Penalties from Google

looking for guidance.

[rober62]

Hello, I haven't post much but find this board very informative. Not sure if this is the proper thread.

I'd like to know more about what happens after Google penalizes a site. Is there a recovery?

Say, I got a site that hides links to other owned sites in an attempt to have G spider them all and for some reason I decide links should not be visible. But after a while, I see the rankings on the hidden-link sites start to drop further and further away from their original positions...

Could this be the result of penalization?
In which case, will making the links visible help regain some of the terrain lost?

[xbase234]

Yes, I'd say you have been penalized.

Read through this site for about a week solid, and you'll get an idea about what is, and what is not acceptable. Hidden urls - not acceptable. Hidden text on same color background - not acceptable.

Then go back and correct your pages. Then wait. After you've waited awhile and nothing has happened, wait some more. Eventually you will get back in.

[rober62]

Thanks.

Fair enough. Want to play by the rules. If it was good before I F*cked up, why mess up?

Hope that the 'waiting' isn't too long.

[xbase234]

If you make your pages legit, Google will probably let you back in. I'd bet it won't take more than a few months.

Good luck.

[pageoneresults]

rober62, hidden links are not found by filters. They are usually reported to Google, investigated, and then a manual penalty involved if applicable.

What you are probably seeing is the effects of crosslinking. Use the site search function and enter crosslinking, you'll find a large variety of topics surrounding the subject. In your case, you've got a double whammy going on; hidden links and crosslinking, the kiss of death if someone reports you. If the sites don't have a PR0 penalty, then clean em up and get away from the crosslinking. What you are probably seeing is the shift in the algo and less weight given to the crosslinking tactic.

[robertito62]

Thank you all. (I think I have logged on under my home account > rober62 is the same as robertito62, not trying to fool anyone here)

pageoneresults:
But what happens when you DO own a number of real sites that revolve around the same theme?

Wouldn't you want you surfers to navigate through them, just as alternatives to the main site?

Can't these sites be interlinked?

And I am not saying "hidden", but have a navigational structure at the bottom, for everyone to see, so that surfers can surf through them if they wish.

Also, I have another situation going on.
On checking my stats, I see referrals from google at a high number for one of my keywords. But clicking on the referral URL I get to page 31 of this particular search.

My site shows up somewhere as the #300. How can I get 35 clicks on that link? Somth'g wrong here. How many surfers would go all the way to page 30 in search for what they want? I mean, 30 pages, 35 uniques, all in one day?

Is there anyone here more experienced than me, who can throw some light on this? txs.

[Alison]

You won't have any problem if you have genuine inter-related site oages that offer genuine links to other URLs through to other users.
Ranks at about #30 or less you will definately have a problem driving traffic to though ... anything less than a top 10 I find totally unsatisfactory....you need to do some more research / work on your pages or get some help on that one. Good luck :)

[Marval]

Robertito62..do you have access to your server logs? You might find that the actual term you are finding in your stats is part of a phrase that the surfers are actually looking for. Some stats programs will pick out a single term from a search phrase and use that as the referring term.
Although in our mutual biz, I have found that many hits from a term that was 360 in the Serps...dont know why they'd go that far unless they just hit the 10 number on the menu a few times to get past the obvious spam that seems to plague some of our terms.
Based on knowledge of your sites I'd also be willing to bet that 35 is not that high of a number for search terms going to your sites?

[deft_spyder]

I have to say I'm confused by this. It seems that the only site that should be penalized is the one 'linking'. I can't see how it would be ok for the sites that are 'linked' to be penalized.

If this was the case, I could hide links on a site to all my competitors and watch their PR drop.

The only thing I can see that would hurt them is loosing the 1 backlink from the offending site.

[Marval]

Have one other question...in your original post you mentioned ranking drops leading to you thinking penalization...did you mean PR drops or Serp ranking drops? Big difference.

[robertito62]

Thank you all.

Marval, it was a SERPs drop.

When I originally posted I had very little experience. Sites came back.

Possibly, the sites in question (the linked to ones) disappeared because of everflux or deep crawl and due to my inexperience I thought I got penalized (hidden links). Deft_spyder, you are right. It didn't make sense...otherwise anyone could do some damage out there.

The hidden links had the pupose of driving spiders to newly developed pages and the reason to hide them was to let surfers focus on links with a sales pitch, as opposed to divert their attention and route them away from our full page ads.

So problem solved basically.

"...they just hit the 10 number on the menu a few times to get past the obvious spam that seems to plague some of our terms..."

That makes a lot of sense Marval, since we happen to have some sophisticated surfers navigating our (yours as well) sites, no?

In Vegas on Sunday. I see you'll be one of the speakers. Let's see what happens.