We have a very quality site - with quality content and solid Google rankings. However, about 30 days ago, the site dropped from a PR 3 to a PR 0. We guess it may be from a sitewide link we published on the site - but who knows what the reason for this is. However, our traffic, which comes mainly from Google, has remained stable and actually, risen by 10 over the past 2 weeks. So, our PR is 0 - but our rankings in Google have remained stable despite the Page Rank drop. Here is my question. Are we at a major risk to lose our core Google rankings. These rankings have been stable from a while back before Google dropped us. Do you think it is likely our site will drop in rankings? Again, are site is very relevant for the keywords we are ranked for - so the site should be listed where it is, regardless of PR. However, do you think that our ranking will drop automatically because of the new PR we have? thanks for your help
A PR drop means: a) You lost backlinks or the backlinks you have were disabled from passing PR. b) You were flagged for selling links or posts (or perhaps cross linking your own sites). A lot of time the PR drop for selling links doesn't result in a SERP loss, but a manual adjustment of your sites PR as it makes it hard to sell links with a PR0 and which don't pass PR juice. Your only option is to live with the PR0 or remove those links (or add the nofollow tag) and request a reinclusion via google webmaster tools - and never sell links again.
so, mjewel - if the site dropped in PR because of a sold link - do you think that the existing rankings will stay the same? and, once we remove any links that were purchased by another website - how would we request re-inlusion? Would that happen naturally when we submit our sitemap - or is there another process you have to go through to request a PR review of your site
It is not the link that you have purchased from other websites. It is the link that you have sold from your website with dofollow link. A sudden drop from PR3 to PR0 sounds like a penalty to me and it happens once for my other blog. I never able to get back my PR back even after 2 years. So, I suggest if you have sold any links via paid post, sidewide links, image links, etc on your website, remove it and use google webmaster tool and ask for inclusion. After that is your luck to get PR.
PR 3 - 0 is big problem.. May be lost BL, penalized the site from Google....OR do some black hat promotion.... any how has to be carefull
Rankings can sometimes not be affected - sometimes they can. You said you haven't seen any decrease, so I would assume you have just had your PR reset to zero. Sitewide links certainly do not look natural - i.e. if you liked a site and wanted to link to them, would you do it from every single page? Not likely. As I said, fix the sitewide link by removing it or adding "nofollow" to it. Sign up for google webmaster tools and then request reinclusion through their interface - and you should really be upfront on honest in what you did and how it won't happen again.
No need to worry bro...just go for making some steady backlinks again...try to make it with high PR sites...and also drive some more traffic to your site..it will regain its position back!!!
Just make sure the links are nofollow. and try doing some social bookmarking sites like digg.com and reddit.com to make some quality backlinks
This only means the toolbar has been updated, that's all. The data exported to the toolbar is outdated, which means that if there was something that could have affected your rankings plus have caused a pr drop, it would have taken effect by the time you saw the change. The pr drop might have been caused by a change in the algo (*I can't back it up by any evidence, but this is the impression I got given the number of sites affected).
It may be a penality but in a nut shell PR is nothing it is the traffic which is important unless you are selling links. As long as there is no competitor for google it is the destiny of all webmasters to do as google says.
From your description, your site must be punished by Google! Google might have evidence showing that you sold your links, I mean dofollow ones, to a bad neighbor, the site who bought link from you. What you should do now is to clear such links and then show evidence to Google and ask for a reindex! Wish this help u,
Following can be the possible reason for PR Drop: 1) You may have Duplicate Content on Web Site. 2) Your high PR back links may be removed or you had back links from bad neighbors 3) You might have done keyword stuffing or Spamming on your website. Well make sure to check all these points and get start working on your site accordingly so you can regain your PR in Next Update Best Of Luck
so to confirm - if PR went from 3 to 0 - we will fix the site up and request a new PR index by Google... if you had to guess - do you think the rankings we currently have - will drop... what is your best guess?