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On 4th June, rankings for most keywords in top 10 and top 20 disappeared, having a total loss of 2/3 traffic from Google. :(
Ranking for "domainname" is still there, as well as for some main keywords. Most of the keywords went to 11-30 positions.
If I searched Google with the latest news exact title before the penalty I would always rank first. But now, I'm nowhere near the first page, and the spam sites that use my RSS come on top positions. It's weird.
It looks to me like the folder where the news are placed is banned. All the urls within "/news" went to lower positions, but the "/comments" or "/photos" folders' urls of the same news are there. We have cca 4000 news.
What I've done so far:
- removed mega menu from the homepage
- removed any suspicious external links
- checked the site with Xenu's Link Sleuth
- cleaned up all WMT Content analysis Errors
- removed Duplicate title tags
- removed Duplicate meta descriptions
- removed the only 2 paid links I had (I removed them on the next day after the penalty)
I've done a reinclusion request a few days after the penalty and still no luck.
Does anyone have any idea how to get back previous rankings?
Fixed 80% of WMT issues ( i'm still working on fixing rest ). Whole site is still indexed with old pr. My new unique content pages get indexed in 7-10 days but never show up in serps for its keywords, people copying my new pages show up in serps.
Note: i am not trying to hijack your thread but just presenting the case study. Some one need to figure out what exactly went wrong and how many of 4th June victims got recovered and what strategies they adopted.
joined:June 3, 2007
posts:6024
votes: 0
I share your pain. My site is over 10 years old, and most of my Top 10 terms are now in the top 30-40 range, similar to you. I've made many mods similar to you, and things are just worse not better. I've done the following:
- Rectified WMT errors/warnings
- Fixed a possible domain.com and www.domain.com issue canonical
issue at the server (they were yielding different IP addresses).
- Removed all references to possible unscrupulous external links,
even if they were 2 generations out.
I have not attempted a reinclusion request, as I hate using my last bullet, and am still hoping that my rankings will one day magically reappear. This "lotto" mentality is probably a shot in the dark, but I am still hoping for the best.
I also make periodic and normal content changes.
After many, many years of strong organic traffic, this algo change/penalty has been tough to accept.
joined:June 3, 2007
posts:6024
votes: 0
Are you guys talking about the 950 here?
Me, no. I went through 950 last year with another site.
This site is very clean, no errors in WMT although 3 or 4 duplicate title tags and no duplicate pages.
Besides myself several other SEOers checked out the site completely and could find nothing wrong. The only bizarre thing was Google had put into the SERPs the 10 yr parked name exampleexample.com instead of the correct example-example.com.
I suspected that this may be causing the problem therefore removed the parked domain and URL forwarded it from my registrar. Whether this was the problem I have no idea.
The only other thing we could come up with that Google's .co.uk geo-targetting had gone completely haywire since we could could not even find the domain under a search using company name + region and when it's only one of half dozen busineses in that entire region and still cannot be found...well, what to do?
Strangely typing in the company name it came #1 and was shown with site links.
I have absolutely no idea as to why it was penalised and why it has suddenly returned and right at the top of the SERPs, not just re-included a few pages in.
It's been totally baffling from my point of view however if G were to admit they'd tweaked their algo one way or another then I may say...oh, really:-)
I'm quite sure it is a thin content penalty/cookie cutter penalty.
Having a large number of dynamic generated thin URLs might be the cause.
Have you tried adding content to your sites?
BTW, fixing WMT duplicate meta tags issues will definitely not fix the June 4 penalty.
I see some people start posting in this thread who have not been penalized on June 4, which is bad,.
DannyTweb: Your 2 years lasting penalty has nothing to do with this issue.
[edited by: SEOPTI at 3:44 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2008]
My site, which was effected, is on the thin side. But, I have "thinner" sites that have not been effected at all. Does this imply manually imposed penalty perhaps ? I dunno.
My effected site has NO dynamically generated pages or URL's at all.
I agree, fixing WMT issues had no effect at all (possibly a slight worsening effect).
I've avoided the total redesign remedy, as I am hopeful one day that I will wake up, and the penalty (-30, of sorts) will be lifted.
Doug
joined:June 3, 2007
posts:6024
votes: 0
I see some people start posting in this thread who have not been penalized on June 4, which is bad,.
And who is to say that my April penalty was not a precursor of June?
There seem to have been several, as yet unexplained, penalties this past few months, maybe they are all connected in a tenuous way?
Any assistance, no matter how generic, may be of help, don't knock it or you'll find no one offering any input whatsoever.
If it is a manually imposed penalty chances are it will never go away.
I'm sorry to disagree with you, but that's simply not true. My site was manually reviewed after downtime and removed from the SERPs in a matter of hours.
That was on the 11th of August.
I then spent a week reading everything I could to fix whatever possible problems Google might have identified.
The Reinclusion Request was submitted on the 18th August.
It was accepted - and the site reincluded - on the 20th September.
I'm sorry to disagree with you, but that's simply not true. My site was manually reviewed after downtime and removed from the SERPs in a matter of hours.That was on the 11th of August.
I then spent a week reading everything I could to fix whatever possible problems Google might have identified.
The Reinclusion Request was submitted on the 18th August.
It was accepted - and the site reincluded - on the 20th September.
I am not speaking about a site removal that was reincluded, our site was never removed, just manually penalized in the Serps, and that has never been removed.
[edited by: tedster at 8:37 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2008]
There may even be a periodic review of manual penalty flags without a reconsideration request. I know of a couple cases where the old -30 penalty was removed with no request being made - and I'm talking here about the penalty that put your site a #31 for a search on example.com.
The Reinclusion Request was submitted on the 18th August.It was accepted - and the site reincluded - on the 20th September.
JackR how did you know your re-inclusion request was accepted other than the reappearance of your site? Since you didn't mention any material notification by Google is there anyway to verify Google did exactly what you said they did? I'd like to believe Google does respond but through the years I've only seen a little bit of evidence some sites from the far-east (India as an example) have been manually readmitted. Overall most re-inclusions I've seen seemed to be for minor things that would likely have corrected themselves with time.
Pardon me, I just saw you had downtime which is a whole different ballgame than what most of these people seem to be experiencing.
I rather think it's an algo penalty because all my sites have been affected at this day ..... but who knows for sure ..
But the mentioning of a thin content penalty got me thinking. I don't have thin content, but it certainly is possible for an automated filtering mechanism to mistakenly arrive at that conclusion. As soon as I returned from the Vegas Pubcon in December 2007, I completely switched from tables to CSS for all of my sites. I reduced html code significantly, but I'm wondering now if I may have inadvertently hit a "thin content tripwire" by switching to CSS and universally altering the balance of code and content structure on thousands of pages across multiple sites. Hmm. Worth looking into.
Sean
I've done everything possible including a complete site revamp, de-SEOing the pages, removal of all outgoing links and even a few reinclusion requests. Nothing has worked. I suspect that my site has a penalty for dodgy link building which I can't do anything about.
To make matters worst, my site has always maintained itself at a level PR5 since the penalty but today I checked and it has a PR0 *cry. The strange thing is that all the backlinks still show up even in WMT.
My site shows up first for query http://www.example.com but is the last listing for "http://www.example.com".
Has anyone experienced a total PR drop too?
So let's add this penaly to the penalty list where you can work your ass off, but nothing will happen.
[edited by: KlingWRAP at 2:01 am (utc) on Oct. 8, 2008]