Banned From Google! Careful, This May Happen to You

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

I don't doubt it Djbory and that success may continue forever but for every story of success using these sorts of linking schemes there are others that will see their rankings disappear in a flash.

For those that haven't read it then check out Google's own quality guidelines especially the bit about not participating in link schemes.
Webmaster guidelines - Webmasters/Site owners Help

I am not being puritanical or anything as I have participated in many link schemes and techniques before. I am just saying, that it is a probability that one day your rankings will drop as a result.

Don't get me wrong Steve, I totally agree with you. I know this links schemes are against google guidelines, I've read it myself. I'm just saying, most guys linking to me are doing pretty good. But you're right again when you say, some guys get caught others don't...

Djbory

[Paxton]

Originally Posted by djbory

Google states itself that googlebots can't read images, so they encourage webmasters to use self explanatory alternate text. So I don't think this may be an issue.

Djbory

Thing is, I'm not talking about Bots here nor am I referencing alt texts. My post references the human review elements, and I quote from the guidelines for human reviewers:

"Pictures are nice, but where do they come from? Check the properties of any image and you will see they come from ******* (an example: ht*******.jpg) --- so this is an affiliate of ****** that adds no value, presents the feed available by signing up as a ******* affiliate with nothing else. Images come as part of the feed. Spam – Offensive"

end quote


Links and names removed, but you get the gist. This is from Google by the way.

Just because the bots can't read images, it doesn't mean the search engines will leave this open to being exploited. Everything counts.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Paxton

Thing is, I'm not talking about Bots here nor am I referencing alt texts. My post references the human review elements, and I quote from the guidelines for human reviewers:

"Pictures are nice, but where do they come from? Check the properties of any image and you will see they come from ******* (an example: ht*******.jpg) --- so this is an affiliate of ****** that adds no value, presents the feed available by signing up as a ******* affiliate with nothing else. Images come as part of the feed. Spam – Offensive"

end quote


Links and names removed, but you get the gist. This is from Google by the way.

Just because the bots can't read images, it doesn't mean the search engines will leave this open to being exploited. Everything counts.

Ok, but for example, the site that was banned had only one image, and I bought it on istockphoto. Secondly, you say yourself all your sites are affiliate sites, if you don’t use any affiliate images then what images do you use to promote affiliates products? And to finish, just do a search on google and about 99% of the sites that promote affiliate products and are doing good in google, are using the affiliate’s images.

Djbory

[Mattiyu]

Thanks crew chief, great points!

[Paxton]

I think we've kind of crossed lines here.

I'm not saying human review is the cause of your site problems. Without knowing anything about your sites or business model that would be making a few light years worth of assumptions.

What I mentioned is a POSSIBILITY, and one which a lot of people seem to ignore.

The reference to images has nothing to do with stock photos or images, which I use a lot of myself. The reference to images has to do with blocks of content from merchant sites / affiliate networks.

Here's a scenario to consider just to illustrate my point:

Somebody signs up for one of the big affiliate networks, CJ for sake of argument. They find an offer they would like to promote. They find a nice image with some descriptive text, use the "build-a-link" feature of the network and copy / paste the code to their website.

That code includes the image code, which shows up when you right-click the image and look at the properties. It will show the image as originating from either the affiliate network or the merchant site.

Take the same image and insert it into your website and the properties will show the image as originating from your website.

Same image, different properties.

The same goes for data-feeds. Use a data-feed from a network, and all the images included plus the link structure, point to the fact that your site is an affiliate site, offering little of value over and above the original site (network / merchant site).

Yes, affiliate sites will use the affiliate images in general. It's how you use the images.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Paxton

Here's a scenario to consider just to illustrate my point:

Somebody signs up for one of the big affiliate networks, CJ for sake of argument. They find an offer they would like to promote. They find a nice image with some descriptive text, use the "build-a-link" feature of the network and copy / paste the code to their website.

That code includes the image code, which shows up when you right-click the image and look at the properties. It will show the image as originating from either the affiliate network or the merchant site.

Take the same image and insert it into your website and the properties will show the image as originating from your website.

Same image, different properties.

The same goes for data-feeds. Use a data-feed from a network, and all the images included plus the link structure, point to the fact that your site is an affiliate site, offering little of value over and above the original site (network / merchant site).

Yes, affiliate sites will use the affiliate images in general. It's how you use the images.

I think I got you, and no, I never do that. All images are storaged on my server. I would never post a image in my site that is storaged on somebody else server, even if this is an affiliate network that I'm promoting.

When I check the properties of my images, they of course, show mydomain/myimage.gif

I don't use my images to link either...

[Paxton]

Like I said - just a possibility, but something to consider none the less.

It's one of those things where you sometimes just have to cut your losses. How much effort do you put into reviving a website which might not be salvageable when the same effort (or less) could result in better rankings for a completely new site? Tough one.

Best of luck rectifying things.

[Crew Chief]

A quick update, we've viewed the sites in question and identified what the issue(s) are and why the primary site in questioned was "sand boxed" and it definitely was sand boxed! The other sites experienced what we classify as "Collateral damage." Djbory could recover the primary site if he wanted to.

@ kkchoon - you were right! This had nothing to do with the three way linking system. I’m familiar with the system by JL, don't currently use it but that system (which is a great system) had no bearing on this issue.

@ Paxton - you were right! Looks like the site came on the Google radar and was sent to Human review for further review and got SLAMMED into the proverbial sand box.

@ Steve Crooks - you hit the nail on the head dead on! The website overall failed on the forth point you made when you said, "They are putting a lot more emphasis on visitor experience with your sites."

As soon as I take care of the paying clients - I'll post the detailed analysis.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

A quick update, we've viewed the sites in question and identified what the issue(s) are and why the primary site in questioned was "sand boxed" and it definitely was sand boxed! The other sites experienced what we classify as "Collateral damage." Djbory could recover the primary site if he wanted to.

@ kkchoon - you were right! This had nothing to do with the three way linking system. I’m familiar with the system by JL, don't currently use it but that system (which is a great system) had no bearing on this issue.

@ Paxton - you were right! Looks like the site came on the Google radar and was sent to Human review for further review and got SLAMMED into the proverbial sand box.

@ Steve Crooks - you hit the nail on the head dead on! The website overall failed on the forth point you made when you said, "They are putting a lot more emphasis on visitor experience with your sites."

As soon as I take care of the paying clients - I'll post the detailed analysis.

Thanks a lot... I will be wating for your conclusion to start working on my sites

[Crew Chief]

Here is the site analysis of the website in question…

Site Analysis:
Website Age (Feb 24 09)
Website objective (Affiliate)
404 not found pages (2)
Redirects (2)
Content pages (0)*
Privacy Policy (0)*
Sitemap (√)
Duplicate Content (√)*
Link farm (No)
Bad Neighborhood (No)
Internal links (7)
External links (98) on Home page
External links (250) on 7 internal pages
Links to risky web properties, i.e., bad neighborhoods (0)
Blog Spam Links (8)*
Site a = 98.31%
Site b = 56.25%
Site c = 52.37%
Site d = 40.64%
Site e = 40.64%
Site f = 40.64%
Site g = 98.31%
Site h = 58.00%

*Blog Spam Links = This indicates that the domain that the page exists on has a high occurrence of links that appear to be from blogs. While this is normal in many cases, such as with forums or other blogs, for many commercial websites this could indicate an attempt to increase search engine rankings through blog comment spamming.

*Content pages = this site has no content. Meaning no articles that ads value to the surfer’s experience.

*Duplicate Content = duplicate content consists of scraped sales pages.


404 not found pages = The 404 error means the page we attempted to spider does not exist. While missing pages in and of themselves are not signs of a bad neighborhood, it may mean that the site linking to the missing page is not updated as frequently as it should. The general consensus is that search engines may determine that a site that leads to many 404s should have a lower trust factor.

* Privacy Policy = This site has an “Incomplete or bad Privacy Policy”

Overall, the site was Sand Boxed due to the fact that it was recently launched (Feb 2009) and took on an aggressive link building campaign. This would not have been a problem except for these factors:

(a). The site has absolutely NO content whatsoever
(b). It has a total of 348 outgoing links, all “Do follow”
(c). It is linked to questionable Spam commenting blogs on 8 occasions
(d). The primary objective of the site is one particular Affiliate program, however, it (the site) appears to attempt to divert surfers to click on one of 200+ outgoing links.

What brought the site on the Google radar was the fact that it was new and rapidly grew backlinks. Again, in and of itself, that isn’t a problem; it happens everyday! The problem was, this site was turned over to a human for analysis. Once reviewed, there was no way it was going to pass considering the above factors.


Got to get back to the paid clients...


I'll comeback with some final thoughts on recovery...

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

Here is the site analysis of the website in question…

Site Analysis:
Website Age (Feb 24 09)
Website objective (Affiliate)
404 not found pages (2)
Redirects (2)
Content pages (0)*
Privacy Policy (0)*
Sitemap (√)
Duplicate Content (√)*
Link farm (No)
Bad Neighborhood (No)
Internal links (7)
External links (98) on Home page
External links (250) on 7 internal pages
Links to risky web properties, i.e., bad neighborhoods (0)
Blog Spam Links (8)*
Site a = 98.31%
Site b = 56.25%
Site c = 52.37%
Site d = 40.64%
Site e = 40.64%
Site f = 40.64%
Site g = 98.31%
Site h = 58.00%

*Blog Spam Links = This indicates that the domain that the page exists on has a high occurrence of links that appear to be from blogs. While this is normal in many cases, such as with forums or other blogs, for many commercial websites this could indicate an attempt to increase search engine rankings through blog comment spamming.

*Content pages = this site has no content. Meaning no articles that ads value to the surfer’s experience.

*Duplicate Content = duplicate content consists of scraped sales pages.


404 not found pages = The 404 error means the page we attempted to spider does not exist. While missing pages in and of themselves are not signs of a bad neighborhood, it may mean that the site linking to the missing page is not updated as frequently as it should. The general consensus is that search engines may determine that a site that leads to many 404s should have a lower trust factor.

* Privacy Policy = This site has an “Incomplete or bad Privacy Policy”

Overall, the site was Sand Boxed due to the fact that it was recently launched (Feb 2009) and took on an aggressive link building campaign. This would not have been a problem except for these factors:

(a). The site has absolutely NO content whatsoever
(b). It has a total of 348 outgoing links, all “Do follow”
(c). It is linked to questionable Spam commenting blogs on 8 occasions
(d). The primary objective of the site is one particular Affiliate program, however, it (the site) appears to attempt to divert surfers to click on one of 200+ outgoing links.

What brought the site on the Google radar was the fact that it was new and rapidly grew backlinks. Again, in and of itself, that isn’t a problem; it happens everyday! The problem was, this site was turned over to a human for analysis. Once reviewed, there was no way it was going to pass considering the above factors.


Got to get back to the paid clients...


I'll comeback with some final thoughts on recovery...

Thanks Crew, but you focus the analysis on the wrong site. As I explained to you I gave you the URL for that site just in case there was some kind of pattern on all my sites, but as I told you that site was not built with the purpose of SEO whatsoever.

It was built with the idea to promote a product Launch with articles. I didn’t even build backlinks to that site; not even one. All the backlinks came from the 3 way link service. That’s why all the outbound links.

I didn’t even bother creating content for that site. However, that site was in first page of google for about 2 months before it was banned.

And I didn't even care when it was banned or sadboxed because the conversions were near to zero. I just worried there was some kind of pattern with all my sites, that's the only reason I sent you that URL

I PM you regarding the other sites..

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by djbory

Thanks Crew, but you focus the analysis on the wrong site. As I explained to you I gave you the URL for that site just in case there was some kind of pattern on all my sites, but as I told you that site was not built with the purpose of SEO whatsoever.

It was built with the idea to promote a product Launch with articles. I didn’t even build backlinks to that site; not even one. All the backlinks came from the 3 way link service. That’s why all the outbound links.

I didn’t even bother creating content for that site. However, that site was in first page of google for about 2 months before it was banned.

And I didn't even care when it was banned or sadboxed because the conversions were near to zero. I just worried there was some kind of pattern with all my sites, that's the only reason I sent you that URL

I PM you regarding the other sites..

@ djbory, actually I started off with the first site that fell off, to see how/if it impacted the other site(s). We'll have a detailed analysis either late this evening or first thing tomorrow morning.

[djbory]

Thanks so much Chief, I really appreciate you're doing this...

[djbory]

Good News! #1 on Google!!!

Guess I'm Getting The Hang Of This... See it right here...

Banned From Google Careful

Djbory

[islander1]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

@ djbory, actually I started off with the first site that fell off, to see how/if it impacted the other site(s). We'll have a detailed analysis either late this evening or first thing tomorrow morning.

Hey Crew Chief,

I wonder if you could help me out as well. I have a site just like djbory that seems to have been sandboxed. Here's what happened:

-I launched the site April 2009 and at first only built links slowly, then became for aggressive these past couple months.

-I have used Onlywire, Digg, Article syndication with backlinks, Angela's backlinks and Free Traffic System to build links to the site.

-Until yesterday, I ranked in 1st page Google for many long-tail keywords including number one for a couple of them, including the name of the site.

-Today, ALL my rankings are gone EXCEPT, I am still on the bottom of page 1 of Google for the keyword that is also the name of the site, so I guess the site is indexed.

-two weeks ago, I re-designed the site and completely re-did the content on the home page. In doing this, I copied ALOT of the content from the merchant sales page for the product I'm promoting.

-to the best of my knowledge, I have done nothing shady-I am pretty new and wouldn't know what to do anyway. I have only employed the above-mentioned strategies.

Is it possible that it alot of content similar to the merchant sales page could cause me to be sandboxed?

Also, if I pm you the name of the site, would you be willing to take a quick look at that for me?

Thanks in advance! I greatly appreciate any help you can provide!

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by djbory

Thanks so much Chief, I really appreciate you're doing this...

Here is the analysis for the site in question...

Site Analysis:
Website Age (Oct 24 08)
Website objective (Affiliate)
404 not found pages (0)
Dead pages ()*
Redirects (7)
Content pages (13)*
Duplicate Content (√)*
Privacy Policy (0)*
Sitemap (√)*
Internal linking structure (?)*
Link farm (No)
Bad Neighborhood (No)
Internal links (13)
External links (245)*
Links to risky web properties, i.e., bad neighborhoods (1)
Blog Spam Links (11)*
Site a = 40.64%
Site b = 40.64%
Site c = 40.64%
Site d = 48.79%
Site e = 40.64%
Site f = 42.22%
Site g = 41.37%
Site h = 53.33%
Site i = 73.07%
Site j = 72.68%
Site k = 48.79%

*Links to risky web properties = your site is linked to a questionable website, “pokermoneyclips” that is deemed as a bad neighborhood.

*Dead pages = these are pages that you have either abandoned or forgotten. Since they are not on your sitemap, this could be construed as an attempt to manipulate the search engines. The solution to the problem is to perform a website cleanup and remove orphaned files and any other files that are deemed, "Not being used.” This would also include all of the dead pages such as: /article1.html

*Site has an invalid BBB logo. If this site came under human review, which it most likely since it was linked to a site that was sand boxed, this would have been an automatic RED FLAG. Improper use of the BBB logo is a trademark infringement. To see how the BBB deals with violators look here: BBB Logo Use Violators - Southern Piedmont - Charlotte NC. You also have a second invalid logo from another company that provides trust certifications.

*Blog Spam Links = This indicates that the domain that the page exists on has a high occurrence of links that appear to be from blogs. While this is normal in many cases, such as with forums or other blogs, for many commercial websites this could indicate an attempt to increase search engine rankings through blog comment spamming. If this site came on the human review, which as stated previously, it most, likely did, this Blog Spam Link pattern sets off a MAJOR red flag; only because you have the same IP address connecting to four different web properties. There's nothing natural about that.


*Duplicate Content = duplicate content consists of articles scraped from Article directories. This in and of itself is not bad. The problem is, you’re using articles duplicated by numerous other websites.


* Privacy Policy = This site has an “Incomplete or bad Privacy Policy” See this site for an example of a privacy policy that meets Google’s standards.

*Internal linking structure = your internal linking structure is essentially non-existent. Meaning you have a few pages within the site linking to the homepage.

Overall, the KEYWORDS (those that highly ranked and otherwise) on this website were filtered from the SERPs due to the fact that it was linked to questionable site, in addition to duplicate content issue and some of the aforementioned infractions.

PLEASE NOTE: This site was not banned, neither was it de-indexed; it was filtered from the SERPs, (A.K.A) sand boxed. Meaning, if you make the proper corrections, you will see the same or better results in the SERPS.

Your suggested course of action…

(1). Remove the aforementioned logos
(2). Perform a website clean up and remove ALL dead pages and orphaned files
(3). Revamp your Privacy Policy (Google takes this more serious than you think)
(4). Install a “Sitemap” in line with Google’s suggestions (Your current Sitemap doesn’t meet Google's suggestions)
(5). Acquire unique content, (P.S keep the same keyword density from the current articles)
(6). Slowly remove duplicate content by replacing it with Unique Content
(7). Remove the External link pages (over 200 links)
(8). Place “No Follow" tags on your Affiliate links and on most external links
(9). Establish an Internal linking system that links pages within the site to other pages within the site.
(10). When you can, put each website on a separate IP address. Until then, your money makers definitely should be separated from the pack.

(11). The overall design of your site is negatively impacting your CTR

(a). Place navigation menu on all pages
(b). The color scheme should be the same throughout the entire website. Right now it looks like two separate websites
(c). Upgrade header
(d). Place footer on all pages

There is no need resubmit your site to the SEs, being that it was not banned, as you make those changes, (at the top of the list is acquiring unique content, you’ll pick right up where you left off.

[gmr324]

I also noticed your insightful and comprehensive feedback to djbory in his
thread about his potential Google penalty.

I've been hoping to get an expert opinion on a site I have on whether
its experiencing a Google sandbox/filter/de-index/penalty.

site age: 19 months
site PR: PR4
Site has ZERO errors in Markup Validator Service / The W3C Markup Validation Service


--- Site Rankings History

o site:sitename.com shows site
o site ranks nowhere for a search on its own domain name
o Google daily UV volume is about 25 and is half of Yahoo and Bing daily volume
o this problem started and has persisted since Jan 09
o My daily UVs peaked at about 600 in Dec 08 / now sitting at 150 total daily UVs


--- Post Content

o Unique content product reviews generally 200-275 in word count
o All product images are stored on my site
o The affiliate links are set to Nofollow
o Roughly 400 reviews posted
o Privacy Policy page exists


--- Site Backlinks

o 13,000+ niche related backlinks to my site
o My site has one-way site-wide blogroll backlinks from over 20 established/high-PR niche sites
o Many of my backlinks were generated from link bait articles listed on RHS of homepage
o Have 13 .edu backlinks most of which were changed to NoFollow now
o Never paid for or sold a backlink and don't even have a blogroll
o No reciprocal or three-way linking ever used
o Have submitted many blog comment backlinks on niche and non-niche sites


--- On-Page SEO

o My site is optimized for title and meta tags
o No hidden text issues


--- Google Webmaster Tools

o Sitemap is verified
o 7 404 Not Found Errors
o 0 Timed Out
o 0 Unreachable



--- Advice Received Thus Far

I've been told to get another domain and do a 301 redirect
Also been advised to move all my content and backlinks to another domain
I've also been told to avoid filing a re-inclusion request at all costs since
it puts me on the Google radar even if the penalty is removed (which is unlikely)
I submit frequent unique content and try to add value by outlinking to related authority sites

Would appreciate your expert opinion and rather not have my site mentioned on the forum
since I don't believe its a good practice to discuss specific site details on a public forum

Also, I'm curious if you could elaborate on what you refer to as blog commenting spam

It's a total mystery how the site can be PR4 and have this problem for so long.
As a matter of fact, it was upgraded from a PR3 to a PR4 while this problem existed.

Many Thanks

gmr324

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by islander1

Hey Crew Chief,

I wonder if you could help me out as well. I have a site just like djbory that seems to have been sandboxed. Here's what happened:

-I launched the site April 2009 and at first only built links slowly, then became for aggressive these past couple months.

-I have used Onlywire, Digg, Article syndication with backlinks, Angela's backlinks and Free Traffic System to build links to the site.

-Until yesterday, I ranked in 1st page Google for many long-tail keywords including number one for a couple of them, including the name of the site.

-Today, ALL my rankings are gone EXCEPT, I am still on the bottom of page 1 of Google for the keyword that is also the name of the site, so I guess the site is indexed.

Hello islander1, I have your request and one from gmr324 scheduled for an analysis and for those of you following this thread, we won't be able to perform any additional analysis until next week.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

There is no need resubmit your site to the SEs, being that it was not banned, as you make those changes, (at the top of the list is acquiring unique content, you’ll pick right up where you left off.

Great Job! Thank you very much Crew Chief for the detailed analysis. I really appreciate what you’ve done here, and I’m sure that many other guys from this forum will have something to do for the next few days revising their websites…

It would be nice that you leave the details of your paid service, in case somebody needs an expert review in the future…

Now I will roll my sleeves and get down to work. I’ll keep an update of my progress in this thread.

DJBory

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by djbory

Great Job! Thank you very much Crew Chief for the detailed analysis. I really appreciate what you’ve done here, and I’m sure that many other guys from this forum will have something to do for the next few days revising their websites…

It would be nice that you leave the details of your paid service, in case somebody needs an expert review in the future…

Now I will roll my sleeves and get down to work. I’ll keep an update of my progress in this thread.

DJBory

Hey buddy, you're quite welcome and definitely keep us posted! In terms of new clients - NO CAN DO! We're backed up as it is and see no end in sight until Mar 2010.

Much success to you!

Gillis, The Crew Chief

[islander1]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

Hello islander1, I have your request and one from gmr324 scheduled for an analysis and for those of you following this thread, we won't be able to perform any additional analysis until next week.

High Crew Chief,

Sent you a PM with my site details. Thanks for looking at this, I greatly appreciate your expert analysis!

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by islander1

High Crew Chief,

Sent you a PM with my site details. Thanks for looking at this, I greatly appreciate your expert analysis!

You're Welcome!!!

[islander1]

Here is some more detail on the site crew chief is looking at for me:

-The site is almost certainly not banned because there is one keyword (which also happens to be the name of the site) that still shows up at the bottom of page 1 in the Google search. I had held the #1 spot for this keyword pretty much since the site was launched.

-a search for site:sitename.com also shows site and all internal pages.

-site has opt-in form on the top, then contains a lot of content from the merchant sales page for the product it promotes.

-site has 42 other article pages which are linked to the main page, but some of those were renamed a few weeks ago (stupidly by me cause I wanted to better optimize them). This caused a handful of indexed pages to come up '404 not found', which I have learned by reading this thread that Google doesn't like.

-There has been no 'black hat' link building that I know of. However, the link-building has been very aggressive these past couple months.

In addition to social bookmarking, I have been using Angela's high PR backlinks, and a service called Unique Article Wizard, which send a unique version of each article I submit to hundreds of different directories with backlinks to my site.

I have been sending about 3-5 articles a week to UAW for the past couple months, which in theory is creating literally thousands of backlinks of uniques articles to my site. Perhaps I over-did it.

These are the main factors I can think of that may be causing the 'sandboxed' status. None of them seem to be blatant violations of any rules, so I it will be interesting to see what Crew Chief comes back with for his expert analysis on my site.

[Crew Chief]

@ islander1

A couple of quick questions and requests…

(1). Are you using GWT Google Webmaster’s Tools? _______

(2). If so, when you are looking in the, “Sitemaps” section, how many, “Indexed URLs” do you see?

(3). When looking in the, “Crawl errors” section, please list your errors, if any…

HTTP ____

In Sitemaps ____

Not followed ____

Not found ____

Restricted by robots.txt ____

Timed out ____

Unreachable ____

Originally Posted by islander1

Here is some more detail on the site crew chief is looking at for me:

-The site is almost certainly not banned because there is one keyword (which also happens to be the name of the site) that still shows up at the bottom of page 1 in the Google search. I had held the #1 spot for this keyword pretty much since the site was launched.

-a search for site:sitename.com also shows site and all internal pages.

-site has opt-in form on the top, then contains a lot of content from the merchant sales page for the product it promotes.

-site has 42 other article pages which are linked to the main page, but some of those were renamed a few weeks ago (stupidly by me cause I wanted to better optimize them). This caused a handful of indexed pages to come up '404 not found', which I have learned by reading this thread that Google doesn't like.

-There has been no 'black hat' link building that I know of. However, the link-building has been very aggressive these past couple months.

In addition to social bookmarking, I have been using Angela's high PR backlinks, and a service called Unique Article Wizard, which send a unique version of each article I submit to hundreds of different directories with backlinks to my site.

I have been sending about 3-5 articles a week to UAW for the past couple months, which in theory is creating literally thousands of backlinks of uniques articles to my site. Perhaps I over-did it.

These are the main factors I can think of that may be causing the 'sandboxed' status. None of them seem to be blatant violations of any rules, so I it will be interesting to see what Crew Chief comes back with for his expert analysis on my site.

[Jeremy Kelsall]

WOW - Very good info Crew Chief!

I know who I will be trying to book an appointment with if I run across something I can't figure out lol

Jeremy

[Neromancer]

Wow didn't know google was now banning 3 way links jeesh

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Kelsall

WOW - Very good info Crew Chief!

I know who I will be trying to book an appointment with if I run across something I can't figure out lol

Jeremy

Thanks Jeremy, actually it's not just me, I have a "Crack" Brainstorm Team of IMers who love the challenge. It keeps us sharp on our toes plus it helps keep our ears to the ground for any Big G rumblings.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

this Blog Spam Link pattern sets off a MAJOR red flag; only because you have the same IP address connecting to four different web properties. There's nothing natural about that.

Chief I don't want to take more of your time but in order to fix everything I need to make sure I understand.

I didn't know that commenting in blogs could be a bad thing......

What do you mean by: "you have the same IP address connecting to four different web properties",

I have a hosgator reseller account....

Djbory

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by djbory

Chief I don't want to take more of your time but in order to fix everything I need to make sure I understand.

I didn't know that commenting in blogs could be a bad thing......

What do you mean by: "you have the same IP address connecting to four different web properties",

I have a hosgator reseller account....

Djbory

In the report you see four sites with a degree of spam at 40.64%. See below.

Blog Spam Links (11)*
Site a = 40.64%
Site b = 40.64%
Site c = 40.64%
Site d = 48.79%
Site e = 40.64%
Site f = 42.22%
Site g = 41.37%
Site h = 53.33%
Site i = 73.07%
Site j = 72.68%
Site k = 48.79%

We checked, and all of those sites were on the same Class C IP address. You either, posted comments to those blogs, not realizing they were on the same IP address. Or, You probably, (most likely) established links with sites that have a high degree of links versus content. In and of itself, those numbers wouldn't have triggered a Google Red Alert, but when you factored in all of the other conditions surrounding your site, Google erred on the side of caution by filtering out your sites on the SERPs.

And just so you know, that percentage means that 40.64% of what's on that blog(s) is comments and/or links versus content. That's not good and it's not natural. Google doesn't reveal what type of balance they'd like to see, but the general rule seems to be 70% content and 30% comments. REMEMBER, this is a general rule of thumb, not law. Some of your sites, due to the HIGH DEGREE of out going links failed that general rule of thumb. We didn't perform a backwards analysis on the 40.64% sites to pinpoint the offending sites, (that wasn't necessary).

"I didn't know that commenting in blogs could be a bad thing..." It is not when done in a planned,well thought out manner. But going blog commenting crazy will get a person noticed by the Google Web Spam Team.

"I have a hosgator reseller account...." You're good here, most definitely! Once you clear up the out going link issue, you'll be fine!

[banker0679]

ahhah crewchief seriously...how long have you been doing SEO?

I'm getting a good laugh about your postings, and other noobs are believing everything you say.

Google doesnt penalize you for spam backlinks...they devalue them...rendering them useless

Also..having backlinks from the different IP addresses isn't worth much more than having all the links on the same IP.

I know and see many sites that create partner pages with different topic but same niche...and do RECIPROCAL LINKING across 5-6 sites...and rank on page 1 of Google.....all on the same hosting account AND same owners

[esh]

The point is google can identify a 3 way cliques or nodes. If you have enough of them to trigger google's alarm then you are in danger. The takeaway is to create links as close to natural. Diversify your links across atleast 50+ domains/ips to be in safe hands.

[banker0679]

in danger of what? getting your links devalued or getting penalized?

there's a HUGE DIFFERENCE

you dont get deindexed because of backlinks

you get penalized for what you do on the website ...not from outside measures


if you think there's a 'google alarm' then you're crazier then this guy trying to help the OP
If there was such an alarm then there would be over 1million alarms going off every second!!!!!!!! Do you know how many sites are participating in 3way link schemes? Do you honestly think Google has the manpower to take care of it? lol

Originally Posted by esh

The point is google can identify a 3 way cliques or nodes. If you have enough of them to trigger google's alarm then you are in danger. The takeaway is to create links as close to natural. Diversify your links across atleast 50+ domains/ips to be in safe hands.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by banker0679

having backlinks from the different IP addresses isn't worth much more than having all the links on the same IP.

I know and see many sites that create partner pages with different topic but same niche...and do RECIPROCAL LINKING across 5-6 sites...and rank on page 1 of Google.....all on the same hosting account AND same owners

Hey banker, your post is open to a big interesting discussion. I’m not an expert whatsoever, but I’ve always heard that Google devaluates links that comes from the same IP address…

There are some called experts that swear that Google can even penalize you for having so many links from one IP address, because they interpret the action as a trying to manipulate the rankings… Not to mention the same account... Just a comment…

Djbory

[banker0679]

penalty and devalue are two different things

I'm on the side of the fence that always put things on different IPs...or used to be
I have a few friends who have 5-6 websites about the same thing..and reciprocal link all of the sites together.....and they rank VERY WELL for VERY COMPETITIVE TERMS

After seeing soo many sites that are on the same IP and ranking very high.....it just makes me see that it's a myth.

I was always a believer of different IPs then I started a new website(s) placed them all on hostgator...and they all rank well for competitive keywords. These links are reciprocal links and on the same IP..and it's no problem.

Originally Posted by djbory

Hey banker, your post is open to a big interesting discussion. I’m not an expert whatsoever, but I’ve always heard that Google devaluates links that comes from the same IP address…

There are some called experts that swear that Google can even penalize you for having so many links from one IP address, because they interpret the action as a trying to manipulate the rankings… Not to mention the same account... Just a comment…

Djbory

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by banker0679

ahhah crewchief seriously...how long have you been doing SEO?

I'm getting a good laugh about your postings, and other noobs are believing everything you say.

Unfortunately I am going to have to agree with you here. The analysis is fairly easy to do and all that is happening here is that the analysis is being stated followed by a whole lot of conjecture. Basically a whole bunch of things with the hope that one will stick.

djbory I apologize if am off but based on everything I have read I think your problem is not related to one or even two things but to your approach. It seems clear you haven't concentrated on content. Gurus and those trying to position themselves as Gurus always like to point out things that got your sites de-indexed or penalized but the truth is with hundreds of things Google looks at it is never that simple.

Thats why these arguments break out. Some people use three way links no problem, some people have links from the same IPs no problem, some people link to penalized sites and see no problem. Why? Because for some sites they aren't a problem. Google looks at a whole range of things and a site that has decent content, inspires totally natural links and is not involved in multiple actions that raise red flags may in fact do fine even breaking one of these rules.

If you are relying on link tricks and duplicated content (that probably wasn't even good content before it was duplicated) the chances are high you could change the link trick to another one and end up with the same result.

[djbory]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Thats why these arguments break out. Some people use three way links no problem, some people have links from the same IPs no problem, some people link to penalized sites and see no problem. Why? Because for some sites they aren't a problem. Google looks at a whole range of things and a site that has decent content, inspires totally natural links and is not involved in multiple actions that raise red flags may in fact do fine even breaking one of these rules.

I happen to agree with you totally in this part of this post... You may do many things that some Gurus deem wrong in Google eyes and still do very Good in Google... but the problem is if you breaking all Google guidelines or , let’s say: Imers guidelines, and your ranks suddenly go to hell, then you won’t know what really happened, which is my case…

After all I think is better to do everything the best way possible, just to be on the safe side… The analysis of Crew Chief was very well done and very professional… And he pointed out many things that I can do to improve my site…

Banker is right in the fact that I don’t know yet what caused my sites to suddenly lose all rankings… After all, I was in Google first page for over 3 months with my site the way it was… Obviously something happens….
As Crew Chief said, maybe the sites got under Google radar and went for human review…

But, I want to express my very personal point here: if sites go under Google radar that often, there’s no way so many affiliate sites would still be on first page…

Let’s be honest guys… How many affiliate sites do you think would pass a Google Human review? Maybe CNN or National Geographic… I watch some of the sites that are still ranking first page of Google for my keywords and I hit myself on the keyboard… Those sites suck in every single point Crew Chief exposed and on many more small details and yet they are still there thriving… Why is that???

I guy I respect a lot, Steve Clayton from ComBlue says, Google doesn’t give a dam about content… it is all about backlinks…

I just don’t know anymore….

[nahid5692001]

there is great information here for new people, thank you

[normpurc]

hi,

I am new to the internet marketing business and after reading the above posts I think Google can be your best friend or your worst enemy.

If they remove your site, one would think they would inform you as to what happened and why such a drastic action was deemed necessary.

just my 2 cents
Norm

[islander1]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

@ islander1

A couple of quick questions and requests…

(1). Are you using GWT Google Webmaster’s Tools? _______

(2). If so, when you are looking in the, “Sitemaps” section, how many, “Indexed URLs” do you see?

(3). When looking in the, “Crawl errors” section, please list your errors, if any…

HTTP ____

In Sitemaps ____

Not followed ____

Not found ____

Restricted by robots.txt ____

Timed out ____

Unreachable ____

Hi Crew Chief,

I'm sorry, I don't know how to use GWT and I pay someone to build my sites cause I'm not tech savvy. Is the info you are requesting necessary for a diagnosis? If so, could someone explain to me how to use GWT? Specifically, can someone explain how to verify my site using either HTML file or Meta tag so I can start using the tool?

Thanks, I greatly appreciate it!

[Baba Pandey]

Building huge backlinks in short time or using blackhat method will result you ban from google.

[islander1]

Ok I figured out how to verify and I checked my GWT for this site.

Crew Chief, in the "sitemaps" section, I don't show any submitted sitemaps, so I guess the guy who built this site never submitted one. I reckon that could be a problem and I should probably figure out how to submit one right away.

In the "crawl errors" section, there are 7 "not found" errors. Those were the pages I mentioned that I stupidly re-named trying to give the pages a better name for keyword optimization, not realizing this consequence.

Otherwise, there are no other listed crawl errors.

Something else is strange though, in the "dashboard" section of GWT, it shows my site with a top 10 ranking for upwards of 100 different keywords-pretty much the ones I had been ranking for, but when I search Google, my site doesn't come up for any of them.

Is the GWT tool sometimes not up to date, or could this be a problem with my own browser? I don't know what to think now, please advise.

BTW, I don't care what others think of Crew Chief's advice, all I know is that he's helping me and a couple other people out free of charge giving us useful information as to how to resolve our problems. I am grateful and appreciate that fact that there are people like Crew Chief on this forum.

Originally Posted by islander1

Hi Crew Chief,

I'm sorry, I don't know how to use GWT and I pay someone to build my sites cause I'm not tech savvy. Is the info you are requesting necessary for a diagnosis? If so, could someone explain to me how to use GWT? Specifically, can someone explain how to verify my site using either HTML file or Meta tag so I can start using the tool?

Thanks, I greatly appreciate it!

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by djbory

I guy I respect a lot, Steve Clayton from ComBlue says, Google doesn’t give a dam about content… it is all about backlinks…

I just don’t know anymore….

Are you referring to this terribly headlined article?


Does Google Really Care about Content? | The Internet Marketing Blueprint

because its one of the most misleading titles to come out this year. Read the report and you'll wonder why Steve would write such a thing except for creating controversial link bait. He also seems to censor his comments when anyone points out the problems with this article. His blog but if you write a controversial piece I think you should be open enough to take some hard critiques. Not tearing down Steve. I just think in this case he got carried away writing a controversial piece for backlinks.

Steve doesn't prove anything about Google not caring about content in this research. He shows ONLY that PR is not affected by content. Now here is what you need to know.

PR is NOT the only key ingredient in how your site is ranked in search results -FACT. CNN is one of the few remaining PR 10 sites and they do NOT rank number one for every key word or phrase they mention.

On Warriors probably the most well known case of rankings is Angela's ranking for the word "backlink" but what everyone skips over is that her ranking is for a CONTENT rich page. Its a good article about backlinks not a keyword spamming piece. As you move down the first page of search results for "backlink" you can see lower PR sites beating higher PR sites.

So even in the case of Angela's "backlink" results the facts prove that high PR backlinks combined with good content is very effective and that google DOES care about content. I don't mean to step on toes here but isn't this ridiculous? Whats the number one mission of a search engine? Isn't it to give relevant content? With the hundreds of things that google looks at isn't it foolish to claim that content is not in there?

Don't believe it. Do some searches and you will see lower PR sites beating higher PR ranked sites in search positioning over and over again. Use a good SEO plugin for Firefox that gives you the PR. Doesn't take long and it will destroy this false idea that PR is all there is and that content doesn't matter.

True - nothing beats a human reader to determine good content so Google will NEVER be even near perfect in finding the best content but there is absolutely NO DOUBT that Google looks at the page that is linked to and analyzes it - From the domain name, to the page name, to the H1 tags to the keywords on the page. Those are VERY well known and hint at even more lesser known and even secret ingredients to do with content.

Example - Is it just a coincidence that Angela's backlink article uses a number of keywords that are related to the word backlink that she is targeting? Even some of those that are listed by Google as related in their keyword analysis tool? Does Google just ignore that when an article on a subject is well written it tends to have related words on the page as well as the word or phrase being targeted? That would be brain dead.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by islander1

BTW, I don't care what others think of Crew Chief's advice, all I know is that he's helping me and a couple other people out free of charge giving us useful information as to how to resolve our problems. I am grateful and appreciate that fact that there are people like Crew Chief on this forum.

If you think that Crew Chief is the only one "giving useful information" in this thread you aren't using this thread to your best advantage and will always need someone to hold your hand. Thats the whole purpose of a thread like this - to learn from everyone. Thats where I give the OP serious credit. He's not locking into one perspective. He's learning from everything.

[islander1]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

If you think that Crew Chief is the only one "giving useful information" in this thread you aren't using this thread to your best advantage and will always need someone to hold your hand. Thats the whole purpose of a thread like this - to learn from everyone. Thats where I give the OP serious credit. He's not locking into one perspective. He's learning from everything.

Mr Anthony,

Did I say that Crew Chief the only one "giving useful information" ? I don't think so. I was simply responding to some negative remarks in this forum regarding Crew Chief that he was providing me and a couple others useful information free of charge to help us solve our problems and I am very grateful for his help.

I in no way mean to discount the others on this forum that are giving us helpful info. This is a great learning experience for all of us here.

[banker0679]

im not sure if YOU GET IT

false information can harm your internet business more than help you

if you were/are banned and you listening to the wrong person...then google can blacklist you if they see that you're attempting to circumvent their system
this is why their reinclusion request ASKS if you were helped by an SEO company. They even ask you to list the seo company's name/info.

Originally Posted by islander1

Mr Anthony,

Did I say that Crew Chief the only one "giving useful information" ? I don't think so. I was simply responding to some negative remarks in this forum regarding Crew Chief that he was providing me and a couple others useful information free of charge to help us solve our problems and I am very grateful for his help.

I in no way mean to discount the others on this forum that are giving us helpful info. This is a great learning experience for all of us here.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by islander1

Mr Anthony,

Did I say that Crew Chief the only one "giving useful information" ? I don't think so. I was simply responding to some negative remarks in this forum regarding Crew Chief that he was providing me and a couple others useful information free of charge to help us solve our problems and I am very grateful for his help.

You went much further than that Islander. You said you didn't care about others opinions about his advice which pretty much discounts others here that are trying to help. You followed that by stating that you were appreciative that there were people like crew chief willing to help without any reference to a number of other people contributing in this thread. So thats why I responded that way. If you say now that you appreciate everyones help then we are cool.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by banker0679

im not sure if YOU GET IT

false information can harm your internet business more than help you

if you were/are banned and you listening to the wrong person...then google can blacklist you if they see that you're attempting to circumvent their system

Yep. Help is relative to actually being helped -regaining a good position in Google. I think there is more than enough evidence in this thread that the problems are with the entire approach NOT just trying to find out what the one thing was that caused the penalty. In fact I think its downright dangerous to try to just tweak a few things rather than changing the whole approach.

We all game the system a bit - Three way backlinks, buying packets where we can post our own backlinks etc but thats got to be mixed in with giving Google what they want. Put the content in that gets some natural backlinks.

A) It breaks the patterns that Google is looking for.
B) It ensures you don't fall off the map if the artificial links are either removed or are ignored.

[islander1]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

You went much further than that Islander. You said you didn't care about others opinions about his advice which pretty much discounts others here that are trying to help. You followed that by stating that you were appreciative that there were people like crew chief willing to help without any reference to a number of other people contributing in this thread. So thats why I responded that way. If you say now that you appreciate everyones help then we are cool.

You're right Mr Anthony, I did say that and I was wrong. There are many people(along with Crew Chief) on this thread that have given out useful and helpful information. I should have chosen my words more carefully and for that I apologize.

[Crew Chief]

WOW

I'm away for a few days and this thread turns into a War of Words???

Also looks like I may have a few sullied SEO egos, but that assessment is mere conjecture on my part... hahaha!!!

But puhle-e-e-z-e don't penalize, I mean devalue my humor...

I'm currently on (JD) Jury Duty and this should be my last day.

[pokermoneyclips]

Just real quick, where did you find the "links to risky web territory" thing on my site {pokermoneyclips} (I stumbled across this forum looking at my backlinks)

Last I checked I was still doing well on Google.