I have a site that gets treated very special by Google and I wonder why. The site is 1 1/2 years old, used to have a PR4, now got PR0. Google shows 155 incoming links and the links have not been changed very much the last 6 months. (Yahoo shows 3300 incoming links.) This site is acting so different from my other sites, its a bit of a mystery to me. I mean, not even PR1 ??? Is this the right forum to post this thread by the way ? hope so.
I am indexed in Google yes, with 1970 pages. The site has never ranked good in Google and I get about the same amount of hits now as before, almost nothing.
Are the bulk of your backlinks from a similar source, such as directories? Have your pages got unique Titles, and Meta descriptions? Is the content unique? It could be alot of factors, although i had a domain back in 03/04 that was like this... Just a total lemon for no reason, not even the regulars on Seochat could understand why. It was like it was banned yet wasn't. I could of fired a truckload of relevant PR8+ backlinks at it and it would of sat there and done nothing.
A lot from directories yes, maybe 90 %. I have some nice PR3 links in also. Yes, that should not have anything to do with the PR though. yes and no, a lot of the pages are in supplemental though.
No but it will have an impact on rankings which is effecting you also. The 90% backlinks from directories is a worry, and was my first thought. Try and diversify your backlinks from different sources. Are your URL's static keywords or long character strings? This won't help matters. Also does your code validate? Chances are you might have some errors in your source which is snagging Googlebot. I can only speculate without seeing the actual site though.
The content not being unique, combined with low quality links, could easily trigger some internal google-filter to get them to drop your pagerank. The serps are what matters: and apparently you haven't ranked well for ages (if ever). I would guess that because there haven't been any new links (quality or otherwise) coming in for a long time, your site dropped below some google quality index - which led to the dropping of the pagerank to zero. But the basic problem has been there for ages, sounds like.
The page rank is not worrying me really, not the serps either, the problem is that the site acts so different from my other sites. And then I start to wonder if its not only backlinks that decides the PR.
It could just be that it's in a more competitive niche then your other sites. Competitive niches have stronger filters.
I don't think so, it could be the reason for a drop to PR3 or PR2, but IMO not for a PR4->PR0 drop. Sure ? . IMO Google doesn't need to make different filters for different niches.