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Q: Page Rank. Why zero? ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Page Rank. Why zero?
Category: Computers > Internet
Asked by: kstrode-ga
List Price: $25.00
Posted: 08 Jun 2003 14:48 PDT
Expires: 08 Jul 2003 14:48 PDT
Question ID: 214804
Please advise why our site has just been given a page-rank of zero. 
It is at

www.kstrode.co.uk  (re-directs to www.kstrode.net)

The site has been re-written in the last few months, and a developers'
copy still seems to be up at

http://www.media-paradigm.com/kstrode/homepage.html

Could this near-duplicate be the problem?  Or is there anything else?

Regards

KStrode
Answer  
Subject: Re: Page Rank. Why zero?
Answered By: robertskelton-ga on 08 Jun 2003 16:39 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hi there,

The problem is almost certainly* duplicate content. Google guidelines
to webmasters state:

"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with
substantially duplicate content."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html 

Google last indexed www.kstrode.co.uk on June 5, and if there was any
re-direct in place at that time, Google didn't pick up on it. This is
what Google saw:
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?qry=allinurl%3Awww.kstrode.co.uk&gg_ca=hB9EjmB5J_UJ:www.kstrode.co.uk%2F&origin=unknown

As far as Google is concerned, the same content appears in three
places:

www.kstrode.co.uk
www.kstrode.net
http://www.media-paradigm.com/kstrode/homepage.html

Without any penalties, it is possible for the sites to fill the first
three places in a search result, whereas Google would prefer to list
your content just once.


Solution
--------

You need to change things so that Google only sees your content in one
place.

1) Get media-paradigm.com to remove the test site. Once it has been
deleted from the servers, submit the URL of every page at the site to:
://www.google.com/addurl.html

When Google sees that it has gone, it will remove it from the index.

2)  Insert this code into the <HEAD> section of the homepage of
www.kstrode.co.uk  :

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

This will tell the Googlebot to ignore this page. 

More info:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html

3) Go to Open Directory and let them know that you are now using a
different URL:

http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Business_and_Economy/Legal_Services/Lawyers_and_Law_Firms/Intellectual_Property/

Click on "Update URL" at the top of the page and follow the
instructions. Don't suggest any changes to the title or description,
as they are fine.

4) After you have done the above three things, contact Google at
help@google.com , and let them know what the problem was, how you have
remedied it, and ask them to remove the PR0 penalty. It's the official
email address to use for problems like yours.

You might also want to contact sites that link to www.kstrode.co.uk
and get them to change the link to www.kstrode.net. This will help the
PageRank of your site a lot.

AlltheWeb finds 70:
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Awww.kstrode.co.uk+-site%3Akstrode.co.uk&c=web&cs=utf-8&co=1&no=off&l=any


* "almost certainly". It is also possible your site received a PR0 for
breaking other Google guidelines. I checked all the usual things (like
link-farming, hidden text...) and your site, as it stands now, is
clean. The only other possiblilty is if you ever used Web Position
Gold or any other software that checks your Google ranking in an
automated manner. If you have, then you need to mention this in the
email, and never use such software again, as Google doesn't like us to
use them.


If any part of my answer is unclear, or if you need more advice
concerning this problem, just ask for a clarification and I'll get
back to you.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

Request for Answer Clarification by kstrode-ga on 09 Jun 2003 06:42 PDT
That sounds good.  We'll fix up the problems as you suggest. We've
never used any auto-submission software or anything like that.

Just two follow ups:  

(1) what's the difference between an unallowable 'web farm' and a
directory service such as
http://www.piperpat.co.nz/resource/world.html (which we do link to)?

(2) how does one find out when Google last indexed a site?

KStrode

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 09 Jun 2003 14:50 PDT
(1) Link farms are for the sole purpose of tricking search engines
into believing some sites have more regular links pointing to them
than they ordinarily would have. Link popularity is a big factor in
Google ranking, so they try hard to find cheats.

If the site, such as PIPERS, does not require a link back, then you
should be fine.

Google doesn't have any problem with reciprocal linking, because it's
quite common for similarly themed sites to have mutual respect for
each other and to swap links. Google dislikes any attempt to automate
the process.


(2) The only tool I know of is at Comet Search (it uses Google):
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php

In the search form, enter allinurl:www.your-domain.com (in your case
you could use allinurl:www.kstrode.net).

On the results page click the link that reads ... Archived copy ... At
the top of the resulting page the date is when it was last indexed
kstrode-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Really good service.  Thank you.

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