How I got my PageRank Back | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

All I have good news.  Today google sent me the following email.

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.yourfinancessimplified.com/, We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.yourfinancessimplified.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue. Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team

 

 I spent some time in the Google webmasters forum, there are some talented and helpful people in that forum and they identified my problem in 2 minutes.

If you want intimate details please email me.

Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog said:

Did you have any ranking/traffic loss? Or was it just a page rank of 0? If it's just page rank, I think that's simply fixed by not having paid text links?

Tom I didn't have any ranking or traffic loss.  My traffic increased.  The fix wasn't simple at all since google simply stated I violated quality guidelines.  If you review the quality guidelines it could 1 of many things that can cause a violation.  Google wasn't very forthcoming in why they dropped my page rank. It took me 6 months and several reconsideration's to figure it out. I believe my rank was dropped b/c of 1 particular link that was on my site and that 1 link only.

Edward Antrobus said:

Sounds like a lot of work. Congrats on being successful.

Thank you.. it was time consuming especially when I "fixed" the wrong things.  I thought I was in violation because of "key words" I literally edited every post for keywords.  Took me forever! I did a lot of things and spent a lot of hours fixing things that weren't the issue.  I wish they just told me what I did wrong in the beginning.

Definitely a great response; I wish you would've received a sooner. It's nice that they listened, I suppose. I hope I don't have to email you at a later date to find out more (crossing fingers).

Congrats on getting your PR back, Dominique. Sounds like a lot of hard work!

Not sure I understand what happened to you?  You were de-indexed and your traffic increased?

Ok.. After a talk with a few bloggers via email.

My problem was in the 'widget section" of my blog.  It was easy to see and affected every single last page of my blog. If I had to do it all over again I would instantly remove everything from widget area that has outbound links, then apply for reconsideration.  I removed things in my widget areas last.

Remember a manual Google team found this, not the automated algorithm.  Meaning, a team of people went to my blog and looked for stuff. They will most likely ding things that are easy to see, because they are reviewing your site from the stand point of a normal user.

just a few tips for those who didn't email me yet.

Post edited 1:03 am – July 22, 2012 by Dominique Brown

Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog said:

I think Glen's confused for the same reasons as me…

Page Rank updates have nothing to do with traffic. Deindexing means your site is removed from google, zero search traffic.

If it was a manual PageRank hit, other members had a number showing immediately after they got greenlighted, I still see 0 for you?

If it was deindexing, no google traffic should mean less traffic, not more?

Tom,

The reason I believe I was de-indexed and hit with a page rank of 0 was b/c of Google's message. 

At first I was in violation of "unnatural links" then I was told I violated "quality guidelines" and was provided the following message..

"In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from http://www.yourfinancessimplified.com/ may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google's search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines. "

Reviewing the message it seems they dropped my page rank to 0 and the weight of existing and future keywords/linking efforts.

Once I cleared the manual webspam team and quality guideline hurdle I was told

"It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site"

I guess the de-indexing part does not add up (using your definition).. but, if Google dropped the weight / ranking of my site my organic traffic should not have surged at all.  Google represents a lot of my traffic!