Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
First thing I want to clarify is what this pheomenon looks like: your domain used to rank well for a number of searches, and now all those searchs show you at position #31, top of page 4. The very best test to discover if you are infected is this: do a search on your domain name itself - type example.com into the Google search box, a search where you naturally expect to be #1. If you have this particular penalty against you, then even that search will show you at position #31.
No other types of suspected penalties are relevant to this thread. If you are not showing #31 for a search on your domain name, then this discussion does not apply to your site.
This position #31 penalty is not at all widespread. I brought up the topic all over at Las Vegas PubCon this past week -- and I barely found anyone, even in this seriously hooked-up crowd, who had a clue what I was talking about. And for the few who did, it was because they read this thread, not because they're bumping into it on their sites or with their clients.
Adam commented a bit on google groups but said he would not comment more because of google secrets.
This seems to be the official comment from Google: no comment. Even with 25 Google employees in attendance at PubCon, no further comments could be heard. As I said, the crowd here had no attention for the topic either.
Although some who suffer this experience appear to be mystified, I sense that the majority have quite a good sense of what's happening - what past marketing approaches may have brought down wrath from Mountain View. It clearly IS associated with practices that were aimed directly at manipulating the Google SERPs, rather than honest marketing practices. Maybe the site owner doesn't know what someone else in the company did in their name, and maybe they're just dissembling.
It seems to me the position #31 penalty is a warning shot -- and a very unusual one at that, quite loud and low across the bow. I believe it will not be a long term feature of the way Google functions. I do not have any sense that new sites will be contracting Google Flu #31 in an ongoing fashion. One morning, not too far from now, we will wake up and not see this.
Until that morning, I think patience and good hygiene in online marketing are the way to go. Scour the Google Webmaster Guidelines, and demand full disclosure from all staff and third parties involved in online marketing/SEO.
[edited by: tedster at 3:49 pm (utc) on April 5, 2007]
But do I remove the bought links and hope that that was the cause of the penalty and get back to #10 in Google or keep the links and remain in the top ten in MSN.
I guess the real? is for anyone who has escaped this penalty how long did it take for you to get back to your previous position in Google after you made changes.
Thanks
Might be some correlation with the "Massive change in SERPS?" topic thread here..
you are saying you are getting terms in spots #1-#10 on page 1? Great! Is this normal flux for you or have you been -30 on all search terms as the rest of us?
I have definite -30 and have had it a long time. For months I saw most everything at 31 and below.
After The Man started this dicussion on minus 30 my mentor confirmed I had it.
The cause is priarily a severe case of SSS (Sh--y Site Syndrome) that resulted from years of neglect. Add a few other things in too.
I have been tearing the site apart, deleting, updating, changing.
A few days ago I started seeing some visitors coming from page one and page two for some search strings. And then they would shift back to 31 plus.
When I mentioned this to my mentor he said that he has been watching the site and it is bouncing and added some words about getting off my dead butt and making more changes faster.
My site is changing too fast for me to pin any one type change as a possible cause for the bounce.
[edited by: AustrianOak at 10:06 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2006]
Did google impose a random penalty (20+ to 3x+) instead of the 30+?
this one there's no one penalty that fits all...
3 months at 31
then 29 for a few weeks.
then gradual improvement back to where i was.
yes, I am up on some but not all searches, I am recovering on least popular ones first.
I have:-
cleaned all dupe content.
removed syndicated content
added several hundred much better content pages.
removed thin affilaite shopping
removed links that were not really so much for people, but for search engiens. did more than just remove the links, i removed the entire links pages and 404ed them, not 301ed.
fixed all broken html
fixed accidental hidden anchors.
polite resubmission request, every 3 weeks.
loaded new google sitemap
is anyone else now in the +28 club
Another domain I watch has slipped to #44 - yet another full page down the slope. And happily some of you are reporting gaining ground. So something is moving here, and the ice is breaking up apparently, some domains heading upstream and some heading down.
As I said earlier in the thread, I think this particular form of penalty will go away in a little while. I assume it will be replaced by something less obvious, in some cases at least. And for others, the issue itself may vanish thanks to repair work of various kinds.
Of course, Google does have a long memory for historical factors, so I also assume that once bitten by this little demon, a domain will be on a very short leash.
thanks and good luck,
weird: if I search for domain.com (no "") with &filter=0 I am #13...with "" the filter=0 makes no difference at all.
Let's hope something good comes of this..
I ahve not finished my site changes, I'm continuing to make them, more content every day, but major structual changes made 1 month, 2 months and 3 months ago, different changes as I found different problems
AustrianOak
yes, I think placing at 26-29 an improvement and a sign of things to come. No hard evidence, but can think of no other reason for the change
OR
just guessing? :)
18 months ago, I had a site reach position 4 for a competitive search. I did it with a big link directory, and a huge home page site map inside a small scrolling div.
I think the big link push, with the huge amount of repetitive anchor text on the home page, tripped a version of the +30 filter.
3 months later, after I had fixed everything I could find, including a whole heap of stuff like dupe content from broken cms i was not aware of... the site went 29 26 23 19 13 7 3 over the next 6 weeks.
I did not recover rankings overnight, as if a lifting of a filter.
I am not 100% sure that it was the +30 filter then, as no others suffered it, and I had nothing to compare it too.
I do remember going from page 1 to page 4, but don't remember if I did for main keywords AND domain name or just main keywords.
Have performed site improvements similar to Nippi and resubmit every month. Out of interest Nippi, do you get any response (even automated) from your site inclusion requests?
any response, would mean they had acknowledged one of the changes had made the difference, or a combination of some or all of them.
If google were going to do that, they may as well speak up in the first place, and adam has already said, they aren't going to, too much of a risk webmasters will use the knowledge to subvert google.
I note a post yesterday in G Groups from Adam Lasnik, in specific response to a question about whether -31 penalties were manually applied:
"there are lines we just cannot cross with regards to getting into specific details... in order to protect our processes and, over the long haul, protect the integrity of our index."
However I think they are doing hundreds of webmasters a disservice. We are not asking for the exact formula behind penalty applications. Where a site is pretty much ok to most trained seo eyeballs and perhaps has been around some time, has lots of good content, WHY CAN THEY NOT GIVE A GENERAL RESPONSE THAT AT LEAST POINTS US IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?
Another question however, do you find that as you go down from 28, 26 etc.. do you bounce back to 30+ as well in the process?
Currently at this moment I am sitting at #34
Thanks!
If any of you have hired folks to do work on your site you might want to look under the hood of your site's pages and at the cached copies of all of the pages that now rank ahead of you for your domain name and are providing links.
You might be surprised at what you find.
All for a buck.
You can read between the lines all by yourself.
It is quite simple and I'll give you a hint, if your site is about widgits and someone has worked on your site and buried in the site is a page about certain medicines and one of the links in a site linking to you is to that page and mentions that medicine in the link text. Are you with me so far?
Just continue on with links to and from being the focus.
Of course these aren't the only things you need to concern yourself with, but it is something you have to watch out for.
[edited by: theBear at 9:08 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2006]
I note a post yesterday in G Groups from Adam Lasnik, in specific response to a question about whether -31 penalties were manually applied:
[edited by: Martin40 at 10:18 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2006]
Here is a hint (I forget which of the Googlers have already said to file a reinclusion request) if you have cleaned up your site cop a plea via a reinclusion request.
Avalanche101, when you get the clue please do share! Where ya been.. thought you left the cause for a minute there...
[edited by: AustrianOak at 10:53 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2006]
