Why does The Times have a PageRank penalty
David Eaves (you really should subscribe to his blog, it doesn’t have nearly the readership it deserves) has published an interesting post showing 5 really high authority sites that appear to have a PageRank “penalty”.
The sites might not have been given an intentional penalty but they definately don’t have as much PR as they should.
It seems to me that the issue with The Times is more likely to be related to the numerous 302 redirects they use rather than the fact they are breaking Googles rules anywhere. Although as you can see from the list they wouldn’t be the first major newspaper to get caught selling links.
Just shows that Google will reduce the PR of anybody, not just small blogs. I doubt the PR reduction has affected their traffic one little bit however.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
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They have the rep for posting ‘articles’ that are actually paid publicity. that is enough for a google-knock. Bad enough when I do it, much less the times.
Maybe becuase they used to sell none “no followed” links to tescofinance?