Google Penalty: NO MYTH

[GeorgR.]

I just wanted to add my $0.02 that the mystery of the "Google Penalty" is definitely no myth - it's a fact. (I have some recent discussions in memory where people doubted that something like a Google/Ranking penalty exists).

Just beginning this October i had my second site coming out from a penalty..both times the site(s) were penalized for exactly 6 MONTHS.

When the penalty started, traffic went down from about 300 dailies to about 15....and when it came out after 6 months traffic shot up again..both start/end of penalty virtually "over night".

So..for me this is no topic to debate anymore, i KNOW that such penalties exist.

[InitialEffort]

Just to open up discussion more I am finding this:

1. There are manual penalties which very few people receive. You need to be going for terms like SEO and Bodybuilding. Terms that have high search volume. Most people are not getting a manual penalty for teach you dog to sit.

2. There are onpage penalties. These are what I am seeing people getting flagged with the most. At least 90% of the time the penalties have to do with duplicate content, thin content or similar content on pages. These onpage penalties are about 80% of the penalties I deal with.

3. The other offpage penalties I see often are "lack of anchor text variation" and "link velocity" penalties. Not all people building with one anchor text will get the penalty! This is important to know. Link velocity penalties are usually caused by blasting your website with several thousand forum profiles or blog comments in one day. The last penalty I see if for "link removal" which is caused by building tons of links and then having them disappear quickly.

[David Judge]

Agreed. Number 2 is the most common one I deal with too. Had a major issue with a site and duplicate content due to the way it was structured. This took a few weeks to fix and Google actually cached the page several times before they allowed it to rank for their search terms again. A Painful process.

I also had an issue with a client after their host decided to change servers and changed the structure of the site to remove the w w w. and to make all sub-pages https ://.

The site pretty much disappeared from the SERP's. I fixed it right away with the host, changed the settings in Webmaster tools (to take the w w w. version) and it fixed it the next time it cached the site.

I did also see a client that signed up to a dodgy directory submission service that had a bucket load of links pointing to their site in a very short period of time. This had a fairly negative impact.

[paulgl]

There could be numerous other things than a penalty.

Like maybe other sites were just better for a time, then
they dropped off. Oh wait. They of course would be
screaming about a penalty now.

I don't think site structure is the same as what
people refer to as penalties. You got dinged, maybe,
because the structure was just horrible. That's not
a penalty.

Too many intangibles that people forget or ignore.

Like I said, the site(s) that you replaced after 6 months
are now talking about what gave them a penalty. Let's
call it the GeorgR. Penalty.

But, some will be glad that you finally saw the light.
Be wary of the light.

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel.
Was just a freight train coming your way.

Paul

[Mike Anthony]

Give it up Paul. There are known penalties and yes there are just on page factors and other issues. Its not one or the other. This whole denial thing is so silly. When you report a site for spam what do you think happens if they agree that its spam?

Thats right a penalty. I'm sure there must be some place that you can go online and argue that the world is flat. Just about the same thing. Penalties definitely do exist

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Like maybe other sites were just better for a time, then
they dropped off. Oh wait. They of course would be
screaming about a penalty now.

There are penalties or filters which drop you back a large number of positions and place you around obviously irrelevant sites. It isn't a case of being overtaken in the rankings where you might drop 3, 4, even a page of results.

There is a lot of talk on other forums about people experiencing them. I've experienced them. I had a strong site dropped back to the last few pages of results - with other previously strong competition. My page was not less relevant than the 900+ results in front of it. The presumed answer was the page was returned in a good position and then filtered off to the end of the results with the other previously strong competition.

After about 6 months this behaviour disappeared and the site returned to where it once stood - at the head of the queue.

During the penalty the page would not be returned for any unique string in the content - always pushed to the back. Other pages on my site which were no relevant were being returned ahead of the penalised/filtered result.

I've got no doubt that there are penalties and filters exist and I'm not so ignorant to think my site was just beaten by a better result.

[David Judge]

I disagree Paul, especially when you can see a drop in traffic and SERP's for a period of time, make measurable adjustments and see it correct itself and then hold it's existing position.

I see that as a penalty.

[dcristo]

Of course there are google penalties, anyone who denies it is a clueless idiot.

It sounds like a lot of people experienced the same thing you did this month. Those who were hit by the panda update in February recovered somewhat mid October.

[GeorgR.]

#3 for me, without a doubt. I don't make "thin" sites..but did some "dumb" things in the past. Mainly, if you buy some "link blasts" and similar... the friendly, neighborhood indian guy doesnt care about link velocity or anchor text variation - he will blast your order and finish your order of several thousand links within an hour.

No doubt this is what brought me in trouble - and as far as i remember, for my two sites there which got penalized in the past it was always the same service i ordered and which got me in trouble.

I simply got careless, thought that sites which are 4 or 5 years old and have been established for some time are prone to the penalties, but they are not!



The gap is exactly 6 months..and the start/end was instant, so it's not a natural thing nor anything algorithmic. On a positive note, seems rankings are better then ever NOW..but that was expected.

I also cannot agree MORE with how extremely important link velocity is as well as anchor text variation...


Edit: As for #1 ("Penalties for certain high search vol. search terms")..i would not be so sure about that. I ranked sites for "super high search volume keywords" and didn't see a penalty..as long as the content is allright and relevant you are fine. But you can screw up ANY site (at least for some months) by doing stupid things like link blasts...and therefore i can with almost certainty say that it is A MYTH that established and "old" sites are prone to this.

Some "SEOs" will tell you it's ok to "blast" a site once it's 1+ years old...but obviously this is not true.

[Ben Armstrong]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

There are penalties or filters which drop you back a large number of positions and place you around obviously irrelevant sites. It isn't a case of being overtaken in the rankings where you might drop 3, 4, even a page of results.

There is a lot of talk on other forums about people experiencing them. I've experienced them. I had a strong site dropped back to the last few pages of results - with other previously strong competition. My page was not less relevant than the 900+ results in front of it. The presumed answer was the page was returned in a good position and then filtered off to the end of the results with the other previously strong competition.

After about 6 months this behaviour disappeared and the site returned to where it once stood - at the head of the queue.

During the penalty the page would not be returned for any unique string in the content - always pushed to the back. Other pages on my site which were no relevant were being returned ahead of the penalised/filtered result.

I've got no doubt that there are penalties and filters exist and I'm not so ignorant to think my site was just beaten by a better result.

I completely agree and have experienced exactly what you've described with one of my sites (EDIT: I should actually say "one of my pages" rather than "sites" as it was just the home page that appeared to be penalized)

[Fraggler]

Yeah, I meant page too. It wasn't the homepage though.

[Gary Becks]

I also cannot agree MORE with how extremely important link velocity is as well as anchor text variation

Just want to note that from my experience anchor text variation can be manipulated. I always had problems when varying anchor text to much so I have really experimented with this a bit.

From my findings plural and and singular versions of your keyword are considered to be a variant along with capitalization differences. So,

Weight Loss
weight loss
weight Loss
wEIght LoSS

are all treated as variants along with use of different tenses. This has at least been my experience and has worked for me overall.

Some "SEOs" will tell you it's ok to "blast" a site once it's 1+ years old...but obviously this is not true.

Can't speak on a site being "1" year old but I can say for sure that I have blasted the hel out of some domains that I bought that were pr 4 + and were between 4 - 7 years old and saw significant results across the board with them. These sites did of course already have some strong links to begin with that were not related to the keywords I was targeting.

[WealthWithin]

Why do we even argue on this? Penalties do exist and it's a fact.

Proof:

When are penalties lifted? - YouTube

[VATANIST]

Is there any chance to get this kind of service againts black hat seo developed websites? Building huge amount backlinks in one day and remove all after a week or so... Anybody provide who can provide me this? Pls PM me...