Anybody had a -50 penalty that was later removed?

[gorfmeister]

Please share your story with us if you believe that your site was once subjected to a -50 penalty and the penalty appeared to go away at a later time.

Please provide details about how long the penalty was in effect, was the removal gradual, what you believe the penalty was for and what you did that may have fixed the problem (as much as you're willing to share). This could be inspiring for those facing this issue.

Thanks.

[gorfmeister]

If this truly is the case, everybody now can take out their competition and cause them grief.

I wouldn't quickly jump to conclusions.

Our site may have been more penalized by "excessive reciprocal linking" (detailed in another recent thread [webmasterworld.com...] Even though only 34% of our inbound linking domains are reciprocal, due to our recent aggressive attempts to increase revelant links to our site, this percentage may have suddenly surged in the past couple of months. We have already submitted a reconsideration request based on this issue.

The site involved had good backlinks from about 300 solid domains ... However, we found something like 2,000 assorted types of spam backlinks

Based on the scenario presented by Tedster (a site with a very high spam backlink ratio), I am now inclined to believe that the spammy links to our site may not be such a problem. To be sure, however, we will still document and submit them to Google.

we used several sources to collect the backlinks report - Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, the site's server logs, and some private spidering.

We have several thousand inbound links which have been put in place over a 10+ year period. Since Yahoo Site Explorer has a 1,000 backlink limit, we can't see a large chunk of the data they have. This is too bad, since what they have appears to be more relevant than what Google WMT shows. Server logs only show clickthrus, which in our case is a fraction of all existing links.

Despite the benefit of this info, I think that any reconsideration request should address only what Google knows about in WMT.

[idolw]

We had a -50 on a couple of sites. We were pointing crap links at the sites and got caught. We removed the links submitted recon requests and prayed. It took tens of hours of hard work to get the crap links removed.
Took exactly 90 days to get out of the penalty for some sites (stronger and healthier ones). Others (including one very strong) still sit there.

So crap baklinks cost you twice - when you get them to boost your rankings and when you remove them to get rid of the penalty.

[WarrenBuffett]

Wow, that is amazing. I'm pretty sure Google stated inbound links can't hurt you as you have no control. Something to think about I guess.

[WarrenBuffett]

Here is a fantastic thread about a furniture store getting his -50 penalty diagnosed and removed. The thread features Matt Cutts himself, here is a quote which I find to be very useful to this thread: [groups.google.com...]

But bear in mind that just because you see some
spammy-looking backlinks to a competitor's site using a backlink tool
doesn't mean that those links are working. It could be the organic
links that are causing a site to rank.

I think that quote from Matt Cutts himself clears up spammy backlinks being a cause of the -50 penalty.

[gorfmeister]

I received an e-mail in WMT saying that "We've processed your reconsideration request". Unfortunately, after a week of progress, my site dropped again ... apparently due to the request itself.

My site's Google traffic had been gradually improving ... from getting 2% of normal up to 20-25%. A main keyword originally at #6 position which had dropped to 52 recently climbed to 11. Now it is at 59.

Sadly, it appears that Google didn't like my request. Now I wonder if I would have been better off not submitting the request at all.

I continue to wonder what I am guilty of. I feel like an innocent person being tortured until I tell them what they want to hear, even though I don't believe I have done anything wrong.

[doughayman]

Gorf,

I would hang tight, and do nothing for a bit. I don't even think Google knows what it's doing. I'm bouncing all over the place, on a daily basis, and now today, in WMT, they've re-introduced Short Titles and Meta Descriptions, which I fixed 4 months ago, and no longer contain the text that WMT claims it does.

Lots of weird stuff happening, and my trust in Google is diminishing by the day. I think that they are currently way over their head in their ability to keep up with the vast (and ever-growing) web, and its ability to manage it.

I understand and feel your frustration. Wait this out, and look for moire thrashing and/or rollbacks.

[bwnbwn]

This is what I am trying to understand and my little tinnie winnie brain can't warp around it.

How could an algo for that matter a human have a rats as_ chance in knowing a competitor bought the lnks for me and I didn't. There ain't no way period for anybody or anything to know for sure. I don't care how many PHD's MBA's DDT's or PQS's they have there is no way it can be determined none nata zit.

The only thing they all SE's can do is devalue all blogs, linking networks and shady domainers to achive there goal.

I would love someone to post a theory on how they would detect links were bought by a competitor or the website owner love to see it.

[WarrenBuffett]

True I guess, theres nothing stopping me from sponsoring wordpress themes with my competitor's site as a link down in the footer, heck ill even do it six times, for six different keywords to make it look really legit, I bet that would get google's attention.