Hi there,
First of all, don't worry about Google's backlinks function - the
links shown and the rules for why are constantly changing, and
typically the list is incomplete. Google still knows about your
incoming links, it just doesn't list them all.
Now, PR0. Ordinarily being listed in DMOZ and Yahoo is enough to get a
PR of at least 4. PR0 means that your site has been penalized, so I
looked through Google's webmaster guidelines to see if you have done
anything contrary to them.
The problem I found is your link exchange page:
http://www.jewelbasket.com/links.html
The page states:
"Incoming links vastly improves your Page Rank or PR on the Google
search engine. 70% of people find web sites via free search engines.
People, search engine traffic can be vastly improved by reciprical
links. Lets link swap now!"
While it is true that links improve PR, link exchanges are a way of
cheating the system, and Google frowns upon them:
"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings... ask, "Does
this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
It is quite easy for Google to notice link exchange schemes, and when
it does, the particpants generally receive a penalty in the form of a
zero PR.
Remedy
------
1. Remove the scheme, and request that all particpants stop linking to
your site.
2. Ask to have your site removged from any other schemes you might be
part of, such as http://www.jewelrylinkexchange.com/
3. Email Google at help@google.com, with the subject "re-inclusion
request". Explain that you didn't realise you were breaking any
guidelines, detail how you have fixed the problem, and ask if you can
have the penalty removed.
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
02 Sep 2003 19:40 PDT
Placing importance on link popularity is why Google is such a good
search engine. It looks at the number of links pointing at a site, and
counts them as votes - and uses those votes as in indicator of
quality. The sites with the highest PageRank, such as Yahoo or
Microsoft, have hundreds of thousands of links pointing to them.
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. And that includes offers to link to any site that links
to you, regardless of any other criteria.
For arguments sake, imagine if you managed to exchange links with
100,000 websites, via an automated process, and Google didn't mind.
Your site would have a PR of 10, and everytime someone searched for
anything to do with jewelry, your site would appear at #1. Regardless
of the quality of your site, this would be unfair on your competitors.
Although it can take a while, Google penalises sites where a link
exchange scheme would otherwise increase their PageRank. You will come
across the occasional site with such a scheme that isn't penalized,
because the number of genuine links far outweighs the reciprocal ones.
And you will see a lot of sites that haven't been penalized yet, but
eventually will be. My estimate is that they identify much less than
10% of link exchange schemes each month.
The solution to your problem is as I outlined above. You need to
remove all reciprocal links from your site, and try to get the ones
pointing to your site removed as well. This means removing the links
page altogether, for it appears that every link on it is reciprocal.
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