Our homepage http://b2b.tradeholding.com had a page rank of 4 until
August 13, 2003 and all other pages within our website had a page rank
of 3 respectively. When we search for links to
http://b2b.tradeholding.com Google displays 104 links. Could this
rapid change with our page rank from 4 to 0 be a temporary situation?
Or a possible penalty due to any reason? If our website penalized by
Google with PR0 what would be the reason and how can we get rid of
PR0?

Hi there,

It could just be a temporary glitch. The Google Toolbar hasn't been
totally reliable of late, in terms of displaying PageRank, and it
could be that your PageRank hasn't really changed. Has your ranking in
search results changed? If it hasn't, and you are still receiving just
as many visitors from Google, then there is nothing to worry about.

It is also possible that Google has difficulty loading your site (it
took over 20 seconds for me, on cable), and that it had dropped your
site because it wouldn't load, and has now only recently re-indexed
your site, and it has not yet had PageRank assigned.

Google might be having problems with your site being dynamically
generated. If this is new (if your site had a static home page up
until a few months ago), then this is highly likely to be the reason.

Otherwise, the most likely reason is duplicate content with this site:
http://e-rittb2b.tradeholding.com/default.cgi

Google counts subdomains as unique websites. In this case Google will
have noticed that the two subdomains have substantially similar
content.

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

The solution is to either remove one of the subdomains, or instruct
the Googlebot not to index it, by using either a META robots tag or a
robots.txt file. Then re-submit the subdomain you do not want in
Google's index, and it will be removed, hopefully with the next
update.


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by qkerteriz-ga on 21 Aug 2003 19:09 PDT

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. However, you state that the possible causes
are:
1- A temporary glitch
2- Difficulty to load our site
3- Due to dynamially generated pages
4- Duplicate content with other sub-domains which all seem to be
possible reasons but which would be the most likely one for this rapid
change? Could you please classify with percentage of possibility?

Also, why do you think Google displays only
http://b2b.tradeholding.com/default.cgi?action=viewtradeleads&type=2
as the bacward link for most of all our pages through Google Tool bar?
All our pages link backs to other pages within our site as well as
outbound links.

And when you search for link:b2b.tradeholding.com through Google again
the only page displayed is
http://b2b.tradeholding.com/default.cgi?action=viewtradeleads&type=2
on top position (second) but not our main page
http://b2b.tradeholding.com or
http://b2b.tradeholding.com/default.cgi. Could this be a sign of a
temporary glitch or our site is omitted while re-indexing?

Regarding the duplicate content we had similar sub-domains for a long
time but http://b2b.tradeholding.com had a page rank of 4 then.

Isn't it strange that the date of our site dropped from PR 4/10 to
0/10 is August 13, 2003 which was the same day of electric outage
which affected a large part of North America???

Since our goal is to build a gloabl network of B2B websites we need to
use such sub-domains so should we forget all about Google Page Ranking
and go ahead? Or could it be possible to communicate with Google and
ask them for our special case? Please keep in mind that many major B2B
sites like www.alibaba.com and www.worldbid.com has similar subdomains
and domains with substantially dupliacte content but they do have
individual Page Ranking for each site.

Thanks in advance for the clarification regarding all above. So that
your answer would lead us to a more concrete position to locate the
problem.

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 21 Aug 2003 19:42 PDT

Hi again,

First of all, if you ask further questions here, it is best not to
rate an answer until the clarification process is completed and you
have gotten the best possible answer. It is very disheartening to
receive a 1 star rating before even having the chance to address your
new questions. It can certainly influence the researchers desire to
help further, because the rating cannot be changed...

You may have noticed that the possibilities I listed have
qualifications, and their likelihood is best judged by aspects
answerable by yourself.

Is your page usually so slow to load? Does it sometimes just not load?

Have your number of visitors via Google changed significantly?

Was your homepage formerly static?


The drop in PageRank occuring at the same time as the power outage is
pure coincidence.

It is okay to have a network of sites, just make sure that the content
varies significantly.

The relative ranking of dynamic sites is very complicated - I was
unable to find a reason for why some of your pages appear ahead of
others.

The main question was: "... When we search for links to
http://b2b.tradeholding.com Google displays 104 links. 1- Could this
rapid change with our page rank from 4 to 0 be a temporary situation?
2- Or a possible penalty due to any reason? 3- If our website
penalized by Google with PR0 what would be the reason and 4- how can
we get rid of PR0?" An unsatisfactory answer without any thorough
research of our case. Not leading to locate the cause of the problem.
By the way, sorry for the rating before clarification completed. That
was my fault.