Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
[webmasterworld.com...]
My website has plenty of outbound links, but they are on relevant pages. The problem my site has always had, was a lack of "inbound links." I got tired of searching for people to link to me (with all the spammy sites around) and gave up. So my pages have acquired some links naturally I guess(and I'll bet I still don't have more than 30 inbound links for the whole site) Still have a PR4, which I've had since it disappeared in Nov.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]
>The same thing seems to be happening consistently. If you disproportionately link a lot of different, off-site pages, more than your own internal pages, you look like a scraper site and get penalized. Throw in Adsense ads on the pages to boot and it appears to be a sure kill.<
Now that sound very interesting. Need to take a look at in the morning.
goodnight
It's down for me too.
If you disproportionately link a lot of different, off-site pages, more than your own internal pages, you look a little like a scraper site and get a little penalized (with some exceptions apparently, like if you're over 4 yrs old).
I tried a test a couple of weeks ago, not knowing anything crazy like Bourbon would be going on. I added a directory (folder) to an established site, with only outbound links, except to the other pages of the directory. (No links to the home page, or otherpages on the site outside of this specific directory (folder).)
This section of the site KEEPS RANKING HIGHER... day in and day out. Within 48 hours of posting the index page was in the top ten, this week all (four) of the pages have hit the top ten for their keywords (2.4mil to 8.9mil results). Each page has 3 internal links, and between 25 and 65 external links, with only a para. description from linked to site, if any. No unique text, two inbound links to the directory, and excessive outbound links. GO FIGGURE...
Not sure what to make of it. Thought it might prove helpful to someone.
Justin
Mysite is also finally out of the sandbox at present, after 9-10 months! Haven't done a thing to it in that time except some inbounds.
Wow...I'm out of the shadows!
If you disproportionately link a lot of different, off-site pages, more than your own internal pages, you look a little like a scraper site and get a little penalized (with some exceptions apparently, like if you're over 4 yrs old).
I have over 400 pages, PR0 to PR6 each with over 100 external links (some with 500+) and have suffered no penalty. It was first indexed by Google in May '02--maybe the cutoff is three years. :)
I do extensively hand edit my pages but to a bot would look like a scraper...
A.
Now I can stop trying to fix things I aint broken!
Precisely! If you reread what you just wrote, "WITH AFFILIATE LINKS" stands out. The point I've been trying to make is that the page (which just happens to be older) HAS MORE EXTERNAL LINKS than the other (newer) page and thus was penalized more. Or am I misunderstanding something?
I just checked, and one of the high-ranking City2 pages (#1 earlier today, #2 at the moment) has the same number of external links as the equivalent City1 page (which isn't even in the top 100 for the comparable keyphrase, even though several of my pages that link to it are).
I'm not reading anything into the disparity--I think it's probably just another example of Google's flakiness these days. Even if Google's SERPs were 99% perfect, one in a hundred would be weird.
The three rules needed to get dumped SEEM to be:
1. High proportion of external links (including affiliate links) to internal links and/or content on the page. (exact proportion unknown)
2. Domain newer than 4 years. (over 4 MAY or may not be exempted if 1 & 3 exist)
3. Adsense Ads on the page.
In some cases 1&2 alone seem enough to get a slight penalty. Add in #3 after you have the first 2 and it appears to be a sure 90+ rank position penalty.
I'm still waiting to hear from someone with a bona fide exception (either breaking all the rules and scoring highly, or not breaking them and still getting dumped on this update - I guess there COULD still be more additional rules that'll get you dumped...).
As mentioned earlier there also appears to be an exact title match penalty of some sort.
We've decided to start some experimenting of our own before throwing in the towel completely. We've chosen a few of the formerly high-ranking, and oft spidered pages and in one set we're removing just Adsense, and in another just all the external links, and in the third set, both. We'll see what the verdict is after the next spidering.
-- Roger
In my niche...two of my competitors...both old (9-10 yrs) sites...dropped out of sight. Both had alot of outbound links. One looked like a link farm. Before bourbon both were nowhere to be found on Yahoo or MSN and I always wondered why google had them in the top 10. Now I can't even pull them up by their company name.
Further qualification...every site in the top 15 on google for the money keyphrase are at least 6 years old...mine is 11 yrs old.
Yes, you are correct... The domain is over 5 years old, and there is no AddCents... If that is the pattern, at lease it's somewhere to start thinking.
Justin
* Sorry, I don't list anything very meaningful in my profile...
** Maybe we should change to AdDontMakeNoCents.
It fits nicely when you figure, the scraper sites are only there to serve Adsense ads. So if you are a "directory" site which looks like a Scraper, but you don't have Adsense ads (or perhaps one of another list of similar ads or affiliate programs) then maybe you're NOT a scraper after all and you get passed through. But if you aren't a directory site (just kinda look like one by having alot of offsite links), and you happen to serve Adsense ads, then you lose anyway.
My directory is supported via Adsense and the update hadn't affected the traffic, neither to better nor to worth. Wrong theory, IMO. And yes, my domain is one year old. Maybe it's the pagerank increase that kept the traffic stream as is? pagerank up + bourbon down = 0?
I'm still waiting to hear from someone with a bona fide exception (either breaking all the rules and scoring highly, or not breaking them and still getting dumped on this update - I guess there COULD still be more additional rules that'll get you dumped...).
I guess you missed my earlier post Mike, scroll back a page.
A.
I'm still waiting to hear from someone with a bona fide exception (either breaking all the rules and scoring highly, or not breaking them and still getting dumped on this update
Facts with my directory -
1. Domain Registered - Oct-2003
2. Run Adsense? Yes
3. Maximum no. of external links? 35
4. No. of internal links? 45
5. External Backlinks? (To about 10% of the pages)
6. Update Effect? Almost nil. Traffic is still same, ranks for few of my benchmark keywords just the same.
Hope this helps.
>The three rules needed to get dumped SEEM to be:
1. High proportion of external links (including affiliate links) to internal links and/or content on the page. (exact proportion unknown)
2. Domain newer than 4 years. (over 4 MAY or may not be exempted if 1 & 3 exist)
3. Adsense Ads on the page. <
So far so good :-)
Lets take a look at this one excluding affiliate links for the moment and concentrating only on outbound and internal links:
>1. High proportion of external links (including affiliate links) to internal links and/or content on the page. (exact proportion unknown).<
Have done some counting for the pages which preserved their ranking and those lost it. I can see that the number outbound links shouldn't exceed the number of internal links. Maybe its a factor of:
Maximum Outbound links number either equal or preferably 10% less than the number of internal links.
As to affiliate links I'm looking at present at pages with affiliate programs reviews, both those which kept their ranking on the serps and those which lost it. Shall keep this thread posted.
As to AdSense, It might be a factor among other factors to identify the target pages but not a factor which alone cause a page to be penalized.
Stupid, Pointless (IMO) Mozilla Googlebot is about my site at the moment eating up bandwidth. Be nice if the crawled data was added to the index in this dance.
Facts with my directory -1. Domain Registered - Oct-2003
2. Run Adsense? Yes
3. Maximum no. of external links? 35
4. No. of internal links? 45
5. External Backlinks? (To about 10% of the pages)
6. Update Effect? Almost nil. Traffic is still same, ranks for few of my benchmark keywords just the same.Hope this helps.
McMohan
Hows your site position on Yahoo's SERPs?
>Stupid, Pointless (IMO) Mozilla Googlebot is about my site at the moment eating up bandwidth.<
Maybe its just a coincident, both Googlebot and Mediapartners-Google (AdSense) have been visiting my site intensively since yesterday.
Anybody talking about a fat lady at the streets of Norwich ;-)
McMohanHows your site position on Yahoo's SERPs?
Overall, not as good as in Google.
Think we have a way to go though (cant check PR no more :( - at the moment)
With reference to EFV Soup theory of sites bubbling up and down again - perhaps true - but sites seem to bubble up from nowhere and then completely disappear. Perhaps they need to turn the heat down to a lighter simmer.
I wonder if this is a coincidence, or if a gaining/losing a backlink from the Google Directory could explain the rises and falls some sites are experiencing? Or having backlinks which were included or dropped from the Google Directory?
Just curious.
Older sites using re-directs and black hat, back in the index. Cant believe it. They had it right yesterday.
Now its like they have turned the age filter up. Ie if your sites over a certain age it ranks higher regardless of what on page techniques they are using or what quality they put out.
My sector is currently returning very poor results and its one of the largest commercial sectors on the net.
Re-directs, directory sites, spam pages, roll up, roll up its all back in the index.
Priceless......
