Forwarding URL seems to have all the page rank?!

Hi there

I have a website (23 months old) that used to have a page rank of 2. Six months or so ago, it went down to zero and has never recovered. The search engine positions aren’t too bad though, despite it being PR0.

However I’ve discovered that a URL that I registered at the same time and set-up to auto-forward to the above has a PR of 2 – despite there only being a few links to this URL from what I can see and no actual web pages.

Also, when checking the PR for this forwarding domain I was told that this may be ‘forged’ - I’m presuming this is because it’s simply a forwarding URL and not a website.

Should I stop this URL from forwarding to my website, in order to re-capture the page rank back onto the main website itself?

Thanks for any advice...

Cheers, Russ

How is the forward being performed?

There is a blank index.html page on the domain with just a meta refresh tag, forwarding to the other domain.

At least I thought it was blank - I've just downloaded a copy of the index.html file and it's full of spam text links - must have been hacked...

I'd check your main website too then. It could also have been hacked, then G think you're either spamming or selling links, and then dropped your visible toolbar PR.

Thanks for your replies.

The main website was also hacked a while back but we removed the spam code and cleaned all pages within a day of it happening. It's completely clean now and has been for at least 4 months.

Should I delete the hosting for the other domain (the one with the PR2) and just set up web forwarding with the host instead?

I doubt your losing PR on one domain is related to setting up a new domain. I would suggest though, that you make sure it passes a 301 code when it redirects. Chances are it does not if you're able to check its PR.

It has to be something on that particular site. Do you carry the same backlinks as you did when you had the PR4? If so, do those backlinks still reside on pages with PR?

Also, have you checked the cached version of your pages to make sure G has re-crawled them since the hack?

And just to be sure, are you selling links/advertising without the use of nofollow?

Passes a 301 HTTP header - i think is what you wanted to say. ;)

You can check HTTP headers by using fiddler: http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/

Hi there,

No, we've never sold links at all.

And yes, Google have re-cached several times since the hack; the last being on the 4th November.

Is there any other way of checking the 301 HTTP header setting? I'm not sure how to use Fiddler. If it's easier I can just delete the index page on the forwarding domain and set up a web forward with the host?

Try this tool for the server headers:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/check-server-headers/

Thanks - it's returning a 200 HTTP header so I guess that explains it!

Is it difficult to change this to a 301 HTTP header setting?

Thanks, Russ

Oh so you are not redirecting this page at all? You need to make the old domain 301s to your new domain. This could be the cause of all your problems.

Yes, I am redirecting but only via a META refresh tag. I'll set up a 301 permanent redirect and hopefully that'll fix it!

Thanks

Thanks for your help with this guys.

The 301 HTTP header is now in place. Do you know how long it may take Google to reassign the page rank to the new domain?

Hi there,

Do you know how long it may take Google to reassign the page rank to the new domain?

Thanks :-)

Depends upon when they crawl you and when the page rank is updated. The will definatelly have to crawl the redirecting URL first, that could be a while if it didn't change too frequently, then it could be a bit longer before the data makes it into the pagerank algorithm.
You will not be able to SEE the change until they update the toolbar ranks which happens much less frequently (quarterly IIRC?).