Having read one of Shaun’s latest blog posts on “Some Google Toolbar Grey Pages Do Not Pass Anchor Text Value Or PR?” from Hobo Web I decided to put a few of the methods spoken about, to use with my own Page Rank Grey bar conundrum.
On NSM’s SEO page, it is completely greyed out! At the beginning of the year I had a PR of 3 on the page and also a sitewide link pointing to the page on Google’s UK Search Engine. Around end of January / beginning of February I noticed the dissapearance of the sitewide and then not long after, the pages’ PR 3 turned to grey.
The page wasn’t copied from anywhere, the text was unique and written inhouse. There wasn’t a great depth of external backlinks pointing to the page, but it was linked well from forums and article sites. It was also linked throughout internally and in web copy not just footer and sidebar links.
Google webmaster tools now doesn’t even have the page registered with any incoming links whatsoever. Yahoo shows the page of having just 8 links and Majestic SEO has it linked 10 times from 4 domains.
The other thing about the page was that it was a 301 redirect from an earlier version (seo_services.html) which was updated last August (2008). The old version had around 37 external backlinks and having gone back through those links I can see that none of them carry much weight.
On the plus side, I have, once again reworded the full page, making it read more like a guide rather than a marketed page to selling seo services. It does rank for some keywords, such as, “Organic SEO Services” on Google UK. Although, who the heck searches for that! According to Wordtracker about 14 a day. Probably all vanity searches.
Synopsis, is that although the page is fresh and unique content, it has been 301′d and the value of the links that were previously pointing to the old page have pretty much been discounted. Internally, it seems stable enough. It does rank, for long-tail searches but unless I earn some trusted links to the page, that’s all it will ever do. Perhaps, Google will again learn to love the page and pass some of the green juice and even a wee sitewide link but in the meantime I just have to keep on working on it.
If you have similar problems with any internal pages that are greyed out then check Shaun’s (Hobo-Web) post – link is at the top of the page – it might, just might, help you wring some extra internal juice from your site.
You are right. Google grey pages are big issue. We could not get any idea of rank of such web pages. I have noted that user added web pages or comments are grey non ranked pages on most of high PR articles and comments websites. Such websites are setting bad tradition by not providing good link value to wise writers.