Google's PR0 PageRank

by Darrin Ward

As Google increases in popularity, so does this term " Google PR0", pronounced "PR Zero". 

I'll explain what it means, and how you can get yours!!

Google's PageRank System

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Google PageRank� system, let me explain a little about it. Every page in the Google database is assigned a "PageRank" number, which can be of a value 0 - 10. The higher the value, the better ranked the page is. In order to receive a higher PageRank, you must receive more links to your site from other websites. The higher the PR, the greater potential the site / page has to rank better.

The Google PR0

When a website has a PageRank of 0, the site is said to be "PR0", very simple! Take note at this point that when viewing PageRank in the Google Toolbar, then PR0 is not the same as when the page is "Not Ranked". When a page is not ranked by Google, you will see no white part in the PageRank part of the toolbar and it will be "grayed out". With PR0 however, the entire PageRank part of the toolbar will be white, there will be no green part.

The problem is that the condition of PR0 makes it very difficult to rank well and very rarely occurs under natural conditions. Having a PR0 usually only occurs under 1 of the following 2 circumstances:

What Causes A PR0?

- The site has been penalized in some form by Google 
- The site is more than 3 months old, and has still failed to receive inbound links (links from other websites).

Under the second circumstance, it will be possible to achieve a greater PR if some inbound links were to be attained. In the first circumstance however, a penalty may have been applied to your website by Google for punishment in part-taking in one of the many methods considered as spamming. Some of the current activities that have been known to result in a PR0 include:

Link Farming: The coexistence of multiple websites evolving around one single service or product, all of which are interlinked to each other with the intention to directly inflate the PR of the central website, or all websites. Websites participating in a link farm are usually hosted on the same server. 

Hidden Content: This includes the use of written text which uses the same color value, or similar color values, as the background of the web page or table in order to hide the content from users, yet have the content indexed by search engines with the primary intention of improving rankings.

Guest book Signing: This is defined as the continual signing of free guest books on third party website, with the inclusion of the URL to the signers website, with the aim of improving Google's PR of the website. This is a controversial issue at this point in time, as nobody truly knows if Google does penalize sites that overuse guest books, however it is in my opinion that the mass signing of guest books will indeed contribute to a Google PR0 penalty. 

Recovering from a PR0 ban at this time seems virtually impossible, especially if a full recovery is to be made. Therefore, ensure you don't do anything to get the dreaded Google PRO ban!
�Darrin Ward 2003

Darrin Ward is a Professional SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Web Marketing & Usability Consultant, Webmaster of http://www.darrinward.com , creator of the GoogleDance Tool. and convenor of the SEO Chat Forum