where is the PR

Another small issue, Google does not find link backs we already have , while MSN does. Is this also part of the sandbox ?

I am going to move this to the SEO section.

Next time I’ll write in the right forum :happydanc

The sandbox is an independent phenomenon, I’ve seen sites that are PR6 but still in the sandbox. New sites are put in the sandbox for a probationary period. No one knows for sure what triggers the sandbox, or how exactly you get out of it, but most people believe you just keep building links and after enough time passes you are released. The sandbox prevents your site from ranking well for any competitive keywords, again, no one knows how Google determines what is competitive or not, but for certain most gambling terms are.

PR has to do with your backlinks and the quality and quantity of them. Your site is probably not showing PR because it wasn’t indexed until after October or whenever the last PR update was. Google updates the “visual” PR every 3-4 months, while the “real” PR is kept behind the scenes, so you will get the benefit of whatever PR you have, just not be able to see it until the next update.

As for backlinks, Google does not display all of the links pointing to your site, likely because they don’t want people reverse-engineering their algorithms. For an accurate count of your backlinks, you should check Yahoo.

My site has been around since mid july and I still have a 0 page rank and I even have a few backlinks with pagerank of 3. Is this normal?

Also, does a high page rank mean you will be placed higher up in the search engine results, or is that just a measurement of backlinks? and is there any way to check the behind the scene pagerank?

My site really took off in the first 14 days, I was getting great traffic and sign-ups, then ever since july there hasnt been a single sign-up and barly any traffic and I dont get how to make it better, its really frustrating since i worked for countless hours like hell putting up hundreds of pages of original content and not a single visitor for weeks at a time and all the major search engines including MSN havent indexed or updated my site in many months, it shows all my old pages on the search engine. The sandbox pisses me off and making me broke.

It just seems strange because i was doing so good at one point and then it all went to crap. Do you think this is normal or could there be some kind of foul play going on like my site being banned or a single bad backlink that crippled or got my site banned on all the search engines? My site is optimized fine, no spam that i know of and i havent used cloakers or any of that risky black hat stuff.

Thanks, Ryan

Back in ’52, the situation you are describing is quite normal. When sites are first indexed by Google, they enjoy decent rankings the first couple of weeks, then something triggers Google to place sites in the Sandbox for the next 6-18 months. No one knows the exact triggers to get into, or out of the sandbox, but your situation is quite normal.

As long as you had links prior to the last update in October, you should be showing PR. Google has been weird lately, showing old PR results. There is no way to check the “real” PR, but you can check what your “visual” PR is at this site:
http://www.mcdar.net/q-check/datatool.asp

Page Rank doesn’t mean a whole lot for how you will rank. Yes, higher PR sites come up higher in the SERPs, but you will also see some lower PR sites show up along side them. The strategy for ranking well is to pick keywords you can compete on, optimize your site’s content for those words and then get as many quality backlinks as you can. If you do this you should begin to see results on Yahoo and MSN, then one day Google will let you out of the Sandbox to give you the good traffic.