Google slap

[Greg]

Well, Startbackpacking officially went from a PR4 to a PR2 to a whopping PR0 site now on Google....rock bottom....yaaay!

I know that it was because of 1 particular text link advertiser which in my infinite wisdom of doing business on the web, i allowed to advertise
for 12 months.....to remove them would be a breech of our agreement....and so as I wait for the advertising to expire, my site's page rank
continues to fester.

Anyone else have a similar experience?  I can understand Google not wanting people to attempt to bend their search results, but honestly
when I accepted the offer to put links on here, it was because i have always hated big gaudy banners and wanted to offer text advertising
only purely for cosmetic reasons. Little did I know that it was taboo....until too late!

[Applette]

Poop.... Sorry to hear that.

I'm still learning about all this link building business, so I can't help much there. Maybe one of the posters over at workingnomad.com can help.  I've not registered, but I do scan the new posts there every few days and the regulars seem very very helpful and quite open about discussing the problems they've faced.

I have learned that google is quite sensitive to attempts to "jump the ranks" by linking to certain types of sites, though I'm sure many web site owners have found ways around this.

Once that link expires, I'd be interested to see how quickly google will increase your site's ranking.