/support/webmas...k&topic=&type=

Quote:

Make sure that other sites link to yours

Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our view of a page's importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives as part of its PageRank assessment, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." http://www.google.com/support/webmas...k&topic=&type=

Quote:

Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. http://www.google.com/technology/

tdd1984 · 03-06-2008, 05:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbaker

Hi,

I have had a long search into this but am having trouble finding any concrete answers:

Do any of you know of a place where you can effectively guage any penalties that have been placed on your site - other than noticing a drop in PR?

What would be a good way to find out how to correct something once you find it?

Does anyone know how long a pentalty would last?

Depends man really...

I was talking with a friend of mine which I much rather not disclosure his company, but he has around ~66 employees and it took there site ~2 years to come back in the serps.

If your penalized do a re inclusion request.

corlock · 03-06-2008, 08:58 AM

to Cricket,

its IBLs that affects in Google SERP, PR is nothing without IBLs...

rbaker · 03-10-2008, 11:04 AM

great help, I appreciate the tips

thanks all

GiorgosK · 03-13-2008, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corlock

to Cricket,

its IBLs that affects in Google SERP, PR is nothing without IBLs...

I will have to agree with Corlock that SERPs are not influenced by PageRank, not by any noticeable amount. From personal experience one of my sites has gone from PR4 to PR0 in January and PR2 on this last update and for the last 2 months google has actually more than doubled my traffic (positions in SERPs have actually imporoved) ...

Good quality relevant backlinks count more than anything

Rankenstein · 03-13-2008, 06:43 PM

Forget toolbar PageRank, it's the flimsiest measure, PR fluctuates all the time. Real PR numbers are something like an eight figure number, e.g 5.3749573. You can't go for popular phrases without high PageRank; you don't need PageRank to have a very successful site, if you understand long tail searches.

GiorgosK · 03-14-2008, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rankenstein

Forget toolbar PageRank, it's the flimsiest measure, PR fluctuates all the time. Real PR numbers are something like an eight figure number, e.g 5.3749573. You can't go for popular phrases without high PageRank; you don't need PageRank to have a very successful site, if you understand long tail searches.

I actually meant popular phrases as a matter of fact very competitive keyphrases

I am curious though, what is High PageRank for you ?

Rankenstein · 03-14-2008, 04:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GiorgosK

I actually meant popular phrases as a matter of fact very competitive keyphrases

I am curious though, what is High PageRank for you ?

It keeps getting devalued but right now I'd say PR6 was a pretty good basis for most ranks, everything else being right. Having said that, it's very hard, if not impossible to guess really what your PR is after the last few toolbar updates.

But PR for me just shows your potential to do well in the SERPs. The PR doesn't make you rank well, the SEO side of things does that. High PR means good backlinks, means you can rank well (if you do the SEO).

To go from PR4, to 0, to 2 is a bit strange. Have you been doing aggressive link gathering or bought any links for whatever reason? Perhaps you got your ranks through anchor text, which would sort of make sense. I understand that the last updates have lowered 'visible' PR (on the toolbar) for sites that are selling links - which doesn't necessarily mean 'real' PR is lowered.

GiorgosK · 03-14-2008, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rankenstein

It keeps getting devalued but right now I'd say PR6 was a pretty good basis for most ranks, everything else being right. Having said that, it's very hard, if not impossible to guess really what your PR is after the last few toolbar updates.

But PR for me just shows your potential to do well in the SERPs. The PR doesn't make you rank well, the SEO side of things does that. High PR means good backlinks, means you can rank well (if you do the SEO).

To go from PR4, to 0, to 2 is a bit strange. Have you been doing aggressive link gathering or bought any links for whatever reason? Perhaps you got your ranks through anchor text, which would sort of make sense. I understand that the last updates have lowered 'visible' PR (on the toolbar) for sites that are selling links - which doesn't necessarily mean 'real' PR is lowered.

Good Points in here.

On this particular domain I have been experimenting and engaging in practices that google does not approve

as you said.

Maybe you are right about visible PR being different than the real one.
If that is the case then PR might actually be playing a bigger role in RANKING than I previously thought.