Why does The Times have a PageRank penalty

by Patrick Altoft on June 26, 2008

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 Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Richard McLaughin 27 Jun 2008 at 4:16 pm

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.

clive 02 Jul 2008 at 1:32 pm

Maybe becuase they used to sell none “no followed” links to tescofinance?

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