When computer.org took a PR dive from 9 to 5, they looked to be selling sponsored text links near the bottom of their website. I checked their web site today and gone are the sponsored text links – replaced by three 120×600 AdSense skyscraper ads. Talk about trying to get back into Google’s good books! As of the writing of this blog post, their PR is at 9. Compare Computer.org‘s ad units (placed at the bottom of their website) below.
There is no way to validate if search engine traffic was affected when their PR dropped from a 9 to a 5 but given that this was a temporary drop, I would guess not. So it looks like it is possible to go from PR5 to PR9!
Is it just a coincidence that many websites who offered text links also saw their Google PR drop? Anyone else see a drop or rise in PR in relation to sponsored text links on your site?
Can you get penalised for being associated with sites that get penalised for selling text links??
im new to this website/seo game and want to try and keep my nose clean.
Google will ding you for selling links. If they find out, they typically lower your PR to get your attention. Computer.org got their PR back quickly because they had a quick response to Google’s demands.
I’m not sure I agree with google doing this. It’s your site you should be allowed to do what you want with it. They should allow link buying if there is a nofollow tag or something.
@Haydn: I think you have the right idea. Keeping it clean will serve you well in the long run.
google will slap down your website hard if you are selling links/ etc.. but if you start abiding by their standards then they will show mercy 😉
So Adsense seems to be the key, of getting high PR. 😉
but serious, it was still a 9
5 was just the visible PR… i guess
Nice post…ya you don’t want to mess with the big G.
Nice post. Won’t touch those selling links! Keep it clean and neat.
I read on digitalpoint forum, that one guy also had PR dropped to 0, but his SERPS were intact, so it seems PR drop is only illusory.
And your kind-a-captcha code is invisible in firefox 3 – I had to use IE to see it.
I went from a page rank 4 to 0 in two weeks.
Sadly, its easy to go down 4 in pagerank overnight but to go from 5-9 is a ten year task.
I was penalised before from PR 2 to PR 0 …No choice but to remove everything just to get back the PR 2….
I think it is possible to rank from PR5 to PR9. All you have to do is have backlinks with PR9 also. Link build your site only to those who have PR like that. But finding PR9 site related to yours are very difficult to find.
Yes, sites which were openly selling their link got penalized by Google and many websites suffered due to this. I have seen several websites who even got banned from Google because of this thing.
From that time i have made it a point that i am not going to openly sell links on my site.
Interesting article
Google is still the undisputed king of traffic and, regardless of what’s on the horizon, Google is the major deliverer of the web’s traffic. That’s why losing your high Google PR ranking, sometimes overnight, can be so devastating for the struggling webmaster or marketer.
Yeah I have seen many cases where Google lowered the PR for sites who are making money selling PR.. But you can request them for a reconsideration also..
very interesting it know lets me know to not sell any of my links to anyone because i wouldn’t want my page rank to dip low when i have worked so hard just to get it up.
PR drop does not necessarily affect google rankings. I have seen this with many sites where PR drops but SERPS dont.
Thanks for that. To check if your website is banned by Google, use this website free tools over 50 seo free tools for webmasters and website users
MadSubmitter.com/tools.html
Thanks for the article
Sorry here is the link
http://www.madsubmitter.com/tools.html