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]
Also, it is NOT restricted to the domain only. All search keywords have also been bumped to page 4 atleast.
[edited by: AustrianOak at 12:54 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2006]
Your reasoning is wrong
If I do a search for
"mysite/com then a whole sentence from my site that appears nowhere else."
that same search comes up 31.
There is no way there is another site with a more relevant result.
If I take the domain name of any other site, and copy a sentence from the home page of their site and place it in a search, then it always comes up No.1
Nice hypothesis, but its wrong.
Do not worry about it if you do not really suffer from it. If you don't have it, it's way over 99% sure that you won't get it. The current penalty is both real and rare, but it is not theoretical. Its existence has been confirmed by Google spokesmen, even though they are quite silent about the specific details.
My assumption - it has a lot to do with keeping bad company (or even being considered bad company), but a borderline case. If it weren't borderline, the domain would just be banned.
Hey AustralianOak,
Impossible.. no site should rank higher to my very specific domain then ME.
Hey nippi,
Interesting example indeed:
If I do a search for "mysite/com then a whole sentence from my site that appears nowhere else." that same search comes up 31.
Hey let's do an experiment: search for
yoursite.com + "then a whole sentence from my site that appears nowhere else"
let me know where you come up like that - there should be only one site coming up - yours...
Can you expand on what "keeping bad company" may entail? Perhaps from outbound links to other sites? I will double check to make sure all my outbounds are to sites that haven't turned to the "dark side".
I also believe that even though this penalty is indeed rare.. it is real and very damaging. We need to overcome this, or perhaps with some twist of fate have some assistance.
nippi, you are being accused of over-optimizing.. care to reply? :)
Tedster made some great final points.
In the example:
example.com then a whole sentence from my site that appears nowhere else
If it has no quotes as above google will ignore the words:
"then a" - "my" - "that"
then will search for matches on:
"example" + "com" + "whole" + "sentence" + "from" + "site" + "appears" + "nowhere" + "else"
Guess what? it's almost the same as:
"sentence" + "whole" + "example" + "appears" + "from" + "site" + "com" + "else" + "nowhere"
Guess what? - if NY Times has an article what has all those words - who do think is more relevant to Google - your site or NY Times article?
Anyways, let's please keep this on topic. Your theories / examples don't explain the -30 penalty and are leading in the wrong / un-useful direction. Let's stay on track! :)
As Tedster puts very well, "The current penalty is both real and rare, but it is not theoretical. Its existence has been confirmed by Google spokesmen.."
[edited by: AustrianOak at 2:14 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2006]
It was not my example - it was nippi's (post #:3167544) - that's the one that you've answered with
nippi, great example. That ends that debate.
I've just analyzed his/her example to show that it didn't proove anything... and it is very much relevant to this discussion (in fact, it's the core of it) - by Tedster (post #:3161050)
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.
Anyone with any real progress with the penalty? Factual analysis?
[edited by: AustrianOak at 2:40 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2006]
AustrianOak,
jinxed ( [webmasterworld.com...] )was jinxed ;) with the 30+ penalty and he said he removed many pages and he's back on top. I have to wonder though if he had the 30+ penalty or just on page 4-5...
OT: Anyone seeing some movement in PR on the DC's?
type
"then a whole sentence from my site that appears nowhere else"
into google
and then
"whole sentence site appears nowhere else"(ie, the same string with your so called "ignored" words)
into google
Different results for the top 10 right? You don't understand some basic principles of how google decides what to present.
You are hypthesising, but not bothering to test anything before presenting to this thread, and its not useful.
You are just denying the existance of the +30 for the sake of an argument. I can cut all the text from my home page(310 words) paste this into google WITHOUT my domain name in the search.... where does my site appear in the results?
31
There is no way your argument stacks up. Please, let it go.
You've not analysed the problem and are arguing from a position of ignorance.
Also, MrSpeed, I am also at #29 as I type this. As for PR movement.. mine seems to finally be slowing down.. it was bouncing between 4 and 5 for a while.. now seems to be sticking to 5.
So perhaps the minus 30 thing isn't recalibrated for when google ineptly loses a few pages because of the &filter=0 thing.
My assumption - it has a lot to do with keeping bad company (or even being considered bad company), but a borderline case. If it weren't borderline, the domain would just be banned.
But for all intents and purposes, it may as well be a ban, because if it can't rank for anything it may as well not be there! What is the point in being in an index where no one ever sees you, other than freaks like us, who eat this stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
In its current form, it's an evil penalty. The Guantamano bay of search where they put suspected search terrorists!
Crap like this, helps government and law develop cogent arguments around monopolisation,free trade, rights and responsibilities. In a civilised society people are afforded the opportunity to hear charges levied against them as well as the opportunity to defend themselves or put right any perceived wrong doing.
[edited by: TravelMan at 11:46 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2006]
Absolutely brilliant!
In a civilised society one should always be allowed to hear the charges and be able to provide a defense.
But unfortunately we are dealing with a corporation, namely google and corporations can do what they damn well please - as long as they don't get caught with their fingers in the cash register aka enron etc.
It would be nice for google to explain why they have enacted this gitmo of penalties.
They do, on the one hand, profess to do no evil, yet on the other hand do silly things like this.
In a civilised society one should always be allowed to hear the charges and be able to provide a defense.
Sure, in a court of law. But we aren't talking about a court of law or a criminal offense: We're talking about the right of a business to make editorial decisions. Is THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW required to tell publishers and authors why it reviews one book but not another? If you decide to remove a link to a third-party site from one of your pages, or to ignore a link request, are you required to explain your reasons? Of course not. Neither is Google. (But don't take my word for it--read the federal judge's ruling about first-amendment protection of Google's "opinions" in the SearchKing v. Google case.)
As I stated before:
But unfortunately we are dealing with a corporation, namely google and corporations can do what they damn well please - as long as they don't get caught with their fingers in the cash register aka enron etc.
It would be nice for google to explain why they have enacted this gitmo of penalties.
They do, on the one hand, profess to do no evil, yet on the other hand do silly things like this.
No need for the book review example, already covered.
I made changes to the site every day over the last couple months and as late as yesterday, so it will be some time until things settle down in the cache. I may only know then.
I had a severe duplicate content problem.
My site had pages on line since 1995 that were in old formats that had been ok with Google.
I had some links to “pills, porn and poker”. Many were “unrelated” links at the bottom of pages. Some were stand alone pages. Total were less than .5% of the pages in the site. Now they are 0.
I did not waste time blaming Google and complaining about how they run their business. I tore the site apart and rebuilt it.
There were too many pages to change one by one. So of about 7000 URLs, I deleted about 5500.
Our standard was simple. If it just didn’t look right, it was taken from the server.
The remainder was the core. Pages were reformatted and checked twice.
All broken links were fixed.
I continued to add about three new pages per day related to our core business/web site theme.
I will review the site again, slowly, and once I have the courage, I will submit a reinclusion request.
Google standards changed. So I had to change mine.
Maybe it worked and them maybe it did not.
Maybe they are still changing their standards and I will have to do some more.
That’s life.
Anyway, Are you saying search for your domain is coming up at no1
My assumption - it has a lot to do with keeping bad company (or even being considered bad company)
In my search cat the only thing that the penalised sites seem to have in common is Adsense. I'm pretty sure Yahoo/MSN will make you drop a few places if you use Adsense, but Google? Sounds crazy, doesn't it?
Well, maybe not. It seems to me that the whole point of their Xmas "updates" (or whatever) is to discourage spammers in the year's retail high season: The weight of PR in the algo is cranked up to reduce webspam.
Around Oct 1st I had been using Adsense for 2 years and suddenly I got 30% more per click. Makes sense that Adsense employs it's own version of TrustRank: they won't send expensive ads to sites with low "TrustRank".
My site's PR has been reduced since Nov 15th, leading to lower positions, but still there, but the other site that uses Adsense has vanished completely. That site started to use Adsense only recently.
I know, it's just one search category and two sites, but maybe other people are seeing the same thing?
[edited by: Martin40 at 7:19 pm (utc) on Nov. 25, 2006]
Yes. #1 . But I am not yet convinced it will hold. The only basis for that opinion is that a very smart man told me that.
I second that. I have been making changes for a while and just this week "deleted" via noindex 1/3 of my pages and made a LOT of other feature changes. As soon as Goog sees them I will delete them for good, but now I think it's faster with noindex.
Once I get back, I will actually make more money and get links as results of them. Funny how things work, huh? Well, I have to get to #1 first :) but I know the problem. I "knew" when Adam from G posted but this confirms it.
Gimp,
are all of your rankings back there or just the "domain.com"?
thanks again,
Can you elaborate more on this, got a little lost on your post?
