Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I don't think this is related to reciprocal linking. If it is overdone to the point that Google sees a big red flag some other penalty might click in but not this 950 thing.
Phase based seems a lot more likely. And there may be something about the words or phrases used in internal linking involved as well. Or that could just be a part of the phrase based thing.
[edited by: tedster at 9:15 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2008]
During the first days of the first my time my site dropped, bot activity was even higher.
on the day I started to loose traffic, for 2 days page 1 terms hung around at page 4 then they slipped to 950
That's an interesting bit of information - thanks. I assume that the basic search for your domain name (just example.com in the Google search box) is not penalized - right? That's always been the litmus test for me of the "minus thirty" penalty. Other fctors can certainly make a url fall to page 4 for some query or other, but that's not the same "minus thirty penalty" [webmasterworld.com] that we've been discussing here since October.
The fact that you saw one url first fall to page 4 and then to end-of-results is very interesting to me - it's a good data point to have in the mix.
is not penalized - right? That's always been the litmus test for me of the "minus thirty" penalty.
Nope on page 1, on international, pages in German and pages from Germany. Top spot on the last one.
According to the Google webmaster console, the sites aren't penalized. :)
I'm still waiting for the next successful crawl on one of the end-of-serps sites I'm testing with to see if I was able to pull it out with the most recent mix of strategies (increased linking from the localset and an incorporation of some of the phrases people were using to link to us [obviously unsolicitied; please make a note of that Googlers]).
Cygnus
I'm still in doubt whether taking too much action is the right thing to do at the moment since many sites came back without any changes done on them (if one can believe the reports of affected webmasters)
For an other site there is still one single page for one key phrase in the 950 range. No onpage changes discussed earlier helped or even moved this page one single spot. Last thing left we have to try is a high-quality link to this page.
One thing that bothers us, this page disappeared 2 days after we discussed a filter issue with the adsense support team.
Did your frame site disappear for the first time?
I'm asking this, because I also thought my site to be pushed down by a scraper site due to double content. And in deed my site returned a few days after I blocked the scrapers IP. One week later the next trip down started...
But if they're recognized they're being blocked ;-)
Meanwhile I don't think that this was responsible for my problem with this 950-something issue...
The scraper site was reported in webmaster tools,
The question is just if I report these masses of domainspammers that link to me with the same page I could make the situation worse .. if they rate even worse these backlinks would devalue my site even more. :/
"Luckily" they even mention SEO on their pages. Since Google prefers automatic processes we are in for a Looooooooooooooong wait ...
Mattg3, what are you talking about?
As mentioned previously it disappeared again - good luck to you anyway, please keep us informed.
Now I think the reason for coming up of scrapers and replacing original sites is the weakness of the original and not vice versa...
But I could be wrong of course, so it would be very interesting to know what will happen to your site in near future.
Searching for "blue widgets" + "mysite.com" I've found that I'm on number 2.
Number 1 is a site from another country that has copied 7 articles putting the text (not hyperlink):
"Source: MySite (www.mysite.com)"
What do I do? Do I fill a Spam Report using Webmaster Tools?
[edited by: Biggus_D at 11:54 pm (utc) on May 1, 2007]
I found #1 to #9 with results from other sites where #10 is my site. The results ranking before me are directories where I myself listed my site in, so filling a spam report wouldn't be the right thing to do... ;-)
As mentioned above, I suppose this is the result of a momentary weakness of your site, not the reason for it. During the last years my site was always stronger than those now ranking better though they already had the same content.
And this case was easy to catch, they didn't even try to hide it.
Eric Enge: What about sites that have wild shifts in traffic, where they pop in and out of the index?
Adam Lasnik: As algorithms get adjusted, most sites are not affected. There is not a huge shift for most sites, but then some sites happen to be right on that border. I sympathize and I understand that it can be painful for those sites that are on a particular threshold on one on one algorithms.
Eric Enge: Fair enough. So, this popping in and out then doesn't relate specifically to the one type of problem, it's anything that would put your site on the edge of some Google quality signal factor, and as the algorithm gets tweaked on a regular basis, sometime you are in, and sometime you are out.
seems like a typo. he probably meant people who get caught by one of our algo changes.
have any of you guys have bought links? If so, have you removed them? I think it is about a 6 month delay and then you get your rankings back.
Mattg3, what are you talking about?
One of the reasons for the 950 seems to be to be linked by bad neighbourhood. I discovered in the webmastertoolkit that I am linked by some domaingrabbers with many domain names on which they repeat again and again links to us. These links are new and outweigh by far what I usually get in new inbounds. To add insult to injury these domaingrabbers have added also links to SEO on the same pages. To a stupid robot it could look as if I did some massive linkbuying or whatever. Since I have never bought links went to directories and submitted stuff, all my other links are mostly highly organic. In the previous months we had really high traffic .. So if I report them, these sites get rated even worse but the unsolicited inbound problem is not fixed I might hurt myself even more.
The spam report page states loud and clear that Google rarely removes pages by hand but look for automatic solutions to problems. Sorting out their google bombing issue took them years. So I suspect from that it's essentially pointless reporting them.
Many commercial sites are going to have paid advertising links on other sites - google are not the only traffic source, if google are hitting sites for paid links then frankly thats a joke in itself!. For one you could bash a competing site doing it (some here claim that can now be done!)and 2 they are hitting popular sites they may well be advertising all over the web.
If a site has backlinks to it from authority sites such as .edu, .gov or some .org sites etc you would think it would carry more weight as those sites are unlikely to link to spammy junk sites yet the 950 penalty doesnt take this into account by the looks of it. A PR3 .gov backlink has the same rating as a PR3 junk site?
Hasnt google lost its way introducing this kind of penalty? - with so many sites hit many are missing from the serps hence the end user not finding what they want - perhaps this is why adwords income went up 68% last quarter for Google? more users clicking on ads because the serps no longer deliver what they want.
I think we are stuck with this until users start moving to Yahoo and MSN to find what they want meanwhile Google are not likely to improve search quality as this additional filtering has made the serps much weaker, producing mediocre results but has helped increase income
Rich
I agree with your statement, but waiting for MSN or Yahoo to become stronger is definetely not what I'm going to do. Here in Germany Google has a share of about 90-95% in searches.
And in deed, I'm one of those who makes Google's revenue on AdWords grow. Since my site dropped I was simply forced to put more money on Googles table for AdWords, otherwise none would have found my site, which is - not necessary to say - very important for my buisines.
______________________
Today I found my site rising from the 800 or 900+ up to #30-#65 for some phrases which used to be #1-#6 before, for one less competetive single keyword I'm even back in the top 10 (#6 now - bofore for years #1).
This is somthing different regarding earlier come backs when the site regained completely its former positions and then disappeared completely again...
See it as a glimmer of hope - can anyone of you see the same?
Six hours ago, I noticed my homepage go from
-#1 to #10 for a search for my domain name!
-#1 to #16 for main keyphrase
-#1 to #247 for second main keyphrase
Would what I have described be the start of getting the 950 penalty? I tremble at the thought of it...
