Poor Newsletter Open Rate Causes Ranking Penalty?

[dazzlindonna]

Can't wrap my head around the possibility of this being true: [lockergnome.com...]

but supposedly this guy got penalized for having a poor newsletter open rate (as determined by gmail), so he got hit with a serps penalty. After purging all the people on the list that hadn't opened the emails in the last 90 days, he filed a reconsideration request, and the penalty was lifted.

"After my purge, I filled out a detailed reinclusion request, listing the steps I’d taken and what I plan to do to avoid having an email reputation problem in the future. Google responded saying it revoked a manual spam penalty against JakeLudington.com, which further validated my action being the right thing to do."

Boggles the mind.

[indyank]

There is now another website that lost a lot of trust - and it's not google, it's lockergnome. Makes me wonder if they have any editorial standards in place.

It's the poster of that article that wanted and received LINKS to his article >> which links to his author page >> which links to his other articles >> that have links to his money sites.

As they teach elsewhere: To get links, post the most silly true or fabricated story...

True and this seems to be a story to attract attention.But it looks like Matt is not doing anything better on Twitter...

[anand84]

I really don't know if this algorithm, even if it were true and made with genuine intent, will work. I, for one, subscribe to a lot of newletters on my Gmail and have set up a filter to forward ALL (not just those newsletter emails) to another non-Gmail email ID. Will this mean Google see these newsletters as having poor engagement with me and so affect their rankings?

[tangor]

Intriguing... probably won't happen to me... I don't allow Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. on any of my newsletters or forums. I even tell them why: "YOUR REAL ADDRESS ONLY, no throwaways, second-guessing, gonna hide addresses. If you like what I have, you'll like me enough to be honest with who you are. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo are not honest addresses."

About once a month I get an argument. I reply: "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Email Address...No Service."

Have about 20,000 INTERESTED and VIABLE recipients instead of 2,000,000 drive-by waste-my-time and resources. Generally good for 2 to 2,000 sales monthly, depending on what's offered. I know that's a dang broad brush painted... but life is too short to maintain bogus lists (proven over the years) and eating and unnecessary bandwidth cost!

Pick your own battles, of course. What works for me may not work for others. But thinking outside the box never hurts. Just a diversification thing, kiddies: my recognition, some time back!, that G is everywhere. I don't need to be everywhere, I need to be in business.

[anand84]

Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo are not honest addresses.

I am sorry, I lost you there. Where else do I create an email address? Of course I have an official email ID but that's given by my employer.

[tangor]

Then you're not on my newsletters! :)

As I said, what works for me may (will not) work for others. This is my version of bank verification, which I'm pretty sure we all try to do as well.