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Deep dive into a Penguin 2.0 Victim's Spam Penalty

by Joe118
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Note that the title of this thread is th title of the original article, not my doing...

--Joe

Here's the link: Deep Dive into a Penguin 2.0 Victim - Penalty Analysis and lot's of spammy links - LRT Link Research Tools LRT Link Research Tools
#deep #dive #penalty #penguin #spam #victim
  • Profile picture of the author jxam69
    Thank you for posting this - although there's only one site in the case study, the evidence presented and the interpretation look quite sound to me.

    The conclusions are ones I would follow up on and investigate further if my site had been hit by Penguin 2.0.

    BTW - the idea that a 301 can transfer negative value as well as positive is something I had suspected would happen, and I expect it will happen within a domain, not just between domains.
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    • Profile picture of the author squadron
      Originally Posted by jxam69 View Post

      BTW - the idea that a 301 can transfer negative value as well as positive is something I had suspected would happen, and I expect it will happen within a domain, not just between domains.
      If that were true, 301 redirects would be a great source for negative SEO. Buy a banned domain cheap in a false name, redirect it to your competitor and watch the result !
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      • Profile picture of the author jxam69
        Originally Posted by squadron View Post

        If that were true, 301 redirects would be a great source for negative SEO. Buy a banned domain cheap in a false name, redirect it to your competitor and watch the result !
        Yes, but as we've seen, Penguin has had the effect of making Negative SEO easier - so I certainly wouldn't rule it out from having some effect.

        It could be done in such a way that the negative effect of the 301 is only transferred if there are a body of other spammy signals present - this would prevent the simple case of pointing a penalized domain at a competitor.

        They've got some really smart people at Google, I'm sure they could come up with even better ideas than mine.
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        • Profile picture of the author Joe118
          Originally Posted by jxam69 View Post

          Yes, but as we've seen, Penguin has had the effect of making Negative SEO easier - so I certainly wouldn't rule it out from having some effect.

          It could be done in such a way that the negative effect of the 301 is only transferred if there are a body of other spammy signals present - this would prevent the simple case of pointing a penalized domain at a competitor.

          They've got some really smart people at Google, I'm sure they could come up with even better ideas than mine.
          That logic is faulty

          If 301-redirects did transfer penalties then...

          If I have a penalized domain and I want to recover my ranking, I'd 301-redirect it at my competition and start a new site.
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          • Profile picture of the author jxam69
            Originally Posted by Joe118 View Post

            That logic is faulty

            If 301-redirects did transfer penalties then...

            If I have a penalized domain and I want to recover my ranking, I'd 301-redirect it at my competition and start a new site.
            I don't see any fault in my logic - you may disagree with the desirability of such a situation, but your disagreement in no way relates to the validity of my logic

            I'm not sure I made myself clear enough - I was trying to say that they could implement it in such a way that the penalty transfer would only take effect if there were significant other spammy signals associated with the domain the 301 is pointing at.

            This would not be fool-proof, but then neither are many of Google's other algorithms.

            If your assumption was true, then it would stand to reason that Google wouldn't apply penalties for spammy link profiles at all, because a 3rd party can take unilateral action to create them - but penalizing the beneficiaries of spammy backlinking is exactly what Penguin appears to do.
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            • Profile picture of the author Joe118
              You wrote:

              the domain the 301 is pointing at.

              OK yes, I misread your message and you're right with that one. No faulty logic

              --Joe

              Originally Posted by jxam69 View Post

              I don't see any fault in my logic - you may disagree with the desirability of such a situation, but your disagreement in no way relates to the validity of my logic

              I'm not sure I made myself clear enough - I was trying to say that they could implement it in such a way that the penalty transfer would only take effect if there were significant other spammy signals associated with the domain the 301 is pointing at.

              This would not be fool-proof, but then neither are many of Google's other algorithms.

              If your assumption was true, then it would stand to reason that Google wouldn't apply penalties for spammy link profiles at all, because a 3rd party can take unilateral action to create them - but penalizing the beneficiaries of spammy backlinking is exactly what Penguin appears to do.
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