Massively hit by -50 penalty

Reason: bought 30 links from a network of web directories.

[sandyk20]

My highest traffic site is massively hit by -50 penalty (starting 12 hours back).

I bought around 30 links from a network of web directories 3 days back which were not inter-linked, nor on same class C ip.

Upon researching those web directories further i found those were completely similar to each other in terms of content, meta, descriptions, usability, etc. and includes a few pharmacy and adult links as well.

This site was one of my main adsense earning site (almost 85% of revenue).

What should i do at the earliest to get back on top? even searching for my domain name gets me on +60th results.

Thanks

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:46 pm (utc) on June 19, 2007]

[jakegotmail]

sandyk20, If you are equating purchasing links in directories to a penalty then I would examine many other things first. I have never seen a case where obtaining links = penalty. It just doesn't work that way. Otherwise I would just go do the same for all my competition.

[edited by: tedster at 3:15 pm (utc) on June 20, 2007]

[vincevincevince]

From what's been said previously it's more likely:

1. Buy 30 links from a bad neighbourhood
2. Get flagged as possible spam
3. Get a manual review
4. Get your penalty based upon Google feeling that your site shouldn't have such good rankings based on its content or quality

As for what you should do now:

Realistically as a business you should start a new domain name, link and redirect wherever you can, and move content across to avoid the ban.

If you're not as pragmatic with your business decisions, then you need to ask as many directories as you can to remove their links to you and contact Google, acknowledging your mistake and asking that your site be reviewed.

[dangerman]

Sandy, don't panic just yet. It's only been 12 hours. I have had sites that tumble out only to come back in a few days later. Maybe it's down to some data centre experimentation.

I have also had a site that has been hit with a -30 penalty, without question, and I have reluctantly spent hundreds of hours following up every morsel of advice and experiences of others in similar situations.

I doubt very much whether your web directory listings are the single cause of your penalty, if indeed you have been hit. Otherwise, as mentioned above, we could all go around dumping on our competitors.

Having said that, your recent actions possibly added negative 'points' to Google's algorithmic score for your site. Everything I have researched indicates that your Google Webmaster transgressions relating to a particular site are accumulated and weighted. When a level is reached the bar comes off and you are penalised.

You can get out of it. But it's not a simple matter of undoing the last wrong (i.e. in your case getting removed from those directories, assuming you can). Reinclusion requests are manually evaluated and you need to make sure that your site is whiter than white. On top of this, in Google's eyes the site must be perceived to offer real value to its visitors.

Good luck!

[Vimes]

This site was one of my main adsense earning site (almost 85% of revenue).

did you say MFA?

Vimes.

[MrStitch]

Sandy... do all of these links have the same anchor text?

If so, does the anchor text happen to match the search term you're trying to target?

[edited by: MrStitch at 2:56 pm (utc) on June 20, 2007]

[julinho]

I bought around 30 links from a network of web directories 3 days back

Did you check out whether Google has already cached those pages?
If Google hasn't spidered those pages yet, then the problem is not with those links.

[buckworks]

Google themselves advise people to get their site listed in relevant places.

What's unethical about getting a widget site listed in the widget section of someone's directory? Promotion is promotion, publicity is publicity, and what Google makes of that is up to Google.

In my book it would be more unethical to expect freebies.

[MrStitch]

Sandy... waiting for reply.

Cornflower - Who cares about paying for links. What everyone here is mostly concerned with is if a site can TANK for paying for links.

It's our understanding that links, paid or not, are valued and that NO link can hurt you. Here, we have a case where there were some links paid for, and a site tanked.

Many questions arise from this -
First, the ones that I asked Sandy, of course.
Second, can a site tank for a single search term due to back links... ANY back links.
Third, will a site still see traffic for other search terms? Internal pages, etc.

We also need more info Sandy. How old is the site? About how many back links did you have before you made the purchase?

More questions will arise later.

btw - G ranks sites via a 'link' style algo. Everyone knows this. Paying for links is GOING to happen, if theres money to be made. Right or wrong, it's there, and everyone in the top ten is doing it. G needs to be darn good at evaluating these links if they want to stick with the whole 'link' theory (faulty in my opinion).

[sandyk20]

Thank You for all your replies, this is a forum based site which used to get a huge traffic of more then 300 unique guests every 10 minutes during normal hours and peak hours crossed 800 guests, now I only have 60 guests online during normal and peak hours since last 36 hours +.

Backlinks results
link:example.com gives 0 results
link:www.example.com gives 2320 results
link: example.com gives 83900 results

Index Status
36 hours back 172000 pages indexed in google
right now 158000 pages indexed in google

@ Vimes this is not a MFA site, I am running forum based site

@ MrStitch yes anchor text on all the directories is same
Example: www.example.com
Anchor Text: My Domain
(I was not trying to target keyword in anchor text)

@ julinho google has not yet cached all the links but only links from 2 - 3 directories to mydomain.com appears in googles index

Site is around 2 years old, I had more then 80000 backlinks before I purchased this new links for first time.

Traffic is still down and revenue is completely messedup :( Very bad

[edited by: tedster at 3:55 pm (utc) on June 20, 2007]
[edit reason] switched to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[bw3ttt]

One of my sites went from having 64,000 pages indexed to 55,000 overnight.. I wouldn't be surprised if they all came back in soon enough.. This type of stuff happens all the time.. Just go with it..

[MrStitch]

k, since all the links aren't indexed yet, then we can assume that it's not a paid link issue. Especially since you just listed your site by name in directories.

Did you use googles link: command for that link count?

Also, have you tried using Yahoo's link: command and telling it to NOT include your domain? (might be a better overview)

I tried those link commands that you had, and I got weird results too. The last one shows a lot of my links are from pages in the supplemental index, which could also be your problem. G's recent update could have put some of those pages that had your link, into the sup index... which doesn't give you much credit, if any.

[tedster]

When there a space between "link: " and the domain name, then your query is no longer using the special operator but only performing a search on two words. See [webmasterworld.com...] for a related discussion.

[WeaselyOne]

In my experience getting a directory link indexed in 3 days is very unusual so I wouldn't have thought it was related to those links.

Likely things will come back - it's hard not to panic - but give it a little time and watch.

[sandyk20]

What should I do, its been over 2 and half days still my traffic is not back.

should i email google about this cause? can you provide me with right email address and what should i write to them?

Thank You.

[hercules]

get rid of those links asap

[Gede]

I must say I also had my site submitted to a number of directories. FREE directories, no pay. Don't even know where, or how many. Guess all low pr dirs anyway.

But all with the same anchor text. This anchor text phrase is also gone for me in the SERPS.

It may not be the only reason why that phrase is gone, but after reading this...

[Marcia]

What's the total percentage of backlinks with that same anchor text? Is it also used internally on the site as anchor text?

[fischermx]

I submitted (and was accepted) in more then 100 directories some months ago for one of my sites, my penality? PR3->PR4 ;)

[Marcia]

I just watched someone's site that was ranking in the top ten for years drop down to #76 for the primary phrase (rankings for the two main phrases were lost) - and it's holding steady there. It's highly unlikely that the person did directory submissions, they wouldn't have needed to and never have gone that route.

It's other reasons, but though it's likely to be because of bad linking practices that finally caught up with them, it's not the same thing as getting listed in directories.

[edited by: Marcia at 2:36 pm (utc) on June 21, 2007]

[Gede]

Dunno real percentage.

Guessing maybe just around 5-10% cannot be more, they are not visible in G, except one.

And I had 3 or 4 paid links too, with some PR.

But in the same period I also added or changed links on two of my own, other, interlinked, related sites, of which one got hit an unexpected boost of PR, if I remember well. Those two sites had almost the same anchor linked to my site as the directory links. I had nothing malicious intended for those two sites, they just needed to complement things, by some multimedia stuff..

Almost the same anchor is used in some internal links.

Ah, you think hee, I am on page two for these specific terms lets try to give it some more "anchors". Now its page 14 or more ...

But I cannot really remember the exact chain of events.

I already confessed, pleaded guilty, promised to be a good boy. But I have to sit it out. Hope they let me out in the weekend :)

[edited by: Gede at 2:39 pm (utc) on June 21, 2007]

[ogletree]

There is proof that a link can hurt a site. It can't hurt just any site. You have to remember that not all sites have the same rules. Google gives sites a secret rating and your algo is based on that rating. If you have a new site or a site that has only been around a little while and you have adsense and a bunch of obvious paid links your going to have issues. Specially if those paid links comprise the majority of your links. I think they have a weighting algo. You get pluses and minuses for different things. Some items count for a lot and some count for less. Some items count for a lot more if they are combined with others. Like having ads is not a big deal by itself but if other factors are combined with it then it ads up to a big negative.

[Marcia]

Gede, you increased the anchor text occurrences, but how is the interlinking done that you mentioned? Is it sidewide, in footer links or in regular site navigation, one way or all of it two way?

>Making alternative anchors will surely trigger the algo to apply phrase based penalties and into the 950 area for sure.

Natural, spontaneous, unsolicited inbound links from third parties generally have a variation the anchors used, which wouldn't be a "phrase based" phenomenon that a webmaster has any control over.

[edited by: Marcia at 2:54 pm (utc) on June 21, 2007]

[Gede]

Lets call the main one A, two other sites B and C

Used B and C to promote some specific items, each has 3-6 items (mini-sites) with each 5-7 pages, relative little text.

Same items are also on A actually, but both B and C show the subject a bit more extensively, that was and is still the idea.

Items on A linked to their mini site versions, on either B or C.

B and C link back to the main page of A, with the dreaded anchor. Got rid of them now, I mean each mini site still links back to A, but with different anchors.

I had a flash ad on a newspaper front page for B which somehow got the (unintentional) PR boost from there. Newspaper doesn't pass PR now, and is linked to A.

Oh just read it now.. Yes they were sidewide. Actually each minisite has it own directory, but linking was from every page, except front page of B/C site, which links to the minisites

[edited by: Gede at 3:15 pm (utc) on June 21, 2007]

[fishfinger]

If buying links from directories hurts MFAdwords sites then that is very gallant of Google.

I know that no paid or other link has *ever* hurt any site I've ever worked on - but all the ones I manage are business sites.

Could you really 'Googlebowl' yourself or anyone with only 30 links? Seems highly unlikely to me but I admit I have no experience with MFA sites.

[lfgoal]

Corndog,

"No evidence exists that same anchors cause problems."

I'd agree with this.

"Making alternative anchors will surely trigger the algo to apply phrase based penalties and into the 950 area for sure."

I wouldn't agree with this. Same reason, no evidence. If you look at MC's blog, he links out using whatever phrase he feels like using.

-950, -50, -30, -whatever, I'm sure these penalties aren't meted out lightly and probably only after a hand review. Anchor text of internal or external links shouldn't make a difference as long as A. the anchor text is relevant to the page being linked to and B. there's not an obvious attempt to game the system.

[edited by: lfgoal at 4:07 pm (utc) on June 21, 2007]

[The Contractor]

I bought around 30 links from a network of web directories 3 days back which were not inter-linked, nor on same class C ip.

As had been said many times. If Google were to actually penalize a site for it's backlinks instead of discounting those links - don't you thing there would be mass sabotage of one's competitors?

Repeat: It would be awfully difficult for Google to penalize a site for it's backlinks as it would be easy and cheap to hurt your competition by using this method...

[trinorthlighting]

Unless google thinks your buying those links to game them in page rank. Let me ask you this, have you recieved any traffic from those 30 paid links at all?

[The Contractor]

Unless google thinks your buying those links to game them in page rank.

How would Google know if the owner of the site bought them or a competitor of the site bought them? Again, it's really impossible to penalize a site for it's backlinks, discount them and give them zero value, but not penalize.

[trinorthlighting]

Right from webmaster guidelines:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links

Back to my original question, are you getting any traffic from those directories?