How to Measure Your Google Page Rank Penalty
Mar 10th, 2008 by Brian
The following may be effective in measuring your Google page rank penalty.
Here’s how we found it …….
A little while back the page rank on one of our sites was reduced from 4 to 3. Not a huge deal as did not seem that SERPs were affected.
We had hoped the PR would move up to 5 because of all the new links we had garnered, but perhaps we’d lost some also. Or perhaps we’d been penalized along with a number of other sites who saw an artifical drop.
There was no way to tell and no point in losing too much sleep over it.
Some time after, our article directory, was shut down by the hosting company for using too much MSQL resources.
To ensure we made best use of the article directory traffic while we found another host and article directory script, we redirected the article directory traffic (using a 301 redirect) to that of the site above.
About a month went by. In that time we found a suitable host & fired up the new article directory script.
When we checked the PR of the Article directory, it was showing as PR4. Furthermore the Google back links for the article directory were the same as for the other site.
A couple of online PR checkers showed the PR of the article directory to be fake.
Hmmm – may have found something here.
Maybe the PR shown on the pagerank servers is different to that shown internally within Googles systems. That might explain why SERPS don’t seem to be affected on penalized sites.
So it came to pass, Brian’s home grown method to measure the page rank penalty for a site.
- Grab an unused domain. Preferably with zero PR.
- 301 redirect that domain to the site you wish to do a penalty check.
- Wait until all the backlinks in the penalized site are the same as those for the redirected site.
- Wait for the next PR update.
- Check the two PR’s, the difference is your penalty.
Would be interested in your thoughts. Is this co-incidence or can this test be reliably be applied to other sites ?
Popularity: 66% [?]
My site too is suffering from Google ranking this past few days. Before it’s between 5-7 on the first page for my keyword but now it’s going down on 8, 9 and 10. I’ve checked all my backlinks and others but it seems there were okay. Now, I’m still confused what is the cause of these going down rankings. I’ve also seek help and advices from my friends who also run their own sites and they were also wondering why is this thing happening. I would really appreciate if you can also help me or give advice. Thanks I found your post.
Good Luck!
No problem, just sent an email - happy to have a look at this for you - Brian
Interesting idea, I wonder whu nobody has thought of that before :)
hmm, ive always wondered if there was a way to check and see what the damage toll amounted to. ill have to give that a try, good postage :)
~Mike
Interesting idea for checking. I never sit around worrying about it. PR changes all the time, the number you guys are going on is only updated once in a while but the actual value is evolving as other sites come into being and enter competition with you.
Nice idea, did someone else check it if it works?
Good idea, but it seems like a lot of work to figure out what’s going on. Wish there was a quicker/easier way to do this, maybe through Google webmaster tools or something. But it’s a helpful tactic nonetheless.
That is a very good idea and something I too have noticed but never really thought about it in these terms. I had my PR penalized on one of my main sites that also happens to be my biggest income earner. So far it hasn’t had much of an effect but I really want to get it back so it doesn’t affect me in the future.
Interesting post. As far as I know a penalty cannot be passed across a 301 redirect, which is why your new domain will have the full TBPR.
Thanks.
Also, in my experience big G has been penalising sites that are blatantly buying and selling links - as they beleive that this is a means of artificially inflating your page rank. So beg, borrow, barter and influence for your links and earn them on merit where you can. IF you havwe to pay for a link make sure to nofollow it, or make sure that it’s not listed right under a heading saying adverts or sponsored links.
Good idea, but isn’t it kind of hard to ensure that the two sites have the same number of backlinks? Or am I misunderstanding something here?
I have not been able to figure how Google functions, they seem to do whatever they want. Some of my sites do well, others just never seem to please Google…
This is very interesting. My problem right now is actually getting some of my sites to have a page rank. Even after all the links I have built. I guess I am still waiting for the next update to take place. Google is so weird to figure out. It doesn’t seem like anyone really knows what is going on over there.
No real need to be worried about PR penalty if your SERPs are unaffected by it but yes redirect does sound like an interesting idea to try out to measure penalty.
Thats a whole lot of work just to check PR. hardly seems worth it.
Woah, now this can be pretty useful. Yet, as someone already stated, that’s too much of an effort to do this regularly.
Interesting idea I have never really thought about. I guess I am not too concerned as I honestly dont care about PR whatsoever. SERPS count and of course revenue. The PR thing seems to me to only matter to people who sell links or want to brag about their PR and impress “make money online” gurus.
Though if you want to do this thing it seems like a good explanation and doesnt really seem like much work.
Interesting article. Is PR really that big of a deal unless you are selling spots for links? I’ve seen a ton of sites that have PR 2 that rank number 1 slot in a fairly high competition area.
I agree with Robert and others above…but especially Robert.
While this is an interesting way to play with PR, the simple fact is PR changes all the time, sometime daily. The numbers you are looking at are only the “Toolbar PR” numbers that are simply a snapshot in time. Yeah, they’re nice to have so we can see if we’re doing things correctly but in the grand scheme of things, not very useful for day-to-day measurement or management.
Hmmm…very useful. I’ve never thought about that, mostly because I don’t care too much about PR, as it has nothing to do with SERPS, but it’s good to know how to check to see what a site penalty is.
Quite smart, I’d be willing to give it a try with one of my sites. Will let u know
Lots of people are having increase of PR and decrease as well. I think that they are having a overhaul and tweaking how PR works. =D Anyway good way to measure PR penalty. Very smart indeed.
Really interesting concept, I think it’d need to be tested a few more times to make sure it works. Clever that, and thats the heart of SEO (learning by experimenting). After I’m done with my huge to do list, I may play around with this.
I don’t think PR is worth stressing about too much, but stuff like this helps gives SEOs insight to the mechanics of Google.
One of my sites also had its PR dropped from 3 to 2, and I was hoping to reach 4. Definitely going to try this method, thanks
One of my sites keep on dropping the number of google backlinks every month. I keep on wondering why this is, perhaps backlink campaigns should be aggressive yet still controlled - so that an unnatural rise in number of backlinks won’t affect your pagerank.
That is an interesting, and I can’t disagree with the logic. I just think that the effort involved to find that out is not worth the effort. PR changes simply arn’t worth that much effort to investigate. If your organic traffic drops off, now that might be worth the effort. :p
With PR only being updated once a quarter this idea seems like it would take a long time. Though, It does sound like a valid way to assess a normally ethereal number like PR. Something that Google would like to keep tightly under wraps.
Thanks!
Nicole
A very clever idea, will impliment it as soon as possible. Keep up the good work
One of my sites has a PR of 2 even though it has zero backlinks. Very strange…
I got penalized recently
sent them a reconsideration request…but I am sure it will give back nothing
lost PR3 to ZERO…heck!!
It’s not worth spending too much time stressing over page rank. The G will do what they want with everyones sites, and there’s nothing too much we can do about it. And pr probably over hyped anyway, not convinced it affects the SERPS that much anyway.
Better to concentrate on your content and your pr will follow
Very nice insight on Google PR troubleshooting…it takes a brave person to test out new methods. I certainly believe Google will always keep somethings strange to throw us all off to their exact methods. And the keyword optimizations certainly play a larger role, where a low PR page can be found for less common searches. Personally, i found using the long url (with keywords inside), having every internal link anchored, and having each page targeted to different keyword combinations, and having as much content as possible (juicing up the main pages) really really helps…then patience in building links for PR .
I got penalized after the last PR update. Went from PR 4 to 2. NOT COOL
Boycott PR!! Totally crap and unpredictable. We should know how the thing works. Is our right to know or don’t use it. We don’t know what’s going on.
As far as I know PR doesn’t affect SERP rankings. I fail to see why people focus so much on PR to be honest.
That’s a lot of work just to check the pr penalty. Then you have undue all that stuff and put it back to normal. How about just watching your PR and when the update comes out if it drops, assume it from a penalty?
What if your domain name happens to be the keyword or phrase that is being searched? What then? How does that weigh in the who scheme of things?
I wish I was at the point of worrying about page rank. I’m still trying to figure out how to keep sliding down in page position.
Hopefully I’ll be able to use this info in a few months.
Mike
This is a good idea because it does work, but it requires too much effort to keep checking back and forth. If you pagerank goes down or if your keyword seems to disappear or move down in Google it is because they are checking if you are a spammer. After a few weeks to two months Google will put you back where you belong…by that time you will probably be first page. I have seen many of my sites do this.
I agree. Surely too much mental energy and time expended for little tangible result?
So many people just assume there website is penalized when there ranking drops with Google. There are so many reasons why something like that may happen so it’s best to just wait it out before making drastic changes to your website.