Hi, I run http://designshack.co.uk/ - it's a widely respected CSS gallery, on a par with sites such as CSS Elite, CSS Vault and CSS Beauty. For some reason, in the latest PR update, we've dropped from PR5 to PR3. I just wondered if any of you particularly familiar with PR could take a look and suggest any reasons why this may be the case? We do sell adverts via Text Link Ads, but I think it seems a little unlikely this would affect the ranking? Thanks for your advice!
Im familiar with your site mate, and unfortunately selling text links is 100% against the google TOS... Im not sure if they have a nofollow tag in the link, but if they dont then you are likely to get google penalised for carrying them on your site. Mind you there are all sorts of other reasons why you might have lost pagerank, for instance it would appear that sitewides now carry less relevance and Im guessing a good deal of your inbounds are sitewide from templates (I could be wrong, but its a fair assumption). so, just checkout whether your nofollowing your OBL's and if not consider changing that. If you dont drop in the SERPs then its of little difference, other than your sales value on TLA.
Google has a system where anyone can report sites selling text links. You have a page that specifically talks about selling text links on your site. Google has already manually adjusted PR for many sites selling links that don't add "nofollow".
Thanks for the advice - from your experience, if I was to stop selling paid links on Design Shack, are there either a) a way to notify Google that you've stopped the practice, or b) a system in place which will figure that out and rectify the pagerank/rankings in the next update(s)? Cheers
If you add "nofollow" to all your existing advertising links, you can use google webmaster tools to file a reinclusion request.
DONT - there is no need to file a reinclusion request as you have NOT been precluded from the google SERPs, youve just had a PR penalty... as I mentioned in my earlier post unless its hitting your traffic its not of huge concern though.
Hi. The pr penalty is still frustrating though. Would filing a reinclusion request serve to reverse this? Or is that not possible?
If you add "nofollow" to outgoing links, and then file a reconsideration request through google webmaster tools, they will take a look at your site and usually remove a penalty if your site is no longer violating their policy. PR is really not important unless you are selling links. People who pay attention to PR when buying links will not want to purchase "nofollow" links. It's sort of a catch 22. If your SERPS have not dropped, then I wouldn't worry about doing anything. If you want to forget selling links, then there is no harm in getting your PR back. It's also possible that the sites that were linking to you have lost PR, which would affect your PR - but google is really cracking down on sites that sell links without the "nofollow" attribute. The ones that advertise link sales are the ones that are the easiest to catch.
Mobile Phone Offers - that is the only ad that seems unrelated so maybe google dinged you for it? Or they could have dinged you for selling ads period because they don't like the comepition. It could also be that the sites linking to you have had their PR reduced so it naturally leads to yours going down too. I wouldn't worry about that it is just a myth.
If your rankings in the search engines are fine, do not file a reconsideration request as MOG noted. This will prompt them to take a closer look at your site, backlink profile, etc. If all you lost was some green gold, don't worry about it. It is possible that some of your backlinks were devalued. Who knows, they may have been selling links and lost PR juice to pass onto other sites. Either way, work on building more links to your site and your PR will return. You may want to reconsider if/how you sell links on your site. Instead of just losing PR, Google may send your site into the abyss...
Thanks for all the great advice - it's really helpful. The final question is... A few of our competitors (most, in fact) have authority status in Google, listing several links after their main domain listing (e.g. http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=css+elite&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) Would our recent drop in Page Rank affect Design Shack gaining this status in the near future? Cheers