Removed My Sold Text Links – Will My PageRank Return To 6?

Everton | Sep 09, 2009 | Comments


Back in October 2007 Google went on the warpath against sites that sold text links and reduced their Page Ranks.  This site was one of those penalised, with its Page Rank reduced from 6 to 3.  At first Ididn’t know what to do, and because this site was making a decent amount of cash from selling Text Link Ads I thought I would carry on selling links until the advertisers inevitably deserted me because of my new low Page Rank.

However, the advertisers didn’t desert me as expected and nearly two years later I was still left with several advertisers.   My Google traffic continued to come through, but I’ve just decided to remove the links because it’s dragged on too long and I don’t want to risk incurring Google’s wrath further and maybe even getting delisted completely.  Being removed from the Google index would be a disaster for this site, which still receives around 70% of traffic from Google.

Should I have removed my text links sooner?  Probably.  I’m going to inform Google of the change and let them know that I’m being a good, responsible web citizen and ask that they reconsider my site to see if I can recover some of my Page Rank.

I’ll let you know if I manage to reclaim some blogging Page Rank rights!


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • DomainNameNews
    so how does google know you had paid text links ?
  • Magic! They must be able to spot patterns on sites that have links that don't belong i.e. aren't relevant. They probably have other ways of spotting which the obviously won't share
  • vandread
    I did not get my PR back when I applied for reconsideration. Still have a PR4 despite the fact that I do not sell links anymore for a long time.

    Everton, check your header !
  • I know - I've been trying to fix the header for two days with no joy. My theme is controlled by a theme functions file which isn't working - none of the settings get saved. Going to do a post to see if anyone can help
  • Good luck on the reconsideration request.

    Vandread they are actually pretty smart on the reconsideration requests, and check things like advertising sales pages, can find evidence of paid reviews and possibly other linking schemes.

    However it is possible they won't trust you fully immediately, and that the value of the links you had before have diminished.
  • I got bumped up to a 4. I guess I'm being watched now, so hopefully I'll continue increasing as long as I behave myself
  • How do you apply for reconsideration? I've also had the same problem with TLA
  • MatthewN
    My main website went from a PR6 down to 5 and then a 3. It stayed at 3 for maybe a year till I decided something was wrong. I cleaned up the past (ie, removed paid links) and submitted a reinclusion request right away. I was totally honest and open saying "I used to use the text-link-ads program to sell links, these have been gone a while now. Also I did some reviewme.com reviews and have got rid of those paid links". I think I submitted it on a Tuesday or Wednesday and by Friday night of the same week my PR jumped up to 5 and a couple of weeks later back to a 6.
  • allreviews
    Your PR probably dropped because you were leaking out PR to those sites, if you wait for the next PR update your PR will come back. Make sure you are using nofollow on all the ads you have running and your Privacy Policy, About Us, Contact Us Pages, this will also increase your PR. Great site and thanks for all the informative posts.

    Kris
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