PR7 dropped to PR4

Hi, I recently had a PR7 website which kept it's rank for about a year - I decided to make a bit of money from this as i was getting a lot of enquiries about text link adverts - I added a few text links (about 7) at the bottom of my site then Google dropped my PR to PR4.

Does anyone know why this is and also is there a was to advertise text links without getting penalised by Google ...

Thanks in advance ...

 

but pagerank is not updated yet...

 

sorry i say recently, i mean about 2 months ago

 

Google penalizing websites that sell text link ads has been going for a while. However, I don't understand why you need to sell links in the first place. With such high ranking, your site should be doing well with Adsense alone and have good SERP rankings for important keywords.

 

google wacthing Dp and you..

 

Google doesn't like people selling links because it is a method used to manipulate the SERPS which means more often than not what appears at the top of the page for popular queries are spam sites designed to make money and not inform.

Link selling methods are discovered by Google sooner or later. Enjoy the party as long as you can before you get penalized for link selling (like you did of course.)

Cheers!

 

didn't know google penalizing sites for text ads...sounds not fair, someone earned his way up, let him benefit a little...

 

Page rank is not updated .. then how you lost pr 7??????

 

You are penalized

 

yeah tell me about it it's not like Google earn millions everyday anyway - ahh well.

Do you think that once i remove the links my PR will increase again or will i be on a Google 'blacklist'?

 

This thread might help:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=933750

 

Did you place sitewide links? That would kill you for sure...

 

I'll admit that im pretty new to all this so i dont fully understand the full in's and out's - the reason i had such a high pagerank was not from extremely high visitors, only about 200-300/day, it was the number of links back to my site, i currently have (according to yahoo backlink checker) 78,000+ backlinks, this may be the main reason for the high PR

Although if im way off the mark please let me know

 

Yes they are. How badly would that affect it?

 

the reason is you sold links.. it has to happen one day.

 

So all bidding directories will get penalizing for selling links? They all will go down like a stone?

 

How are they to know that, I dont advertise 'Get your link here' or anything like that - for all they know i simply have a few links for sister sites for example - Ok on this occasion they are right, but how do they know that - I do think that Google is Big Brothering my ass .....

 

Google don't have any other business(es)?!

 

Footer links, especially to unrelated sites, is like a red-rag to a bull for google nowadays and every day more people get penalised.

If you sell related links only, and in content, and not site-wide, you might get away with it. Now your site is highlighted for link sales I wouldn't risk it though, I think someone keeps an eye on previously penalised sites.

You can try removing them, pay people back who bought links, and grovelling to G through google webmasters and you might eventually get your PR back...but you probably won't care about PR anyway if you can't sell links anymore...

 

You can report sites that are selling links to Google - its possible that someone has done that with your site.

Alternatively if you have a page on your site that mentions you sell links then I guess its possible that Google either have an algorithm to pick that up or have manually reviewed your site and spotted paid links.

This one really pisses me off....how can a company that has Adsense and Adwords as its main business model penalize sites for selling paid links?

Surely when someone puts AdSense on their site they are also selling links - ok Adsense might not pass PR but no one gets penalized for it? Why not just discount paid links and not pass any PR through them instead of penalizing the site that sells the links?