-50 Penalty Removed

[Love2Blog]

I had 3 of my sites in a -50, these were my first websites and I had no clue what I was doing and so I engaged in various crappy link building tactics, crappy directory links, bought a couple of links, used recip link pages both on site and got them from other sites on their link pages, used crap blog networks, article marketing on turbo, getting tons of links from one identical article distributed to thousands of sites and the like.

Also, not knowing anything at the time, I got links in excessive rates, in one month I had gotten over 1000 links and most ALL externals were to the home page, barely any internal page links at all, nor very little variations of anchor text, so the link profile looked very manual and unnatural.

Symptoms at Time of Penalties
1. Everyone of these sites was page 5 or 6 for the tld without .com, so for example, bluewidgets was page 5 or 6, and these domain names were not common.

2. All 3 sites were ranking Page 1 (Google) for some time for their sitewide kw's, home page and several inner pages when penalty came.

3. Bing and Yahoo ranks not affected, ranked for several terms.

4. Once penalty hit, ALL kw terms, especially the home page/sitewide kws would not move past page 5, mostly jumped around pg 5 - 6.

5. PR had not changed for any of the sites, 2 were PR3 and the other PR2, then and now.

What I did initially:

1. I got rid of all on-site crap, recip links pages, overdone internal links, footer link to home page with keywords, most all home page links on the site that had sitewide anchor.

2. Also a couple of these sites interlinked and so I set those links to nofollow, eventually I deleted them all together. (these sites are same IP)

3. I could not get rid of most of the external crap links, but I got rid of a few.

4. One of the sites was a blog, so I got rid of most of the blogroll, just kept a few good recip links.

5. Added some fresh unique content, (which all these sites all ready had) but I added more.

6. Then I left them alone, stopped building links of any kind, but kept adding content to all of them.

These penalties happened in late 2008 and just 2 weeks ago, around June 5, 2011 one site recovered on its own.

1. Initially when penalty lifted the home page of this site was on page 1 for main site wide kw's (2 of them) for about 2 weeks, now fallen to pg 8 or so, of course due to not having any fresh quality links.

2. Ranks #1 for tld without .com

3. Inner pages jumping, around pg 2, 3, 11, 8.

So, in my case it took over 2.5 years for the penalty to lift on its own, the other 2 sites still penalized.

In my case the only explanation was crappy backlinks, and lots of them.

On site SEO I do not think was as significant, all though the useless recip links pages might have had some impact, but I still see site after site with 4-6 pages of recip links and not penalized, so, I believe that in main part crappy links, ineffective manual link building and overall unnatural link profiles were the culprit for this penalty, in my case anyway.

I never asked for reconsideration, at the time I had no clue why it happened or what I did, it's only now that I have experience that I understand the whole picture much better, so I really had nothing to say to Google.

I hope this helps someone, the news is not great I know, ie: 2.5 years

[Frost_Angel]

I could have written this post. I feel like I'm in the same boat. Only it just happened with the Panda update on April 14th for my site. Some kind of -150 penalty. Like you I have spent two months cleaning up my mess and just submitted for reinclusion. I don't know what to do about all the crappy backlinks. I assume they de-value them or don't count them at all.

Anyway....thanks for the post.

[Love2Blog]

@ Frost_Angel

Yes, it's not fun at all, there was nothing I could do about most of the crap links, no way to remove them, just a lesson well learned is how I see it, and not to make those same mistakes again.

For sure they devalue and don't count them, but that's apparently not all they do, they actual penalize for having them, if they just devalued that would be good, but with penalty you can't move past page 5 no matter what you do.

[Planet13]

Lesson here be don't go around getting crappy links. Especially ones that can't be undone.

Also, it's a pretty good reminder that you probably CAN hurt your competitors with crappy links.

[julinho]

Inner pages jumping, around pg 2, 3, 11, 8.

Did you get back to page one for any keyword, even the long tail ones?

[Love2Blog]

Did you get back to page one for any keyword, even the long tail ones?

Yes, since yesterday for two of the sitewide main kw's the home page is sitting on page 1.

Lesson here be don't go around getting crappy links. Especially ones that can't be undone. Also, it's a pretty good reminder that you probably CAN hurt your competitors with crappy links.

I totally agree, Google has no way of knowing that I built these links, just as easily it could have been anybody trying to harm my site. When they say competitors can't harm you, it's really B-S.

[SEOPTI]

There is no -50 or a -950 pentalty with BING, all the way go for BING rankings, BING will never f*** with your rankings and your white hat site.

BING has no paranoia added into their algo mix. Goog index is based on paranoia since some Chinese spammers showed the world how easy it is to spam Goog with tons of urls. Just get a few PR6-7 links and spam the sh** out of them.

I believe Goog is following in the right footsteps, Calligula, Nero .... now Goog. It's all about paranoia.

[Nagani]

When they say competitors can't harm you, it's really B-S.

Yes it is really BS. Matt Cutts said that. So I bought a few links hoping it won't hurt whatsoever and my site's ranking was down to 2nd and 3rd pages from the first page. Only when I removed those links, the penalty was lifted. It seems like I've lost Google's trust also. Even if I picked up a few natural back links since then, ranking doesn't improve.

[SEOPTI]

No more than 5 links for a completely new domain. If you get more you are running into their paranoia algo and will see a -50.

Again, no more than 5 links in the first months. Even if the domain is old the only factor that counts is the age of content in their index. This means go for high pr links in the first months.

I have tested this over and over with new completely new domains and with an old one.

[superclown2]

No more than 5 links for a completely new domain. If you get more you are running into their paranoia algo and will see a -50.

Again, no more than 5 links in the first months. Even if the domain is old the only factor that counts is the age of content in their index. This means go for high pr links in the first months.

I have tested this over and over with new completely new domains and with an old one.

Yep this mirrors my experience. So, to destroy a new competitor - or for a new competitor to destroy your site - just pay some Chinese 'SEO' firm to send a pile of lousy links.

What a brilliant way to design a search engine. Engineering geniuses they may be, but common sense is sadly lacking.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Panda helped me uncover a new info-getting trick, I think, and since I'm sure it's fairly useless and/or will be patched soon I'll share.

- In Google webmaster tools click on manage site and then proceed to unverify yourself, from every site.

I was penalized on one site(-50, aff links sitewide in sidebar I think) and try as I might Google would not allow me to remove that site from my GWT, while the others disappeared that one switched to "verify this site" and is not removable.

I'm guessing that since the site has a "record" about it Google won't allow me to delete it completely, even though it's shut down(new-ish site, not worth fighting a penalty on).

I re-verified the others without problem but the record for the penalized site seems permanent. Permanent AND attached to me as a webmaster, ick!

edit: Don't click delete! doing that just removes the site from your dashboard but it's records remain, you have to unverify and it will vanish on it's own, if not penalized.

[walkman]

Thanks sgt, that's a nice trick. Luckily all my sites went away by un-verifying, or so I think. Amazing how misleading the 'delete' thing was.

You don't want to give Google a reason to go on a inspection spree if they don't like one of your sites.

[Love2Blog]

Panda helped me uncover a new info-getting trick, I think, and since I'm sure it's fairly useless and/or will be patched soon I'll share.

- In Google webmaster tools click on manage site and then proceed to unverify yourself, from every site.

I was penalized on one site(-50, aff links sitewide in sidebar I think) and try as I might Google would not allow me to remove that site from my GWT, while the others disappeared that one switched to "verify this site" and is not removable.

I'm guessing that since the site has a "record" about it Google won't allow me to delete it completely, even though it's shut down(new-ish site, not worth fighting a penalty on).

I re-verified the others without problem but the record for the penalized site seems permanent. Permanent AND attached to me as a webmaster, ick!

edit: Don't click delete! doing that just removes the site from your dashboard but it's records remain, you have to unverify and it will vanish on it's own, if not penalized.

I actually had got ridden of everything in GWT a while back because I thought that an issue with one site might affect all other sites and cause them to mark me somehow on a permanent basis, (since when I got this -50 both sites were in GWT, one went first, then the other) I figured I was just paranoid, but now I think not so paranoid, but right on the money. I just don't use GWT anymore for any sites, whatever info they give is so limited and so unupdated it's not worth the risk.

[Love2Blog]

Im wondering if anyone knows, if a perm redirect is done from the penalized site to a fresh new domain, (where all the content from penalized site is copied to fresh domain as well) would the penalty follow? I imagine it would, and it might be better just to copy and start fresh, but I wonder if anyone has tried it?

On the other hand if the -50 is an algo based automatic penalty and not manual, maybe the penalty won't follow, and PR could at least be retained from the penalized domain with the 301?

[SEOPTI]

A -50 never follows with a 301 redirect but it could lead to a manual inspection so I would never redirect more than a single site at the same time.

[superclown2]

Im wondering if anyone knows, if a perm redirect is done from the penalized site to a fresh new domain, (where all the content from penalized site is copied to fresh domain as well) would the penalty follow? I imagine it would, and it might be better just to copy and start fresh, but I wonder if anyone has tried it?

Why copy? Why not rewrite the content?

I've launched new sites to replace penalised ones with rewritten copy saying the same thing in a different way several times and overall they've done OK. Important thing is not to list them in WMT, IMO.

[Love2Blog]

I had a few sites come out of the penalty not long ago, as I posted here.

More observations:

What's funny is that once the sites were restored I lost a good chunk of traffic because many pages were taken from Pg 5 to Page 10+ of Google.
.
Some pages ranked, but mostly these were the home pages, that had the most links (which I think is partially to blame for the penalty to begin with).

I had not built any links to these sites as they sat in penalty for 2 years, and I regret that now.

Had I gotten some good consistent links I think more pages would rank faster out of penalty.

As I am now working on getting a slow trickle of quality links more pages are moving up regularly.

Just more data to add to the mix!

[courier]

On the other hand if the -50 is an algo based automatic penalty and not manual, maybe the penalty won't follow, and PR could at least be retained from the penalized domain with the 301?

I tried this recently, at first is was fine but must hav had a manual inspection because after a few weeks I was back to where I was.

I had not built any links to these sites as they sat in penalty for 2 years

A site I had got lifted out of a 2 year -50 penality at the start of the year, it has been hard to rank above #6 for competitive keywords. I suspect there may be a probation period, so I am being very careful.

[martinacastro]

Superclown

you said:

I've launched new sites to replace penalised ones with rewritten copy saying the same thing in a different way several times and overall they've done OK. Important thing is not to list them in WMT, IMO.

You redirect 301 to a brand new domain, the rewritten content?

Regards

[Donna]

There is a 2.5yrs penalty or they changed something this summer as a lot of websites came back after 2+ yrs in the canbox. One of mine came back somewhere July-Aug and I had a post about it, and some others on this forum reported returnings too. It might be over optimization onsite, that was my main conclusion plus unatural inbound links for new domain the 1st 1-6 months.

What I did rly this summer before it came back was a small blast of 15 bookmarkings and lower my kws density to 3% from 7% for top words. Other than that I have not touched it for 2+ years.

[Love2Blog]

It might be over optimization onsite, that was my main conclusion plus unatural inbound links for new domain the 1st 1-6 months.

That is exactly what I believe causes the penalty and it's purely algo, not manual.

[Donna]

Did your main page dissapear completely for any key terms? Not -50 on main page , but completely gone for search but still there for name.com .

[Love2Blog]

Did your main page dissapear completely for any key terms? Not -50 on main page , but completely gone for search but still there for name.com .

No, the main was always pg 5-6 for all key terms for all sites in penalty.

Also, widgets-for-me (gone to page 5)
widgets-for-me.com (page 1)

As soon as the penalty was lifted the widgets-for-me was back on page 1 Pos 1.

[Donna]

I think you and me had the same penalty . Did you touch anything prior to coming back in the serps ? Like anything ? And did you notice a huge amount of pages not found in your GWT. And did you notice the links shown in GWT dropping by a large amount ?

[Love2Blog]

I think you and me had the same penalty . Did you touch anything prior to coming back in the serps ? Like anything ? And did you notice a huge amount of pages not found in your GWT. And did you notice the links shown in GWT dropping by a large amount ?

I got rid of all on-site crap, recip links pages, overdone internal links, footer link to home page with keywords, most all home page links on the site that had sitewide anchor.

I built no new links to the sites throughout the 2+ years of penalty and I added fresh content on occasion.

I deleted all my sites from GWT after the penalty, I don't trust them and I don't like to showcase everything I have. Though I know they have other ways of telling what sites I own, I still deleted all of them.

I do know that each of my sites had the exact same penalty, that also got lifted at the same time, within days of each other.

The first post on this page is mine where I explain everything that happened and what I did in detail and the recovery.

[Whitey]

Sounds like it's confirmed - from my sources as well , crappy backlink equals a -50 penalty which lasts 2 to 2.5 years. The one I observed lasted May 2008 to mid August 2010 which involved lot's of low paid poor quality articles and blogs. So Google does consider the quality of the writers and or the levels of excess linking.

Let's face it, high quality keywords repeated on trophy terms are never going to be natural in volume. Dead giveaway IMO and times moved on to something much more sophisticated.

Not only that, but if you have crappy content Panda will get you, so the combined effect is a turnaround to the mass SEO approaches that went on before.

[courier]

Yes but there must be a -50 threshold - quantity of links added to ammount of pages - keyword in link - speed in which they are added, perhaps the older a site is and more established the harder it is to detect.

Perhaps this would make it almost impossible to take a competitor down with links, unless you went on a long campaign.

[Donna]

I just check my logs, thank god I keep them, my last refferals from google for my index page were Jun/30th/2009 and then came back exactly on Jul/5th/2011. So I guess there is a 2yrs penalty .

[Whitey]

Mystery uncovered.

[martinacastro]

@Love2Blog you never request to remove the crappy links from the third sites?