Incredible - Google Penguin Ranks Blank Site - Cloaked Even! - How to Handle
- SEO |
I've got a website www dot {keywords} dot com. This was a cloaked doorway site use IP cloaking. It redirects to the target site if not a search spider. In order to avoid Google penalty we had disabled the cloaking for Google to be safe. The domain fell off Google results and was buried for last couple of years way down in the results. This is fine as target site was ranking #2 for the keywords. However about a couple months ago, with the Penguin update, all of the sudden target site goes to #11 and this unmaintained old doorway site goes from obscurity to #6! This is not an obscure keyword. It is a name brand. Global searches 22,000/month according to Keyword Tool.
What we didn't realize is that we actually didn't disable the IP cloaking for Google. Instead we just broke it so the site returns NO DATA for the home page NO CONTENT! Not sure where they are getting the title from, but the site description under the title on the SERPs is BLANK! We use Webmaster Tools to see that the site home page is returning NOTHING. This is amazing that Google is ranking it #6, but this is a testament to the fact the keyword as domain name is still an EXTREMELY powerful ranking factor.
We've been devoting energies to other projects other than SEO but have now gotten around to addressing this. I am amazed it is still racked #6 and that site has not been banned with Google manual review to see it is cloaked to redirect browsers to another site. This can't last much longer.
I'm wondering what is the opinion on the best way to leverage this situation? I'm thinking of several options:
a) Implement content for cloaked page and still 301 redirect actual browsers. If this is discovered by Google though, will the target site be penalized in addition to the cloaked site being banned? If so, this seems too risky. Target site is VERY important e-commerce site.
b) Implement content for cloaked site, remove cloaking, and link to target site in natural way. This is what we did for a while. We had a 'Dealers' page (Where to Buy) and put very poor dealers or dealers with broken websites and then mixed in the target website. Another way would be to use a banner ad but this would not pass through most of the traffic. It seems Google is smart enough now that we cannot have buy buttons for multiple products link to target site as then site is easily identified as a doorway site.
c) Implement separate e-commerce site with separate unique content but same fulfillment operation. This is very time consuming to setup and competing dealers may complain to the manufacturer we are using a domain very similar to manufacturers domain and not our own.
d) Safest/Easiest? Make 301 redirect for search spiders also, so send all kink juice to target domain and say bye bye to keywords.com domain site. I noticed Bing is not ranking it at all so it seems Bing must have already done manual review to see the cloaking. But it seems backlink profile is very very week, so I'm afraid 301 redirect will result in dropping this doorway site from SERPS with minimal improvement for target site. If we try it, and improvement on target site is minimal, can we remove 301 and Google will re-instate the domain back into the SERPs? How long will it take to go back and forth? AHrefs overview looks very weak, no new backlinks which makes sense as site has been 301 redirect for 3 years. Looks like:
Ref pages 28
Total Backlinks 29
Ref IPs 11
Ref subnets 11
Ref domains: 12
.gov 0
.edu 0
.com 8
.net 0
.org 1
Backlinks types:
text 28
nofollow 12
redirect 1
image 0
frame 0
form 0
.gov 0
.edu
Any advice is MUCH appreciated.
What we didn't realize is that we actually didn't disable the IP cloaking for Google. Instead we just broke it so the site returns NO DATA for the home page NO CONTENT! Not sure where they are getting the title from, but the site description under the title on the SERPs is BLANK! We use Webmaster Tools to see that the site home page is returning NOTHING. This is amazing that Google is ranking it #6, but this is a testament to the fact the keyword as domain name is still an EXTREMELY powerful ranking factor.
We've been devoting energies to other projects other than SEO but have now gotten around to addressing this. I am amazed it is still racked #6 and that site has not been banned with Google manual review to see it is cloaked to redirect browsers to another site. This can't last much longer.
I'm wondering what is the opinion on the best way to leverage this situation? I'm thinking of several options:
a) Implement content for cloaked page and still 301 redirect actual browsers. If this is discovered by Google though, will the target site be penalized in addition to the cloaked site being banned? If so, this seems too risky. Target site is VERY important e-commerce site.
b) Implement content for cloaked site, remove cloaking, and link to target site in natural way. This is what we did for a while. We had a 'Dealers' page (Where to Buy) and put very poor dealers or dealers with broken websites and then mixed in the target website. Another way would be to use a banner ad but this would not pass through most of the traffic. It seems Google is smart enough now that we cannot have buy buttons for multiple products link to target site as then site is easily identified as a doorway site.
c) Implement separate e-commerce site with separate unique content but same fulfillment operation. This is very time consuming to setup and competing dealers may complain to the manufacturer we are using a domain very similar to manufacturers domain and not our own.
d) Safest/Easiest? Make 301 redirect for search spiders also, so send all kink juice to target domain and say bye bye to keywords.com domain site. I noticed Bing is not ranking it at all so it seems Bing must have already done manual review to see the cloaking. But it seems backlink profile is very very week, so I'm afraid 301 redirect will result in dropping this doorway site from SERPS with minimal improvement for target site. If we try it, and improvement on target site is minimal, can we remove 301 and Google will re-instate the domain back into the SERPs? How long will it take to go back and forth? AHrefs overview looks very weak, no new backlinks which makes sense as site has been 301 redirect for 3 years. Looks like:
Ref pages 28
Total Backlinks 29
Ref IPs 11
Ref subnets 11
Ref domains: 12
.gov 0
.edu 0
.com 8
.net 0
.org 1
Backlinks types:
text 28
nofollow 12
redirect 1
image 0
frame 0
form 0
.gov 0
.edu
Any advice is MUCH appreciated.