Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My site, based around one of the most competitive topics on the web, used to get hundreds of Google visitors each day several years ago when it was an amateur and not very informative site. I put AdSense on the site and joined Adwords, soon dropping the latter because it's not cost-effective for me. My Google visitors plunged to about half a dozen per week, which has been the case for more than three years, during which time I’ve constantly added content so that my site now has around 250,000 words on about 170 pages with original photography.
When the Big Brother changes were made a month or so ago, my Google visitor count leapt to about six per day, most seeking relevant search terms. For a couple of weeks there was a sign that my site might be getting relevant Google search rankings after more than three years. Six visitors a day might sound like a joke to most on this forum, but I was dreaming the figure may even double or triple! Three years is a long time.
But then I made a big mistake. About two weeks ago I checked my Google sitemap stats and found the most common words being seen by the Googlebot on my site included “poker”, “casino” “roulette” and “blackjack” - none of which has ever appeared even once over five years on any of my site pages. In fact, hardly any of the most common words listed via Googlebot have anything to do with my site, although the common words listed in external links to my site are all 100% accurate.
I wrote to Google Help pointing this out, asking if it was causing a penalty and/or if there was anything that could be done about it. A few days later I received a form response with standard answers saying I wasn’t penalised because my pages are visible through a site: search, and it made no reference to the incorrect common words.
I was receiving about six Google visitors per day but since the hour I received that Google email, I have received zero Google visitors... none at all, and it’s been 10 days. After about four days I reply emailed to Google Help again asking about the incorrect common words and also asking if the total absence of Google visitors meant I’ve been (further) penalised because of my query. I received another form letter with no reference to either question.
My site is white hat but has very few inbound links. I have built and maintain eight other sites, all of which rank either well or acceptably on Google, so I think there’s sufficient evidence I know how to build and write sites conforming to Google’s criteria - i.e. totally clean code and packed with information for visitors. As mentioned, the site topic is perhaps the most competitive on the net and it’s virtually impossible to get a competitor to put a link to my site - particularly since it has a low PageRank due to the lack of inbound links. Who in their right mind will link customers to a competing site that has no PageRank to make a reciprocal link worthwhile? When you’re in Google purgatory, nobody wants to know you. The companies that rank in the top 10 of my main keyphrase targets have mostly been known around the world for decades and enjoy a resultant high number of inbound links with correspondingly high index listings - where they belong and good on them. In the top 100, it’s a hotch-potch of search results, about half the indexed sites just sell tickets with little information (= editorial) on their pages.
I’ve been trying to make money for Google through AdSense for almost four years (they make more than me per click) but since joining I have “not” been penalised to the point of obscurity in their search results and it’s seemingly impossible to contact a human who will respond to legitimate questions. I’ve taken all recommended Google steps for webmasters, even when those steps damaged my rankings on other engines, and I’ve concentrated on more and more up-to-date, informative editorial content - supposedly a key to Google approval. Each step I’ve taken to conform with the guidelines has seen my Google rankings fall further.
My sitemap data still shows the most common words on my site are gambling-related and/or non-existent, and there seems to be nowhere I can turn to make sense of this. Now that I’ve “not” been banished entirely from the Google index for asking why the Googlebot is finding non-existent gambling words on my site, I recommend that other (un)penalised site owners think twice before posting any questions to the company. I’m sorry I asked.
When I looked it was obvious what had happened. His 'Free' server host had added some server side code which added links to their own porn industry pages, giving them a boost from this PR5 site. You could see nothing through a browser, but once you viewed the source code you could see obvious links added to the base of the page.
The moral of the story is if it's free, it has no value.
All the Best with your recovery
Col :-)
Did you see this as well?
Wow, scary. It's a snakepit out there sometimes, isn't it?
he added adsense recently and has seen a huge jump in SERPs for his site.
Unrelated.
I believe I’ve been penalised by Google because I asked a question.
The type of problem mentioned by Colin_h seems more likely. And even if your question did prompt a manual review, the real cause of the penalty wasn't the question, but whatever turned up in the manual review. IMHO, that's the problem you've got to identify and solve.
All the Best
Col :-)
[edited by: tedster at 7:38 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2006]
This site is basically an affiliate sales site, and my links are cloaked to hide the actual affiliate links. (i.e. www.mysitename.com/cgi-bin/click?id=5).
These erroneous words are obviously coming from one of the affiliate sites, but I'm getting the credit due to these links appearing to still be on my site. Could this be what's going on with you?
You have to watch that you don't get blacklisted. A number of my clients' link partners complained that they lost rankings and got penalties from out of the blue. I suspect Google gave my client a big penalty for having network porn links and then also questioned the integrity of all the sites further down the link-line.
All the Best
Col :-)
I don’t use a free server - it’s a stock standard shared server that costs me a few hundred dollars per year. Several of my clients’ sites are hosted on the same server and they all rank fairly well with Google, so it’s unlikely that my own site is being poisoned, so to speak, by gambling, porn or other sites on the server. I trust the owner of the server, who assures me there’s nothing spammy on it, and since I know of various sites on the server that rank well on Google, including other sites I’ve built and maintain, I have no reason to suspect the server is penalised.
glengara... no gambling AdSense ads ever appear on my pages because the AdSense bot has no problem working out the different themes for each page on my site - unlike Googlebot, which seems to think I’m a casino. The ads that appear on each page are almost all accurate and specific to the country each page deals with. I have another site hosted on the same server and also tracked via sitemaps, and its common words detected by Googlebot are exactly right. Both sites are built using the same elementary html techniques and similar densities/placement of key words and phrases. AdSense sees no gambling connection to my own site, there is no server cause of the problem, yet the Googlebot seems to believe I’m Las Vegas incarnate.
Jamie.uk... no, I saw no change in serps when I joined AdSense almost four years ago. However, I did see a change in serps when I tried AdWords - from hundreds of visitors per day to one or two per day. arran is right in saying that AdSense and serps should be unrelated, but my experience obviously leaves me suspicious about the AdWords account.
flobaby... I also have one cloaked affiliate link on one of my pages. I cloaked it because I feared I might be penalised by Google for linking to an affiliate ticket sales company. Besides, the affiliate company has nothing to do with gambling and I doubt the words “poker”, “blackjack”, etc, even appear on their site. That’s not my immediate or long-term Google problem as the serps (non)penalty started a couple of years before I put in the redirect java to cover the actual url (which appears only once on 165 pages).
europeforvisitors... I’ve been in contact with Google three or four times in the past few years to try to work out what’s wrong, and all of their form responses say I’m not penalised. If I’m not penalised, I assume (actually, I know) I’m doing nothing wrong from a structural point of view. If Google did a manual review of my site and uncovered a problem, by implication there’s a human being involved who knows what the problem is. The form responses indicate I’m not allowed to talk to him/her and he/she isn’t allowed to tell me anyway. And if there was a manual review that uncovered a problem with my site, why do the form responses tell me I’m not penalised? If there is a problem, I assume they do something about it (as long as its not called a penalty).
The broader problem is most likely my lack of inbound links and I have to live with being invisible via Google to any other site owners, who probably don’t want to link with invisible sites anyway, and that circle will continue. The short-term problem is that googlebot apparently associates my site with nothing but gambling terms, and I’ve had zero Google visitors in the 11 days since I received their lack of response to my query.
My site, based around one of the most competitive topics on the web...My site... has very few inbound links.
Competitive topics and few inbound links is generally a recipe for bad ranking. There doesn't seem to be a mystery here as to why your Google traffic is drying up.
If after three years few people are linking to you, then perhaps you need to be proactive (like it says in the Google Webmaster Pages) and tell more webmasters you're there.
It's possible to get one way links from academic websites that will appreciate useful content that's relevant to students, faculty or for supplemental reading.
