Hi there,
Your situation and the cause are quite common. Here are the answers to
your three questions.
1. What have caused the sudden PageRank change?
-----------------------------------------------
Two words: reciprocal linking.
Reciprocal linking is basically at attempt to artificially inflate
PageRank, which is contrary to the desires of a web searcher.
Therefore Google has developed tools to spot it happening, and dishes
out heavy penalties to those involved. Having PR reduced to zero is a
typical penalty, although if you broke other Google guidelines your
site could be removed from the index altogether.
Quality Guidelines - Basic principles:
- Make pages for users, not for search engines.
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
- Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank.
- Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check
rankings, etc.
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Your site appears on link pages which are part of this reciprocal link
scheme:
Success Online Casino
http://www.successonlinecasino.com/urladding.php
2. Why does Google consider only one link out of 920 links?
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Google backward links function, despite what you would expect,
does not return every link to your site, if your site or those linking
to it have a PR of less than 4. When your site had a PR of 5, you
would've seen every site with a PR of 4 or more that linked to you.
The best tool for listing backward links is by searching for the URL
at http://alltheweb.com
3. What do I need to do in order to get our rank back?
------------------------------------------------------
"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
You need to remove any reciprocal links that appear on your site, and
if possible ask for them to be removed from the sites that link to
you. Then email Google, tell them you didn't realise you were doing
anything wrong and ask for them to assign a normal PageRank again.
GoogleGuy (a Google employee) says:
"The most effective emails to help@google.com are ones that list what
might have been wrong before, but that show the site is clean now."
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/8053.htm
Brett Tabke suggests:
I've sent about a dozen in the last six months and got 2-3 replies.
Tips:
a) short. If it is more than 3-4 sentences, it's too wordy and gets
the delete key. Support folks have better things to do than wade
through two paragraphs of tee up noise to get to the real reason you
are writing them.
b) use a valid return email (no hotmail, or freebie mails here). I
would imagine all hotmail and yahoo emails go straight to file 13. Use
your isp email.
c) use a very succint and high quality title. It amazes that so many
here have poor title skills. I'd say 50% of the people reading this
have substandard title skills and less than 10% have pro caliber title
skills.
d) check the faq and do a site search before emailing them. The
question has probably been asked and aswered dozens of times before
(sounds sorta like this post ;-)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/8257.htm
Follow the link for other people's experiences of emailing Google.
Search strategy: personal experience and various searches of
WebmasterWorld.
If any part of my answer is unclear, just ask for a clarification and
I'll get back to you.
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
nina_roberts-ga
on
20 May 2003 04:35 PDT
Hello robertskelton-ga,
Thank you for your detailed answer.
I have a few questions though.
1. It’s obvious that I have no control over sites linking to my site.
Will it make a difference if I make efforts to remove links to my site
from places such as guestbooks and "pages which are part of reciprocal
link schemes"?
2. You were writing about fixing the reciprocal links problem and
sending help@google.com an email, asking them to "re-include" my site.
Actually, all of your answer to question no. 3 was referring to a site
which was "manually removed from our [google’s] index"
As I understand, my site is still included in the index and was not
manually removed, and therefore the information you supplied may be
irrelevant.
Am I wrong?
3. I found the following paragraphs confusing:
You said:
"Then email Google, tell them you didn't realize you were doing
anything wrong and ask for them to assign a normal PageRank again."
GoogleGuy (a Google employee) says:
"The most effective emails to help@google.com are ones that list what
might have been wrong before, but that show the site is clean now."
You advise me to email google and telling them I didn't realize I was
doing anything wrong. GoogleGuy, from the other hand, advises that the
most effective emails are the ones that list what might have been
wrong before.
4. Is there a way to remove the site from google, and let google treat
it as a site it hadn't crawled before?
Thank you.
|
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
21 May 2003 20:32 PDT
1. In theory once the links are gone from your site, you are no longer
participating in "reciprocal linking". But the links to your site
still might influence PageRank - so from Google's point of view the
ranking for your site could still be inaccurate. When emailing Google
you are basically begging forgiveness. You need to convince them that
you have tried everything within your power to fix the situation.
2. Google do not mention anywhere how to reverse the PR0 penalty. When
you consider that having PR0 is almost as bad as being completely
removed, emailing Google is the best and only option you have.
3. You need to tell them that you have only recently become aware that
you were doing something wrong. Originally you didn't know, but now
that you do, you are fixing it.
4. The only way is to:
a) Remove the site from the web
b) Submit the URL of each removed page to Google - Google will see
they are gone and remove them from the index, either in the next index
update or the one following
c) Let the domain expire
d) Re-register it under a new name
Doing the last two steps means that everything starts from scratch,
and any quality links still pointing to the site will no longer count.
|
