Is there a -200 google punishment?

[MrFewkes]

Hi,

I have a new site - new domain about 5 weeks old now.

I paid up for about 40 links to get the site crawled and indexed (not mass spamming or anything - I normally do this to get things moving)

I sent links to the root, and to three sub-pages of 6 subpages in total - with most links hitting the root.

The site came in on page 9 - so about position 85 for its two word phrase.

Alas - it is now at exactly position 200 for its phrase.

Its a great site and I know customers will love it when they get to see it - its clean cut pure HTML start to finish - pics - buy now paypal buttons - plenty of 100% original info (although they are products which are on other sites of course - so I modified the descriptions somewhat)

I havent been hammered by google for using this particular paid link network before - so I am confident about that (anyway hows a guy to get a site going without begging for links whilst lying on ones belly in the street these days)

So - if anyone knows - is there a -200 hammer?
Could this be to do with the recent farmer update?
What would you guys do in this situation?

Thanks in advance
Mr Fewkes

[MrFewkes]

Planet - Hi,

I have done some searching for your question.

I cannot get the site to rank for anything at all (the domain index.htm that is).

It does not appear to be anywhere for

Its term
Its term plus other words which are in the title
Its term plus the other word in the domain name

Ok
There is a sentence - the first sentence on the site as follows.

Welcome to keyword1 keyword2 xx, the anotherword site in the anotherword anotherword

If I search for the above sentence in "" - this is the only page which google returns.

If I search for the above sentence without "" - then there are 200,000 pages returned in the serp - and my index.html page is at position 8

Does this mean anything I should learn about?

Cheers
Fewkes

[darkyl]

No affiliate links
No outbound to offsite links
Inbound links all purchased (just added some from my own sites though)
Paypal buttons
Stocked product
No --- in domain name
www dot keyword1keyword2xy dot etc
No adwords
No adsense
Not WMT listed
Has contact, phone, company reg no, email etc
Has TERMS, SHIPPING, RETURNS, PRIVACY policy etc.
Fast loading
Pure HTML - no php or anything
1 index - 6 subpages

Did you make this list because you think these are good quality signals?
Well, except from "fast loading" none of them is.

No affiliate links: an excess of them is a minus but absence is not a plus.

No outbound to offsite links: definitely not a plus... linking to other sites is natural and can even improve your serps.

Paypal buttons: why should this help?

Stocked product: ?

No adwords, adsense: adsense and adwords do not influence your site quality, unless you're violating the guidelines.

Not WMT listed: Again, why should this help at all? Wmt shows to you info Google already knows about your site.

Has contact, phone, company reg no, email etc
Has TERMS, SHIPPING, RETURNS, PRIVACY policy etc: A good practice, but I doubt it has anything to do with rankings.

Pure HTML - no php or anything: ? Is php bad?

You also say: "so I modified the descriptions somewhat". Google recognizes "somewhat" modified descriptions. If you want your content to be read as original, re write it from scratch.

Also, one of the reason for your penalization might have been link buying, which Google doesn't like at all, and you bought 30 more links?

No offense but you may want to study basic seo strategies a little bit more.

[MrFewkes]

No - I was not indicating they were a sign of good quality - that is your assumption. I couldnt think of anything else to put to help people get a handle on the issue in terms of what the site consists of.
Basically I am saying the site is as simple as it gets.

"so I modified the descriptions somewhat".
Yes - you are correct. There are not many ways you can write one of these descriptions.

"Grey Casing"
"Grey Outer Holder"
"Grey Cover"

Infact - using various technologies including n-grams - google can spot that anyway. Including words like "this these has and the etc etc" is of no use as they are not indexed.

A grey Cover is a grey cover.

Putting "Dark White Cover" looks as stupid as ... er well.

When black is black and white is white - you cannot do more than modify somewhat - and as I say n-gram lists have that nailed anyway.

Can you enlighten me? I am after all - here to learn more about SEO.

[darkyl]

Sorry if i misinterpreted your post.

When you talk about descriptions, what do you mean exactly? By your examples it looks like you're talking about page titles... or are they meta descriptions? Or descriptive text (content)?

[MrFewkes]

Ok

there are no meta descriptions on the domain - or meta keywords - its just a route I went down.

If I put them in and get them wrong I could get and OOP - If I dont put them in - then given they dont help much in ranking - I am helping myself avoid an OOP

Thats my (probably flawed) logic to those two.

The page titles are my own unique titles.

The description I am referring to which I modified somewhat - is the text on the page body which is provided for the consumer.

It is a small block of very very short lines like this - and sits next to a picture of each product.

Hiking Shoes
Brown Leather
Size 10
Nylon Laces
Waterproof
1 Year Guarantee

so this could now read
Brown Walking Boot
Mens Sz 10
Lace-up Strong Nylon
Waterproof
Guarantee lasting 1 year

Now - there are better ways of re-writing - I know - but there are many sites doing this - so I am bound with 100% certainty to be hitting the same perms.

Thats the kind of thing on the site......

[Planet13]

If I search for the above sentence without "" - then there are 200,000 pages returned in the serp - and my index.html page is at position 8

Does this mean anything I should learn about?

That's really a question for tedster to answer, since he seems to have the most experience / best judgement regarding whether this could be a manual penalty or other...

But it would seem strange that your page, if penalized, would only be at position 8 (instead of -50 or -200 or the -950 penalty), doesn't it?

[MrFewkes]

Planet13 - it appears to be penalised for a phrase - please note that it is -1000 for its phrase - and at 8 for that sentence which is not the phrase, but contains the phrase.

Its a combination of the phrase and other words which cause it to rank at 8.

For the phrase alone - it is totally hammered somehow.

It seems to be as follows

A page only penalty (other pages from the site rank)
A phrase only penalty - it (the page) ranks for strange long sentences which contain the phrase.

I have had pages like this in the past - through the florida update - which were hammered for a phrase but ranked for obscure stuff on the page.

I dont think its manual - I think its automatic.
It is for this reason - I am holding out hope for it when I change my inbound link profile to include more variations of the anchor.

My logic behind this is as follows.
If google permanently and automatically hammered pages based on the link profile containing too much of the same anchor then there would be too many babies chucked out in the bath water.

Does this make sense to you planet? and anyone else who could comment?

Fewkes.

[Planet13]

Does this make sense to you planet? and anyone else who could comment?

Yes, that is a very good explanation.

the only thing I can offer at this time is that is something similar to what I am going through with a specific inner page, and if I can get that resolved, I will tell you what I did to solve it.

[Planet13]

Hi again, MrFewkes:

My logic behind this is as follows.
If google permanently and automatically hammered pages based on the link profile containing too much of the same anchor then there would be too many babies chucked out in the bath water.

Your situation seems similar to mine, so will just pass along the advice I was given, which is to gradually de-optimize that page for the particular keyword phrase, and try and add some related concepts to that page, as well as possibly link out to a page or two of content on your site that could be considered a co-occurring phrase.

Please see tedster's and aristotle's advice to me at the bottom of the first page, and the top of the second page, of this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

As for chucking out the baby with the bathwater, you are correct. I don't know why google would have a bug up its backside with your site. I look at the top 10 ranking sites in my niche for my keyword phrase, and they repeat the keywords two or three times in the titles and their links are incredibly spammy - lots of free directories, lots of forum posts, squidoo and suite101 and other article marketing... In short, they are SEO'd for 2003 and are enjoying great ranking right now.

I hope this helps.

[MrFewkes]

Planet.

Ok - I read tedsters advice there at the bottom of the first page and aristotles top of the second page.

I think I have quite a bit of knowledge on this - I think me and tedster differ somewhat in our terminology but it comes down to almost the same thing.

In summary - yes - I often surmise this by saying if you are going to write a ranking page about albert einstein - then you better include text about special relativity, general relativity, energy, light speed.

There are tools (see PM) which provide words/word pairs/word triplets etc etc associated with other words on the net. It is these which provide the best data.
Because it is the net which is the source of the data used for ranking - not real life - which is sometimes different.......but not that much :)

Anyway - in my experience - whilst I try to be rich in text - I have noted time and time again that modifying a site after it has been indexed to include extra riches shall we say - has NOT EVER changed my ranking.

Which leaves me thinking that its not a factor which is heavily weighted - or it is - but only on initial finding of the site....... dunno - interesting though - and totally logical.

[MrFewkes]

Ok - here we are - an important post.

The page is back :))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
It has gone from -1000 to position 18

Get some finally.

Brief rough summary.

1 Paid for Links - 30
2 Site initially indexed and placed at 85
3 Paid for more Links - 40
4 Site plummets to 200
5 Site plummets to 1000+ off the scale
6 Google found link from my Authority site with target anchor
7 Simultaneously as point 6 purchased 16 MORE links with varied anchors
8 One week after point 6 - the site is back.

Important - step 1 and 3 links are drip fed and step 3 were completed and indexed by point 6 Step 1 were completed and indexed by step 3.
Out of 16 more links - only 1 has been indexed as yet.

This means the following.

1. The page has got rid of its penalty by virtue of the authority link.

or

2. The page never had a penalty, and the -1000 was given whilst the 70 links were "processed" by google.

It may drop again whilst the new 16 are added in. I anticipate these to take the page to the top 10 from where it is now at its new slot of 18.

But of course - I will let you know.

Thoughts anyone? A good real life example this is of link spamming struggling. :)

Cheers
Fewkes.

[driller41]

Hi, is this a keyworded domain, I believe this behaviour kicks off from such a domain ?

I am having a similiar problem in the UK - a decent ranking on page 1 or page 2 for 4-8 weeks, then a huge drop to page 20-30 on a brand new domain.

Cant really see a reason for the huge drop, even if google hates the site there are of course dozens or totally irrelevant sites taking those 25 pages above me, only the first two pages of serps are relevant for most terms, after page two most almost any serps are not relevent to the query.

[MrFewkes]

Yes driller - the keywords are in the domain - and there is another word after them which is just not relevant really.

Im just glad the dam thing is back.

[Planet13]

Hi there, MrFewkes:

Do you have any updates about how this site is ranking? Would like to know, since I think this is a good experiment.

(and is this the same site that you mentioned in your other thread, that you you used the rock climbing warehouse example? Or is this a different site).

Also, you did mention one thing about meta descriptions:

...there are no meta descriptions on the domain - or meta keywords - its just a route I went down... If I put them in and get them wrong I could get an OOP - If I dont put them in - then given they dont help much in ranking - I am helping myself avoid an OOP...

I wonder if it might be a good idea to actually use a TRUE meta description - meaning to have it include meta data, such as:

This is an xhtml document covering the history of rock climbing equipment. This document contains three jpg images of the equipment being used in the Grand Tetons as well as four paragraphs of text, navigation links to other pages on this site, and external links to rock climbing forums. It is authored by Joe Schmoe and the photographs are licensed by Jane Doe.

I have never done this, but I remember reading somewhere (can't remember, maybe Matt Cutts said it), that this was a pretty good use of the meta description tag. In fact, I remember Matt Cutts saying that "supplementary" info (author, copyright info, etc.,) should go in the meta description tag.