So you paid a guy who probably contributed to your problems to give you the advice on how to get out of it, wow That sums it all up easy money for that guy, interesting indeed, i see how it works now. Where theres a problem theres a solution but you first have to create the problem so that you can sell them the solution.
Ignoring PR when submitters still use it for a metric of how good your site is difficult. I mean ignoring as in if I get penalised and I lose my PR well its not really viable to just accept the PR drop and hope the submitters wont care because the reality is that no matter what Google tells us about PR not making a difference the submitters still rely on it a lot. I agree with you on how PR can matter in relation to how it will attract submitters and they in turn help keep the directory in profit. Until Google devalues PR and submitters stop relying on it then it unfortunately must matter. and the information he gave you was to goto the google webmaster forums and cry about losing money etc?
Google say not to concentrate on pr, yet they have gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to change the pr picture for directories. If pr shouldn't be a focus, why are they focusing so hard on it with certain types of sites, even though its to remove pr.
So what was the "supposed" problem? Ive done the same with webmaster tools and never even a response... Im to the point where im just going to go to one of those SEM conventions and get my answers in person (at 6'1 240 pounds i highly doubt ill just get ignored like my emails do ) so that i can move forward with my sites as im done with penalty games. @mikey1090 Maybe ill try going threw Rand/SEOMOZ for a 6 months or year first, (see if i missed something or what he can do) as i dont wont to wait a year till the next expo comes... thx for the tip... thx malcolm
I don't think it will be easy to find a shortcut out of penalty. It seems some are either lucky or had the right people to look into it and that's what sucks about the whole thing. It's who you know.. I don't think its as easy as fixing what you would imagine would need fixed on your directory and submitting a reinclusion..I know cause like you I have already done that. If you are submitting any of your network directories for inclusion it would be obvious not to interlink them though..
I have some directory that got penalty (both PR and SERP) and submitted quite some re-inclusion requests but no change at all.
Frankly I never bothered with my penalised directory, I just forget about that domain and moved on to my other directories (which were not penalised). But now I see other directory owners' experience in getting their penalties lifted, maybe I should try reinstating that directory, develop it and ask for a reinclusion later.