Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I started investigating the issues of our site because of a sudden drop from page 1 on google to page 8. The site no longer pulls up for any of our searches whereas we were between the top 5 on page one.
Any thoughts, advise on what we should do?
Yes, it is time consuming to have to investigate a bunch of backlinks, but the time would be minuscule compared to what it would take to rebuild a website, or worse yet, start over from scratch. And with a "warning system" in place, these link investigations could be ongoing, rather than all-at-once, so the siteowner could stay on top of it and would thus have some recourse against this sort of attack
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It would make an excellent tool to start investigating the outer limits of "acceptable practice." You could scale-up your black hat practices incrementally until the warning bells ring.
On the other side, you could set up a throw-away account, and find out just what techniques send you red straight away. All the better to take down that pesky competition in an efficient way, without wasting time having to frame them.
These reasons are precisely why G, Y! and B don't discuss or elaborate on the penalty processes. And particularly don't give specific feedback on individual situations
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Yikes.
2000 ROS links to a single page? Cool. I don't care who paid for them or how they got there! Only one counts and the value is based on overall relativity of the linked topics...
IOW Site A links to Site B's home page 10 times throughout the site. Only one link from Site A to Site B counts. The weight of the link 'counted' is based on the relativity of topics between the linked pages... If 100% (all ten) of the links pointing from Site A's pages to Site B's home page are from 'relatively on topic' pages, then the 'most important link' counts 'full weight'. If only 20% of the links share 'relativity of topics' then the 'most important link' counts at 20% weight.
Multiple links from one site to one page count as one link total where the value of the counted link is based on the overall relevance of the topics of the pages containing the links as compared to the topic present on the page receiving the link.
2000 ROS links to 2000 different pages? Cool! I don't care how they got there or who paid for them: 'via***' to 'buy cars now' = no relativity... Buy 'em up, they don't count!
IOW Multiple links from multiple pages on one site to multiple pages on another count at the level of perceived relatively between the linked pages.
Trucks to Trucks = Very relative.
Trucks to Cars = Fairly relative.
Trucks to SUVs = Fairly relative.
Trucks to Insurance = Somewhat relative.
Trucks to Tractors = Somewhat relative.
Trucks to Concrete = Low relativity.
Trucks to Pharma = No relativity. (Unless the receiving page contains info about a mid-life crisis and shrink recommendations! LOL)
* The converse of the preceding is also true.
** If you're a 'Googler' I think you could use 'Math 3.0' to 'score' the value and relativity, but I'm 3/4 nuts, so don't mind me too much. I just like posting craziness!
ukonetraining - Anyone know of good tools (preferably free) to track these links if indeed they do exist?
[webmasterworld.com...]
Just looked at list again, only few days later; and this time tried visiting some of dodgy pages that had reportedly been linking to my site. Found several that had no links to my site, tho maybe had related keywords.
So, wonder if there's state of flux, w pages sometimes having links, and links later vanishing (speculating: as links to other pages created, w different keywords).
jd01 what you describe will get you SEO traffic eventually. That is what everybody should be doing. SEO is about making content that is useful. A good site will attract links. If you site is popular without Google it will become an authority and will get the traffic from Google because of that. If you spend your time trying to get people to come to your good content outside of Google you will get links as a side affect.
I think Google does care about it, but the issue is not on the top of their list. If you think that's what has happened to your rankings, then document what you've found and use the reconsideration request. But if you're in a position where you've been pushing the boundaries yourself, then you have some clean-up to do first.
Sorry I don't share the excitement.So I will have to go over each and every one of the 15,000 pages linking to my site and approve each in GWT?
And even if I do that I am not protected from anything. An attacker can build few thousands of pages with links that look legit and after few months (after "approval") change the content and the anchors while keeping it on the same approved URLs. And to prevent that kind of attack you have to monitor your links regulary, and to do that for a medium/large website you have to hire a team of link approvers ...
The only solution I see is that under no circumstances google will let incoming links hurt the website being linked to. This is the only robust solution.
This is scary, if it's really what happened, because if this type of subversion works, any site could be vulnerable.
This isn't the first WW thread outing this theory. I thought it was common knowledge, even to newbies? The only decision webmasters have to make these days is to either be a victim, or an attacker.
I've been a victim 3 times now, I know which competitor did it on one occasion and now I really feel like being an attacker.
somebody spent alot of time and money
Then they were idiots. The black hat packages I've seen cost under $100.
Yes, I could sink most sites around me in the rankings for $100 - seriously. They don't have a stable enough base to fend off a spam link attack. Google will drop them and unless they have a WMT account they will never know why.
There must be threads on this dating back to early last year -- and the arguments are still the same. Google should only "devalue" the links, not penalise sites as all it does is give weapons to black hats.
If spamming was not penalised, there would be no reason not to do it. You need to dissuade black hats from trying. Just discounting the effort is not sufficient.
If spamming was not penalised, there would be no reason not to do it. You need to dissuade black hats from trying. Just discounting the effort is not sufficient.
I don't understand. Making their efforts worthless is the BEST way to do it.
They are not discouraged by penalties, if a black hat's website get's penalised they just start up a new site. This mainly is a way for black hats to damage competitors. It has has no "deterrent" factor.
reinclusion requests
Verifying just how pointless the whole thing is! Black hat get's penalised, contacts Google saying "someone else did it" - black hat gets re-included.
The only people suffering are webmasters attacked by black-hats who don't have a WMT account, don't realise they've been attacked and don't know how to undo it.
Google have provided black hats a way to damage competitors rankings and a way to undo any bad actions they may have taken on their own sites.
If spamming was not penalised, there would be no reason not to do it. You need to dissuade black hats from trying. Just discounting the effort is not sufficient.
I don't understand that reasoning. If Google was penalizing the blackhatters who were doing the attacking, then sure, that would make sense. But Google is penalizing the victim, not the attacker. The penalty *is* the whole reason the attacker launches the attack - it's certainly not an incentive for him to stop.
And yes, the possibility certainly exists that once the attacker is discovered, then the attacker could be penalized as well. But honestly, I seriously doubt that happens. Why? Well, just take a look at the whole paid links penalty.
There are two parties involved in the buying and selling of links - the buyer and the seller (obviously). The buyer is the one who benefits from the link (in terms of Google's interest in the matter). It is the buyer who is attempting to game Google's algo, after all. So it would make the most sense to penalize the buyer. But does Google penalize the buyer? No, absolutely not. The seller is penalized instead. (The penalty is merely a TBPR drop, but they could increase that to be a rankings drop if they wanted to).
In both cases, the party actively seeking to game the algo (blackhats bowling competitors with spammy links, and buyers purchasing paid links) skate by with no penalty. In both cases, the other party is penalized instead. Now one could argue that sellers of paid links aren't as "innocent" as webmasters who've been bowled, but I'd argue that they are (with some exceptions). How many bloggers who knew nothing of SEO sold text links to monetize their blogs, and then got smacked with a penalty? Lots did.
So, I'm in the corner of believing that Google should be discounting spammy links and paid links rather than penalizing anyone. I think that would be far more effective in the long run, and much less damaging to innocent parties.
Buyers would stop buying links if the ROI was zero. Blackhats would stop bowling with spammy links, if the ROI was zero. No innocents would be penalized in the process.
The penalty happens because the technique employed USED to give a blackhat SEO boost. G got wise, and penalised.
G believes anyone employing the technique in isolation is trying to unfairly improve their rank. From that basic premise...
Apologies for the cut-and-paste job. This is from previous page of this thread, but slightly edited for clarity:
The philosophy around penalties is exactly the same as criminal justice- retribution and deterrence.IF you "sin" by trying black hat techiques (to IMPROVE ranking), there must be consequences. If the technique works, but then does nothing when discovered, everyone would go black-hat. There would be NO downside, just a series of short-lived upsides- leading to an arms-race as everyone struggled to stay ahead of the devaluation curve.
Throw-away domains would be launched in the thousands, soley for the purpose of propping up black-hat websites. It would be chaos.
To stop this proliferation, there has to be some way of making transgressions a risky business. So, penalties are applied. These punish the transgressors, but most importantly discourage most sites from even attempting it.
Of course, the criminal justice analogy can only go so far. The "evidence" is pattern-based, the "trial" is algorithmic, and the punishment arbitrary. The appeals process is the very opposite of transparent, and the judiciary are inscrutible, unanswerable and unimpeachable.
But for all that, I believe penalisation is a necessary ingredient in the algo, though the entire process needs improvement, IMHO.
Now, what happens today is that black hats frame you as a black hat. This is a secondary problem, and one that needs addressing. However, it is not even close to being on a scale as the first order result vis black hat SEO boosting. Spammers have the process automated. If google stopped penalising, the results would be full of spam. Lots and lots of spam.
Here's how it would work. You would release, say, 5 "main" sites. Then 1000 support sites. The 1000 would be devalued. You would launch 1000 more. Then another 1000. Your 5 "main" sites would keep their top status, because they were never penalised.
If google stopped penalising, the results would be full of spam. Lots and lots of spam.
No-one wants that, obviously. But simply ignoring will work the same.
Here's how it would work. You would release, say, 5 "main" sites. Then 1000 support sites. The 1000 would be devalued. You would launch 1000 more. Then another 1000. Your 5 "main" sites would keep their top status, because they were never penalised.
That makes no sense. I really could not grasp your point or why the 5 are ranking based on 1000+ sites that ... nope, still am not getting it at all ... :(
If those 5 are not doing anything spammy then why should they not rank? If those 5 are being linked to by the 1000+ devalued sites then they will give no boost to them so they won't rank.
Here's the thing. It works. But only for a while. Say 1 week to 3 months. Then the benefit disappears*
So, in the absence of a penalty, you launch another 1000 sites, rework the content, rinse and repeat. Once you figure how long it take to get penalised, you can actually have the next batch gaining ranking points ready to weaponise at just the right time.
All the time, you are doing "normal" SEO in the 5 sites, and simply using the rolling 1000 as a temporary-cum-permanant boost.
The point is, IT WORKS FOR A PERIOD, THEN GOES. Unless it hurts to "reload", you just keep reloading. You don't care what happens to the weaponised sites, just the site they are propping up.
This is an outline of trechnique, without specifics. I'm not going any further with the practicalities on a public site.
*In the current algo, at this point a penalty is applied, thus punishing the propped up sites, and removing any benefit from further spamming.
Right, 5 sites are well-optimised. They're just normal ...
etc. etc. etc.
Still makes no sense. Whether devalued or penalised ... the effect is the same in the example you give.
I think Google does care about it, but the issue is not on the top of their list.
That's because the issue is not widespread enough (yet). I know you are guys trying not to reveal too much details about the cases you have seen, but seriously, the best thing that can happen is that this kind of exploits would become a common knowledge. When many authority sites will start to fall one after another Google will have to deal with it.
I can't emphasize enough, this is not an epidemic. What we don't want to do is start some kind of panic. In most penalty cases, a penalized webmaster has some other issue, but just they put on blinders.
That way the bad guys will stop doing it (1) to increase their rankings, because it will be a waste of time. They will also stop doing it (2) to hurt their competitors, because it will be a waste of time too.
Simple and effective.
I can't emphasize enough, this is not an epidemic.
Non-penalisation scenario
DAY 1)
I have one site. It has 1200 sites linking to it. I control 1000 of those sites. I get credit for a full 1200 though.
DAY 2)
Same situation. I havent been caught yet.
DAY 30)
Still havent been caught
Day 60)
Ah, lost 1000 ranking points today. Bummer. Still, I have another 1000 sites ready to go.
Day 61) EXACTLY WHERE I WAS AT DAY 1. YEY.
Day 100) Still getting 1200 backlink credits. Lucky I dont get penalised
Day 300) Still where I was. Burnt through 5 sets of sites now, but still riding high on my money site. Due to launch another set of sites soon, but I'm ready.
Penalisation Scenario
DAY 1)
I have one site. It has 1200 sites linking to it. I control 1000 of those sites. I get credit for a full 1200 though.
DAY 2)
Same situation. I havent been caught yet.
DAY 30)
Still havent been caught
Day 60)
Ah, lost 1000 ranking points today. Bummer. Still, I have another 1000 sites ready to go.
DAY 61) ARGGGHHHHHH. Its not working
DAY 90) Damn, I've throw thousands of sites at this now, and nothing works. I'm stuck way down SERPs. If only I had kept within guidelines from the start, I'd be much better off. I wont try this again on my next site, leason learnt.
Whatever you wish, simple devaluation is not effective to stop manipulative practices. You need to make a lasting impression on the offender, not just take something away that is easily replaced.
This is a real solution to a real and automatable problem. It gives rise to a smaller problem that is rectifiable. Its not perfect, but it is substantially better than allowing the endless propagation of spammy sites that can never be effectively removed from SERPs.
A real solution like dropping back-link usage altogether. The whole system is based on a premise that was shaky in the beginning: that people link to their favourite sites. They don't. We have thousands of visitors a week who don't even have a web site to place a link on. How did we get those visitors? Certainly wasn't from back-links.
I noted on another thread that according to google we have 35 back-links to one of our sites. It comes top in searches for a reasonable number of keywords irrespective of that.
PR is not to do with ranking, which I recall was the original purpose of it. Whether it has anything to do with site stability I doubt, though more experienced webmasters here can probably prove it to some peoples' satisfaction.
A real solution like dropping back-link usage altogether. The whole system is based on a premise that was shaky in the beginning: that people link to their favourite sites.
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