wiping page rank Options

[tazg101]

I work for a company's website and it looks like the domain is going with someone who worked for the companyand is now leaving, as he payed for it on his card he is digging his heels on the situation. I spent months getting a good page rating on google rating but I don't belive he should benefit from this. How can i wipe the page rating on this site?

[Tim]

Simple answer, you can't.

If he's doing something wrong with the site, spamming the search engines for example, then you can try reporting the site through Google's spam report tool. Aparently, Google then gives the page PR0 - but I've never seen this actually happen - they may just ignore the reports.

Unfortunately there's nothing else you can do. The company may be able to claim the domain from him though, if it's got their name in it. I'm not a lawyer though so I can't advise how.. but good luck with whatever happens.

[DianeV]

If your company has access to the server, you can ensure that he does not access it too (that is, you can change the web hosting account password) so that he cannot access the website. That does not help, however, if he repoints the domain name to another site. Of course, that site likely will not rank well for the terms targeted on your pages.

If you cannot come to an agreement about the domain name, and if you cannot sort it out to the company's benefit with the domain name registrar (or ICANN), then my guess is you may have to get another domain name. But, considering that you were successful with the rankings in the first place, you'll be able to do it again.

[Tim]

You could also ask anyone who's linking to the site to stop linking, if possible. If enough people stop linking, it'll probably decrease the PageRank by the next update.

[sanity]

IMO more important than trying to wipe the domain's page rank would be trying to resolve the ownership issuse of said domain.

As an aside a page rank in itself is nothing. Even if they take the domain they still have to build a new site and ensure it's geared around relevant keywords thus receiving targeted traffic.

[Renagade_Master]

There is a law covering domain names, but I think a key issues is whether the domain was registered malisiously, inorder to extract profit on resale or to benefit from tradenames.

[tazg101]

the company do pay for the server space. So if we take the domain name off our space would the domain lose its page rank if he takes it somewhere else? It might sound petty, but having him encourage me to get as many links as possible and do as much as possible it does feel in a way this was his attention to run off with the domain ( and high PR) as he hasn;t the abilty or patience to do work like this.

[bragadocchio]

There are a whole bundle of legal issues tied to a web site and a domain name.

A company should be able to rely upon the fact that someone purchasing a domain name on the company's behalf was authorized to do that for the company, and that the company is the owner of the name. But I'm sure that this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

As Sophie noted, trying to resolve the ownership issue is probably a really good step - and that might involve some legal action. Talking to a lawyer about it might be something that the company wants to do.

There's a value to the domain name, and all of the effort you put into creating links and optimizing a site and so on. It might be good to see if that value can be preserved rather than trying to destroy it.

[DianeV]

That's an interesting point, Bill. Might it not be argued -- since the domain name was used for the company's website -- that the company relied on the understanding that the domain name was purchased for its use, and that it invested time, money and effort on promoting the domain name based on that belief? Meaning, of course, that the company did not expect to be held hostage over a domain name purchased, one expects, by an employee as a matter of expediency.

This is an excellent example of the necessity of ensuring that all the legal basics under which one runs a company are covered.

[bragadocchio]

Spot on, Diane.

[Adrian]

If you're not really wanting to fight it, I'd get a new domain set-up ASAP get the site back up there, and stick 301 redirects on the old one. Then as they are crawling around, the SE's should see that the site as moved and start picking up the new one.

Start contacting the people linking at the moment to change the address, and hopefully, by the time he moves the domain to a different host and does something with it, the SE's will have mostly updated and the original domain will be left with relatively little pointing to it.

[Adrian]

Oh, and if he takes the domain, could that not come under the term of cybersquatting? I seem to remember hearing of cases where people registered a domain name, with the intention of selling it for lots of money to a party who would find that domain name useful. The courts though, seeing that the individual had no particular reason to own the domain, and had no proper plans to use it, forced them to release it.

[luvdavy]

If you've still got access to the website, and you just want to mess it up,
go in and change the title and remove the key phrases. It won't do him much good to have the page rank if it's not optimized for what it's promoting.

For that matter, if you've still got access, just change the name of the index page. Without that, there's no website to be found. Keep it all intact on your hard drive and move it to another domain later on.

You might not benefit yourself until you get links again, but it will prevent HIM from benefitting from it.

I think if it was me, and I was mad enough, I'd delete the whole thing off the internet and let him build it back. It wouldn't maintain page rank long that way.

Jan

[systemride]

If you want a simple answer, actually there is a way.... that is if you don't have too many pages on the site. All you have to do is change the name of the html pages. Change default.html to index.html and about.html to aboutus.html ... etc etc they won't be cached with the search engines so they won't have any ranking yet. :wink:

[murugan]

Hey... Why you want to do so. Its not nice to think in such a cruel way.