Query question re:
www.directtoyoustoragesystems.com
Specifically, our listing on Google. Over the past year this site has
not been listed on Google and we continue to struggle as to why.
Recently, we upgraded the site and reformatted our products and
descriptions. In addition, we switched this site over to a VPS (Verio)
server and put in a redirect. This was done in the middle of March of
this year and we were hoping this would be noticed by Google and we
would be listed in their search engine when our customers entered
\"keywords\" to locate our site.
Since then "nada" has occurred and we continue to be 0/10 in page rank
and third from the bottom in their directory. We own and operate many
sites and have achieved respectable ranking on Google and other search
engines. This one has us puzzled. In checking the \"links\" section of
Google--Who links to you?

Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to Google.
One such word for Google is the link: operator. The query link:siteURL
shows you all the pages that point to that URL. For example,
link:www.google.com will show you all the pages that point to
Google\'s home page. You cannot combine a link: search with a regular
keyword search.
When we entered our URL as Google suggested it continues to reveal we
do not have any links. Yet, there are links that do point to our site.
Why is it then that Google does not recognize them and how do we alert
Google to the fact that they are not picking up our links?

Hi there,

There are a number of issues here, so I'll address them individually.


Not listed in Google
--------------------

Your site is listed in Google, as evidenced by these searches:

www.directtoyoustoragesystems.com
://www.google.com/search?q=www%2Edirecttoyoustoragesystems%2Ecom


"Multimedia storage for all media formats"
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Multimedia+storage+for+all+media+formats%22

The problem is having a PageRank of zero, which pretty much means you
will be near the bottom of search results. The above two searches have
you at the top, but it is also the bottom.


PageRank Zero
-------------

Ordinarily a listing in Open Directory and Yahoo would guarantee a PR
of 4 or more.

A PR of zero is one step short of being removed from the index
permanently. In most cases a site receives this penalty for breaking
one or more Google guidelines. The usual culprits are:

Duplicate content - I cannot find any evidence of you running another
site with substantially similar content. If you once did, that is the
likely cause of the problem.

Web Position Gold - I have no way of knowing if you use this software,
or anything similar that automates the process of checking your
ranking at Google. Google has been known to penalize users of this
popular software, because it overloads their servers.

Link Exchange Schemes - the only reason for using such a scheme is to
artificially increase PageRank. Google's guidelines say:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank.
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Fiction: Joining a link exchange or "free-for-all" link program will
boost my rankings.
Fact: Linking schemes do not increase a given site's PageRank, and
will often do a site more harm than good.
://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

I have found traces of evidence that suggest you once used such a
scheme, run by:

Recprolinks
http://www.reciprolinks.com/

I say traces because the reciprocal link pages that link to your site
are all dead, and if I try Google's cache, they redirect elsewhere
before I can see them. However the text of the pages are viewable by
entering Google's cache link into the Spider Simulator at
SearchEngineWorld:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi

The pages I found are:

My Favorite Links
http://exoticfashions.com/_reciprolink/index.html 

Reciprolink Sites
http://www.palazzoantellesi.com/_reciprolink/

My Favorite Links
http://www.getrader.com/_reciprolink/index.html 

My Favorite Links
http://www.artsparx.com/_reciprolink/index.html 

My Favorite Links
http://www.maxallterrainvehicles.com/.../index.html 

This is the most likely reason for your PR of zero. Now that all
current traces of any involvement have disappeared, you need to ask
Google if you can be reinstated:

"Your page was manually removed from our index, because it did not
conform with the quality standards necessary to assign accurate
PageRank. We will not comment on the individual reasons a page was
removed and we do not offer an exhaustive list of practices that can
cause removal. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text
that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up
pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result
in permanent removal from our index. If you think your site may fall
into this category, you might try 'cleaning up' the page and sending a
re-inclusion request to help@google.com. We do not make any guarantees
about if or when we will re-include your site. "
://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A1

Although your site hasn't actually been removed, it is worth asking if
the PR zero can be lifted.

Otherwise, you should re-submit your site's URL every month or so. The
GoogleBot hasn't visited your site for a few months, so reminding it
that you are still there is a good thing to do.


link:siteURL 
------------

I wish Google would mention this somewhere on their site. The link:
operator does not give accurate or complete results. It does not show
links for sites with a PageRank of less than 4. For finding backward
links, go to AlltheWeb.com and enter your URL in the search box. Here
is AlltheWeb's list of links to your site:
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Adirecttoyoustoragesystems.com+-site%3Adirecttoyoustoragesystems.com&c=web&cs=utf-8&co=1&no=off&l=any


If any part of my answer is unclear, just request a clarification and
I'll get back to you.


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga