Google Pagerank & Backlinks Wrong

[mclamb]

My sites backlinks have always been fine, 5 or 6 displayed and a 4 pagerank. It doesn't get many hits at all but I've optimized it as best I can getting top placement for all of my important keywords. My 'problem' started about 2 months ago after an update and Google listed my site with over 3,000 backlinks, I was pretty shocked so I checked them and the code for my url or even something but there mostly just random websites with no relation to anything. I'm not complaining and rather like it since it gave my site a Pagerank 8. In fact I love it.

I'm just writing to put notice on the responces I got from Google from this, which showed complete ignorance and unwillingness to even look into this. Heres my email messages:

Sent to Google Support -
"Im just baffled with the new pagerank and backlinks to my site. I should
have 1 or 2 backlinks but instead I have over 3,000. Heres the google
search http://www.google.com/search?q=link:http%3A//mysite/ and my
site is http://mysite Im not complaining just confused and
wondering if you can explain it and if there going to stay there. Fix it
if you want, I personally wouldn't mind if you left it even though
pagerank is pretty much only for the owner of the site it is pretty cool
though"

1st Response from Google -
"Thank you for your note. We understand your concern about the Google link
search results for your site. Our link search does not currently return a
comprehensive set of results. This list is in no way indicative of the
link structure utilized by Google to formulate a page's PageRank.

To obtain a more comprehensive list of the links that point to your page,
perform a Google search on your URL. From the results page, select the
'Find web pages that contain the term' link, and Google will provide you
with a list of webpages that mention your address.

Please keep in mind that our search results change regularly as we update
our index. For additional information, please visit
http://www.google.com/webmasters/. If we can assist you further, please
let us know.

Regards,
The Google Team"

Reply to that from me -
"Dear google,

I think you misssed my question. Im not worried about my pagerank or the
list of links not being complete, im worried about them being WRONG. I
was simply sending you a notice of something in your system being messed
up. I love having a pagerank 8 and was just wondering if you guys knew
what was wrong or even knew of these results."

2nd Response from Google -
"Thank you for your reply. It appears as if many websites are linking to
yours without your permision. If you would prefer not to have these links,
we suggest that you directly contact the webmasters of the sites in
question.

Regards,
The Google Team"

So is optimizing what we really need to do or just wait for a flaw that will set us at the top. I hope they don't ever fix it but I also think they should or should atleast look into it. Its been two updates from looking at my other sites but no change in my except for PR on a few other pages. But atleast 'The Google Team' should be looked into for actually taking a look at problems that there whole business revolves around. Oh well...

[pdstein]

mclamb, just start selling text links and don't ask any more questions. :D

[mclamb]

Originally Posted by pdstein

mclamb, just start selling text links and don't ask any more questions. :D

:) Sounds good, anyone want to buy a backlink from a PR 8? Wonder if I would get a turnout on eBay...

[ststravel]

just email me the url of your website I have people to buys links email thproposal@yahoo.com

Link popularity building services
search engine placement

[kokopoko]

I'll buy a text link off a pr8. Email me about it: kokopoko2000@yahoo.com

[jackit_chick]

OK I decided to look at my page links. There's a company that has a lot to do with 4x4 stuff that we pay for them to link to us because it add's like 500 links to our website. They're relevent links.
Those haven't been showing up for the past 3 months though, don't know why, but about 1700 other links to us have. I just barely checked and now suddenly the 4x4 one is the ONLY link showing up, so now I only have 502 links to my website! This is freaking ridiculous because we have a hell of a lot more RELEVENT links than that.
So I tried two differen't searches...
link:www.jackit.com
link: www.jackit.com
From what I saw the first one with no space is IMAGE links and hte one with a space is TEXT links. Well you guys try this out and see if I'm right?
Jennifer

[martinibuster]

1: Have you had an increase in traffic?

2: When checking the backlink pages, do you find any common url's there? It might be someone pointed their domain name to yours, by accident.

3: Don't be a knucklehead by revealing your url to strangers in the interest of selling text links. It could be someone from Google.

[sv800]

Do not be fooled, getting 3000 links for nothing, is like finding $100K in the trash?. This situation should be carefully reviewed before happily buying PR8…next day could be gray bar.

[mclamb]

Originally Posted by martinibuster

1: Have you had an increase in traffic?

2: When checking the backlink pages, do you find any common url's there? It might be someone pointed their domain name to yours, by accident.

3: Don't be a knucklehead by revealing your url to strangers in the interest of selling text links. It could be someone from Google.

1: Possibly a slight increase but still very very small number, like 400 unique visitors a month.

2: Completly random

3: I'm probably not going to sell any but if I get a overly tempting offer I may just consider it. Well, still debating, we'll see.

[jimmie1_us]

Originally Posted by mclamb

So is optimizing what we really need to do or just wait for a flaw that will set us at the top. I hope they don't ever fix it but I also think they should or should atleast look into it. Its been two updates from looking at my other sites but no change in my except for PR on a few other pages. But atleast 'The Google Team' should be looked into for actually taking a look at problems that there whole business revolves around. Oh well...

I have checked out this thread and it has given me a good laugh. So it has been good for something. For one thing Google as a Company or Corporation could care less about us out here battling for position. As long as they generate revenue from the suckers out there that pay for adwords adsense and adnonsense they have no other concern. It's all about the dollar.

If it was me I would not have even contacted them! Taken it for another crazy Google glitch and enjoyed the page rank. They just may research it and you loose it and the back links. But I think you said you have not gained a significant amount of additional web traffic. If not what is a page rank of 8 worth? (laughing out Loud). And paying for links?? What has the web come too!!

As Far at the Google Team. You actually thought they were going to give a good reply?? Ha!! I am truly happy this has happened for your site. A page rank of 8 puts you there with the major portals and other major sites. I hope it lasts.

As far as traffic from Google , page rank and the like. Well personally I just work on it and go with the flow. Having it or not will not make me or break me. I have already said this several times. Google is great for traffic and somewhat of a standard. But they are not the only game in town!! They get to much attention and energy. The mentality you encountered is nothing new. its the mentality of all major companies and corporations. Things that concern us little people don't concern them at all. We are just bugs on their windshield! Laughing out Louder!!

[danno]

Originally Posted by mclamb

I'm just writing to put notice on the responses I got from Google from this, which showed complete ignorance and unwillingness to even look into this. Heres my email messages:

Whether it is a good comment or a bad comment you
will invariably get the same kind of response from
Google. "That's nice, but don't expect anything
out of us."

I got the same response while working for a client
on the www.powerindiversity.com website.
The website is a standard, straightforward business
site with no exotic programming or cutting edge
technology.

Despite many months of trying (September? October? I've lost my mind and can't remember), the url would not get into Google, despite a huge press release that put it into many news engines and also a full
site submission to the search engines.

Each time, Google sent me the usual generic info.

"Did you use a meta tag? Is anyone linking to you?
There's nothing we can do about it for you."

Then to really show their disinterest, they sent
me the link to the long-toothed "webmaster" page
at Google.

As someone who has no problem normally getting
top 3 results, it was a bit insulting, especially
when I had previously mentioned all the steps I'd
taken to try and get the thing into the database.

Here is the sterilized Google response:

QUOTE GOOGLE
We recommend that you read our Webmaster Guidelines at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. This page outlines core
concepts for creating and maintaining a 'Google-friendly' website. Please
note that Google does not accept payment for inclusion in our index, nor
do we manipulate search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing
the 'democracy of the web' to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites
in our search results. If you'd like more in-depth information on Google's
search technology, please check out
http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

We're sorry we can't be of further assistance in this matter.
UNQUOTE GOOGLE

Now, here is the funny part. My experience is the
opposite of the experience mentioned previously in this thread.

This guy gets Page Rank 8
(I'm glad for him, I wouldn't begrudge it to anyone)
while my client can't get into the database with ethical web pages for a purely business website.

Also, and yes you should be very afraid, Google
is toying with "ROTATING ALGORITHMS".

Because if all people get are the same results all
of the time, in basically the same order ( and I'm
talking about Page One and Page Two, it gets stale.

What does this mean? Basically, the next step in
thwarting manipulation of search engine results by
clever SEO techniques. It's harder to hit a moving
target.

To put it in terms everyone can understand, it's like
training a spam filter. Yahoo has pretty well
mastered it. On the other hand, Google is finding more and more ways to identify and fine-tune SERPs that don't fit the proper profile for the search engine queries.

Rotating Algorithms are just another step toward
trying to free up the top 2 pages of the SERPs for competitive results based on relevant content.

This is vital for the long term life of the search
engine and can not be avoided.

The old saying "Content is King" is getting more
pertinent, sort of.

Now there are new programs coming out that the same
people who used to spam, are now using for creating
content metropolis sites, that don't really have
valuable, usable content, but rather, reams and reams of bland "keyword relevant" content for their
particular niche.

Their needs to be a lot more "human checking"
of SERP's just like there is "human checking"
of Yahoo directories. If Yahoo can afford it,
then certainly Google can afford it.

Otherwise, "there is nothing new, just another
twist to the old status quo."

I think in the end the human factor is Yahoo's
real strength.

They know better than to sit back and collect
dividends while machines work on autopilot.

Anyone who has tried to run a website that way,
eventually find out that the "sameness effect"
kicks in and with it "the user boredom effect".

"That" is the problem with "algorithm only"
strategies.

Yahoo has been a people driven organization from
the beginning. They were there before Google and
from what I've seen, they will be there after Google
has become just another spike on the graph.

Danno

[danno]

Join the fun! Kill Google AutoLink
Until it is dead dead dead.

Go here:
http://www.isedb.com/news/article/1125

Danno

[rivux]

Originally Posted by martinibuster

3: Don't be a knucklehead by revealing your url to strangers in the interest of selling text links. It could be someone from Google.

Google doesn't give a rats ass if you sell text links or not. Selling PR is a totally different issue though. So don't make blanket statements that are patently false, the guy can sell text links all he wants. Its no different then selling banner ads or popups.

[mclamb]

Originally Posted by rivux

Google doesn't give a rats ass if you sell text links or not. Selling PR is a totally different issue though. So don't make blanket statements that are patently false, the guy can sell text links all he wants. Its no different then selling banner ads or popups.

No need to bash him. What do you mean about selling pagerank and whats the difference in selling links specifically for their pagerank?

[GSO]

"Also, and yes you should be very afraid, Google is toying with "ROTATING ALGORITHMS".


During the last PageRank update I lost 2500 links that are not listed on Google but I still have the links on the sites that link to my site, I know because I have list of web sites that link to mine and I checked and the common thread for those that were dropped was they were not that revelent to the content on my web site. My PageRank went from 6 to 4 with an increase in monthly traffic. The number of daily searches to my site from Google has increased. I still add quality content on a daily basis. So I think that the next update might be the opposite and maybe I will go to a 7.

[espectations]

Danno,

Chew on this one and then start wondering if you really need Google.

I launched a new division in October 2004 - My holding company's site is http://www.e-spectations.com and the new division is http://www.smswarehouse.com

The split had nothing to do with traffic, search engine positioning etc. - it was a strategic decision that called for the SMS business to be split off from the online marketing etc. The reason why the sms is still on E-SPECTATIONS relates to the fact that EC works with the convergence of technologies and SMS now forms a great part of web sites in the target market that I work in.

Anyway, sites co-branded to send a message that it all belongs to the same group of people.

SMSwarehouse is hosted in North America and http://www.smswarehouse.co.za is parked at E-SPECTATIONS.COM seeing that EC is on a server in South Africa and my secondary target market is South Africa.

Since October, my site did not get any ranking in Google so I assume I am in the Sandbox....

In January and Feb I saw Google crawling the site, but still nothing in Google. In January we launched downloadable software and I created a PAD file, listing the site with all the download sites - am still busy with it.

January I had a total of 4815 visitors and February 4651 visitors. Daily average visitors for January 155 and daily average visitors for February 166 which means February actually exceeded January but totals differ because of the short month.

......and I am still not in Google....when you type in site: www.smswarehouse.com you will not find the actual domain, but the blog, the RSS feeds etc.

Interesting thing though is that when I look for smswarehouse.co.za it is there......maybe because it is parked at E-SPECTATIONS.COM????

I am not complaining - since we launched the software in January, within the first month, I had my first sale.

Shall I complain with Google or not? No I won't - as I am already getting traffic and sales from my site.

Within the first week of launching the software, we had over 50 downloads of the software.....

Now I know that not everybody has downloadable software on offer on their sites but this makes me think - do we really need Google?????

I am positioning www.smswarehouse.co.za seperate from www.smswarehouse.com - .co.za targeting traffic in South Africa (South African engines and directories requires a .co.za address), and .com targeting the International market.

I have other supportive data but this will make the post very long - bottom line is that I have no pagerank in Google but my site is performing so the question arise - do we really need Google????

[DaButcher]

About the PR..
My volvo site, has PR=3, it has two languages, a lot of text, maybe 30 links out, forum, one guestbook per member (1300++ members).

Even so, it only gains PR=3!

Then, me and this guy made a website, with almost no content at all! It had maybe 50 pictures.

We used IFRAME, to get a nice "picture site", as we wanted to make a design that was very simplistic, without server side coding (as none where avail.).

It soon gained PR=3!

How can that page be of same "value" as the volvo page I have? The volvo page has more links out/in, it also has more content and in two languages.

I however found one serious flaw in my programming, which made google not index my images!
My users have uploaded a total of ~530 pictures.

I have now developed a dynamic image-watermarking script, which makes me able to spoof an image-name.
I'll then simply spoof the title of the image, as the filename.

Previously, my images where:
[img]/.../.../.../_merge.php?28283828.jpg[/img]
Now, I can do:
[img]images/b_28283828-jpg/search_keywords.jpg[/img]

I can then "fake" the filenames and extract the real filename (b_28283828-jpg). I then manipulate that string and use that for watermarking the image, before outputting it to the user.

I hope this will gain me some PR rankings, as then finally my images will be indexed!

I cant think of anything else than the images on the second site with PR=3, that made it so high pr,as it has less content than I Have already written in this thread.

I also used the same technique for spoofing filenames, so instead of:
domain.tld/?p=2&c=233

I can now do:
domain.tld/search-keywords/p_2/search-keywords2/c_233.html

I'm really looking forward to letting google index my spoofed pages!

it's done thru .htaccess, inspired by some tutorial I found on www.evolt.org (searchfriendly urls).
I then rewrote it to use database, instead of flatfiles.

[sem4u]

danno - that site needs more links.

[mclamb]

Originally Posted by DaButcher

About the PR..
My volvo site, has PR=3, it has two languages, a lot of text, maybe 30 links out, forum, one guestbook per member (1300++ members).

Even so, it only gains PR=3!

Then, me and this guy made a website, with almost no content at all! It had maybe 50 pictures.

We used IFRAME, to get a nice "picture site", as we wanted to make a design that was very simplistic, without server side coding (as none where avail.).

It soon gained PR=3!

How can that page be of same "value" as the volvo page I have? The volvo page has more links out/in, it also has more content and in two languages.

I however found one serious flaw in my programming, which made google not index my images!
My users have uploaded a total of ~530 pictures.

I have now developed a dynamic image-watermarking script, which makes me able to spoof an image-name.
I'll then simply spoof the title of the image, as the filename.

Previously, my images where:
[img]/.../.../.../_merge.php?28283828.jpg[/img]
Now, I can do:
[img]images/b_28283828-jpg/search_keywords.jpg[/img]

I can then "fake" the filenames and extract the real filename (b_28283828-jpg). I then manipulate that string and use that for watermarking the image, before outputting it to the user.

I hope this will gain me some PR rankings, as then finally my images will be indexed!

I cant think of anything else than the images on the second site with PR=3, that made it so high pr,as it has less content than I Have already written in this thread.

I also used the same technique for spoofing filenames, so instead of:
domain.tld/?p=2&c=233

I can now do:
domain.tld/search-keywords/p_2/search-keywords2/c_233.html

I'm really looking forward to letting google index my spoofed pages!

it's done thru .htaccess, inspired by some tutorial I found on www.evolt.org (searchfriendly urls).
I then rewrote it to use database, instead of flatfiles.

I've seen tons of cases where sites with nothing at all on them would have PR 3 or 4 and very hight quality sites that have been here a long time with tons of backlinks only a 2 or 3. My case does prove without a doupt that backlinks make up a significant part of your PR.