Is This a Google Slap or What?

by Sayed
20 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hi Fellow Warriors,

One of my sites was gone from Google today..
It didn't disappear but instead of Google ranking my posts URLs till last night, Google ranks now the tags of the posts!!!
Of course tags are very bad in rankings and this cost me a lot really.
My site is not new (7 months old with PR1) with over 600 results in search engines.
The actual posts URLs are still indexed but they are not ranked

So, what is this? And how I overcome this?

Thanks in advance
#google #slap
  • Profile picture of the author oneshotmarketing
    Personally.. I never had tags of posts ranking on Google but, what have you done recently? Or, could be just a dance.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sayed
      Originally Posted by oneshotmarketing View Post

      Personally.. I never had tags of posts ranking on Google but, what have you done recently? Or, could be just a dance.
      I'm not sure if it can be a dance as this affected all my keywords (around 100) not only few.
      For example:
      I was ranking as follows:
      product name: 2
      product name review 5
      product name bonus 3
      All the above was the actual page URL

      Now the tags of the keywords only are ranking beyond 30

      One thing only happened 2 days ago that Socrates theme sites were not loading due to a problem in the theme server. This caused my site to go down for some hours but I don't think this is the problem as other sites were down but never affected in rankings
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  • Profile picture of the author Sayed
    Hello, any help?
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOExpertSydney
    hmm.. it happen when Google thinks your site as link farm or copy content. You just remove all ad sense, copy check, out bond link remove and then go for the reconsideration.
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    • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
      Originally Posted by SEOExpertSydney View Post

      hmm.. it happen when Google thinks your site as link farm or copy content. You just remove all ad sense, copy check, out bond link remove and then go for the reconsideration.
      Thats only if the penalty was imposed manually which this sort of penalty is most likely not.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sayed
      Originally Posted by SEOExpertSydney View Post

      hmm.. it happen when Google thinks your site as link farm or copy content. You just remove all ad sense, copy check, out bond link remove and then go for the reconsideration.
      I don't think so as I don't have adsense and all of my content is unique and the posts are over 600 words each and some over 1000.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkbuildr
    your tag pages shouldn't be indexed at all...that'll cause dupe problems with G. Noindex thos bitches as well as category and archive pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sayed
      Originally Posted by linkbuildr View Post

      your tag pages shouldn't be indexed at all...that'll cause dupe problems with G. Noindex thos bitches as well as category and archive pages.
      I'm not sure if this is the case as they are indexed for over 6 months with no effect and also I heard that Google gives high power to the categories
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  • Profile picture of the author IMhelper
    One thing only happened 2 days ago that Socrates theme sites were not loading due to a problem in the theme server. This caused my site to go down for some hours but I don't think this is the problem as other sites were down but never affected in rankings
    I think it should be a crawl error and your ranking disappear cause of temporary Google dance.

    Don't worry! do some quality backlinking or social bookmarking and anyhow try to bring google bot to your quality page to index. Then see what happen!
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    • Profile picture of the author SeoSarah
      Why do you allow google to index the tags at all? That's pointless. No-index them, this might solve the problem.
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      • Profile picture of the author Sayed
        Originally Posted by SeoSarah View Post

        Why do you allow google to index the tags at all? That's pointless. No-index them, this might solve the problem.
        How should I do this for all my posts?
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        • Profile picture of the author SeoSarah
          Originally Posted by Sayed View Post

          How should I do this for all my posts?
          What kind of blog is it? If it's a wordpress blog, there are plugins like All in One Seo Pack which have an option to no-index the tags. Are you using one of those seo plugins?
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      • Profile picture of the author roady
        well, I have noticed a weird problem on my side as well. Since day 1 of my website, I have set up noindex via all in one seo pack for my tags, categories etc etc. But recently I did happen to find some links coming via tags.
        Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author Sayed
    I use Platinum SEO plugin, I made all noindex now and lets see
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  • Profile picture of the author SarahZT
    You should noindex your tag and category pages - pretty much all SEO plugins enable you to do this. I usually nonidex tag, category, archive and search pages too.... it's content you don't want to get ranked for!
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  • Profile picture of the author Sayed
    I found a post saying that content locker plugins may cause a punishment from Google, is this true?
    I added a copy-protect plugin and log-in lockdown plugins about 2 weeks ago
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  • Profile picture of the author Sayed
    Nothing till now
    I used this tool
    Google Adsense Sandbox Preview Tool with Text, Image and Video Ads - Leaderboard, Skyscraper, Rectangle and Square formats
    And the site shows no ads which means that it is in the sandbox!!!!
    Any ideas?
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  • Profile picture of the author Coffeeconsumer
    Are you sure your site has actually dropped totally from the SERPS? I had a site that dropped from position 4 to about position 700 but was still indexed. If I wasn't rank tracking that deep I would have said it had been dropped.

    After removing low quality content and continuing link building it took about 6 weeks before it returned to page 1. Eight weeks on I'm ranking in position 2.
    Signature
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    • Profile picture of the author Sayed
      Originally Posted by Coffeeconsumer View Post

      Are you sure your site has actually dropped totally from the SERPS? I had a site that dropped from position 4 to about position 700 but was still indexed. If I wasn't rank tracking that deep I would have said it had been dropped.

      After removing low quality content and continuing link building it took about 6 weeks before it returned to page 1. Eight weeks on I'm ranking in position 2.
      No, it didn't disappear, it is still indexed but instead of the actual URLs what is shown in the SERPs is the tags URLs

      If it is allowed here is my site:
      Affiloguide - Affiliate Marketer's Ultimate Guide

      When you type site:affiloguide.com, it shows over 700 results
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  • Profile picture of the author Johnabrahamsp
    Sometimes ranking may fluctuate. But in the case if you are not showing up, then you might be banned from Google for any reason.
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