7 Authority Sites With A PageRank Penalty

Image credit: google pagerank

Google really got serious about giving out PageRank penalties in October last year. Andy Beard was at the centre of attention and the following post, a long with a couple of others that he did got a lot of traction:

Google PageRank Update October 2007

The 7 in the title of this post is not a fixed number. I want to put together a big list of all of the most important sites/pages on the net that appear to have PageRank penalties.

Normally PR penalties are applied to sites selling text links outside of the Google guidelines, but in some of these cases I couldn’t find any paid links. The sites may have internal linking issues or there might be other reasons. I just know that all of the following sites should have a higher PageRank score:

Enn.com

Environmental News Network is and environment news site and hub that has been around since before 1997. The website currently has a Google PR of 4/10, it should be 8/10.

Update: I am pleased to report that Enn.com is no longer penalised. The website’ homepage now has a PageRank of 7/10.

Reason for penalty: Up until very recently this site was blatantly selling spammy text links in its footer. These are gone now so maybe the site is due for an update. Or maybe there is another reason.

Update: I am pleased to report that Enn.com is no longer penalised. The website’ homepage now has a PageRank of 7/10.

 

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Fark.com

Fark is a very popular social news site and forum, which was established in 1999. The Fark.com homepage currently has a Google PageRank of 5/10, it should most probably be 8/10.

Reason for penalty: Anyone who can work out why this website is penalised will be given SEO god status - they nofollow everything. The only thing I can think of is the partner links - someone at Google may have mistaken these for payola.

 

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Independent.ie

The Independent is a very popular Irish newspaper. The website currently has a Google PageRank of 4/10, it should have a Google PageRank of at least 7 out of 10.

Reason for penalty: Website is sneakily selling dofollow text links via a drop down menu in the top nav. which says more services.

Update: Someone has just pointed out to me that the sites that are linked to via the drop down menu are owned by the Independent, so it is possibly a mistake on Google’s part if those are indeed the cause. You read my initial reaction to seeing the links. It is easy to understand the difficulties Google spam engineers face when news sites are linking to commercial properties in that way. Even if they explain on a reinstatement that they own those sites, Google may still keep them penalised - purely because of their anchor text choices and the fact that they are linking from a trusted news source to highly commercial properties.

 

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Online.WSJ.com

The Wall Street Journal is beyond important. The homepage of this site currently has a Google PageRank of 4/10. I am guessing that the site should have a PR of 8/10.

Reason for penalty: Unknown

 

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STPT.com

According to Wikipedia in 1997 Starting Point was the 7th most trafficked site on the net. Sometime during the 1st few months of 2008 the sites PageRank dropped from 7 or 8 out of 10 to 5/10. At the April 2008 PageRank update the sites PageRank again fell, this time to 4/10.

Reason for penalty: The site has been penalised because of the directory of websites it has. Website owners can pay $99 per anum to have their website reviewed for a listing. IMO the directory is well maintained, but they need to make an effort to add more BOTW sites themselves.

 

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TimesOnline.co.uk

The Times of London is one of the oldest and most well read and respected newspapers in the world. Website currently has a Google PageRank of 5/10 on its homepage, I am guessing it should be an 8/10.

Reason for penalty: Unknown, but there maybe some text links on the site somewhere that are leaking PageRank. I would say that if there is that it is probably just a mistake and not intentional.

Update: I am pleased to report that The Times is no longer penalised and back to a PageRank of 8/10.

 

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W3Schools.com

Far more geeky then the rest of the sites, but equally important. The internet has been built on information provided by websites like this. Website homepage has a PR 5/10, it should be an 8 or a 9/10.

Reason for penalty: Website is blatantly selling dofollow text links.

 

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If you know a really important site that has had its PageRank reduced just leave the URL, why you think it is important, your name and your website. If it is a good one it will be added to the list.

Update: Drew Broomhall from The Times has been in touch with me. Some unintended paid text links were the cause of the penalty. These links were nofollowed a long time a go, but the penalty remains.

I told Drew what he needed to do to get it back, but he did not seem overly concerned. He knows that PageRank penalties do not effect rankings or traffic. I have a feeling that now it has been talked about, it will get fixed.

Random thought: I have been trying to think of some reasons why a PageRank penalty could be bad for a website. Obviously for people in the SEM industry it is quite important. If you have a poor PageRank score, people might think that you are not very good at what you do. But what about other industries?

I have studied the effect of links from PageRank and -40 hit penalised sites and one thing that I am sure about is this: if the visible PageRank is not there then it cannot be passed. I am not suggesting that links from penalised sites do not work, because in some instances they definitely do. I believe that links from PageRank penalised sites do not pass as much trust and authority to the sites they link to.

So here is the only potential drawback for the publisher that I can think of: If you own other websites that you link to, then those sites will not be getting the credit they deserve in the search engines.

Posted in Search Engine News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

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June 26th, 2008 16 Comments

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