IP Relationship to a -50 penalty

[Love2Blog]

I was wondering if anyone has any insight into wether moving a -50 penalized site to a dedicated IP hosting account could possible poison my other sites at that hosting?

I get the feeling this penalty is domain level, but I am worried that my other sites might get affected if I move it?

[walkman]

A few months ago I would have said no way, but lately I've been reading about group demotions...like all the sites listed in one Webmaster central account, so who knows. I would not risk it.

[Love2Blog]

A few months ago I would have said no way, but lately I've been reading about group demotions...like all the sites listed in one Webmaster central account, so who knows. I would not risk it.

Yes I have seen some threads like that too and I am leaning towards not risking it too, too much to lose.

This BITES!

[Planet13]

Are you SURE it is a penalty?

If so, how do you think you got the penalty?

[nickreynolds]

This is just a gut feeling based on my experiences with Panda 2.1.
Maybe Google does look at "networks of sites". A "network" may be due to interlinking, shared IP, using the same Analytics account, using the same adsense account.
My gut feeling is that the more of these "network" factors are in place, the more likely you'll be affected.

[Love2Blog]

Are you SURE it is a penalty?

If so, how do you think you got the penalty?

It is a penalty and has been for about 2 years now, it happened as a result of my being new to this and manually building the usual crap links that most novices tend to build.

[Hoople]

Time to burn this domain and get a new one?

Might be a consideration if you can't remove most of the maginal to definately spammy back links.

[Prudence]

For what it's worth, one of my sites had a -50 filter/penalty and I moved it, together with all my other sites onto a dedicated hosting package. All the sites are also on the same Webmaster Central account. Its been six months now and none of the other sites were affected.

Incidentally, the site in question recently recovered from its penalty.

[Prudence]

Time to burn this domain and get a new one?

IMHO patience is still the byword here. My site had the -50 thing for three years. Don't despair!

[SevenCubed]

You may want to rethink the -50 penalty for same IP, I have seen no negative effect from this at all.

After I develop client sites I micro-manage them long-term. In one solid example of what you are asking here I have 3 particular sites that are on the same static IP that the first site has occupied for about 2 years, the second for about a year and the last one for about 3 months -- so there is history to them. They are all in the same base holistic industry but their combined dozen or so modalities do not compete against each other. Additionally they even lease space within the same building and unit number from a larger umbrella organization that I did not develop nor do I have control of.

I have cross-linked them in reference to each other to varying degrees of 2-5 links of exchanges where it was in a natural context, plus the umbrella organization links to them and they to it. Essentially there is no hiding the fact that they are all somewhat inter-related with even the same identical published address. The only difference distinguishing them is they all have their own unique phone numbers and of course each one is a unique business on it's own. They are very legitimate small businesses, provide their clients and patients with genuine services, at the most affordable rates in the region. They provide VALUE.

When I added the 3rd one to the chain (and same IP) the other 2 sites got pushed higher for their targeted search terms and the newly added practitioner enjoyed the benefit of trust that the other two existing businesses had built up -- sort of like that single static IP is considered to be a good "neighbourhood".

Keep in mind this is only 3 sites and they are each on their own unique GWT account. I really cannot see sharing an IP as a reason for a penalty. That would be poor programming logic unless really finely tuned, but ultimately it is possible, just highly improbable IMO. In comparison think about the bricks and mortar world where hundreds of stores in a mall share the same street address. I'm sure it's not something that could lead to what you are describing unless there is obvious abuse going on in some way. You may want to look elsewhere for a cause.

As a side note the umbrella organization which I do not manage, and I know is not SEO'd at all, is climbing in results for search terms that I would like to see them rank for because it's in the best interest for the lessees -- a symbiotic relationship. The reason for the umbrella organization's climb is due to strategic links to it from the 3 smaller trusted sites. Everyone wins, overall that location dominates the holistic industry for quite a large physical radius and the public enjoy the benefit of what is offered there.

Same IP = no penalties.

[Love2Blog]

Time to burn this domain and get a new one? Might be a consideration if you can't remove most of the maginal to definately spammy back links.

I've been considering this for some time. No way to remove the majority of the links.

For what it's worth, one of my sites had a -50 filter/penalty and I moved it, together with all my other sites onto a dedicated hosting package. All the sites are also on the same Webmaster Central account. Its been six months now and none of the other sites were affected. Incidentally, the site in question recently recovered from its penalty.

Can you share anything you did to make the recovery happen?

IMHO patience is still the byword here. My site had the -50 thing for three years. Don't despair!

Yeah, I had more than one site affected back then, as I was building these crap links for all my sites, one has recovered recently, coincidentally one of the more worst sites I had, the better ones are still in penalty.

[Prudence]

Can you share anything you did to make the recovery happen?

It seemed to be a backlink profile problem. I thought that, because my site is an exact match domain, that building links to the site name wouldn't be a problem. Mistake. When I suspected this might be the problem, I started link building again and managed to acquire around 30 new links with mixed up anchor text - it seemed to do the trick.

I assume that it was a backlink problem because I hadn't touched my site for about a year beforehand. I had kind of given up on it.

[mhansen]

You may want to rethink the -50 penalty for same IP, I have seen no negative effect from this at all.

Ditto, same for us. We have seen an obvious -50 penalty on a site on a dedicated box, shared with several other sites in the same general market, same IP range, etc. Rankings dropped a few months ago by 50-52 positions across the site.

To the point of the OP though, none of the other sites on the same server were affected.

[Love2Blog]

It seemed to be a backlink profile problem. I thought that, because my site is an exact match domain, that building links to the site name wouldn't be a problem. Mistake. When I suspected this might be the problem, I started link building again and managed to acquire around 30 new links with mixed up anchor text - it seemed to do the trick.

I assume that it was a backlink problem because I hadn't touched my site for about a year beforehand. I had kind of given up on it.

Thank you, that is one thing that I suspected but never tried, I think I will try it.

[learnseo81]

Hi Love2Blog,

Did you ever submit a reconsideration request? If yes, then what was the reply from Google?

JC Penny backlink penalty was removed after 3 months and they built a crap load of links and thousands of them. Did you make that many links? IMO, Back linking penalty doesn't last for two years unless you are linking out to bad sites. Just my thoughts.

[Love2Blog]

Hi Love2Blog,

Did you ever submit a reconsideration request? If yes, then what was the reply from Google?

JC Penny backlink penalty was removed after 3 months and they built a crap load of links and thousands of them. Did you make that many links? IMO, Back linking penalty doesn't last for two years unless you are linking out to bad sites. Just my thoughts.

No I didn't request reconsideration for the main reason that I had nothing good to say, from reading many threads Google wants to know what you've done to fix issues, such as bad links, since I could not do that I just left it alone.

I have read threads in the -50 thread on this site and in this thread as well (see above comment) where people have had the penalty for a long long time, while others get lifted fast. I can't imagine it's not a penalty since no pages of the site ever go past or before Pg 5 or Pg 6 and even the tld (without .com) is on page 5.

My crap link counts were about 4000

[Reno]

but lately I've been reading about group demotions...like all the sites listed in one Webmaster central account

If that quote is true, then that's yet one more example of the perverse love affair that Google has with penalizing people. At the time when GWT began there were people here who warned about simply handing Google a list of sites controlled by a single webmaster, as (they said) it would not likely help you, but the information could be used against you. Now it seems obvious that it was the easiest way for Google to find out relationships between sites. But back then there were still many of us who did not realize they were not a company to be fully trusted, and thus in retrospect caution may have been the better strategy. Given all that, the advice by others to not risk the server move is probably on the mark.

...................

[Planet13]

...Google wants to know what you've done to fix issues, such as bad links, since I could not do that I just left it alone.

Wondering out loud here...

In a case where you built many spammy backlinks to INTERNAL pages, whether 401 those pages would help your case.

I know that wouldn't help in the case of spammy links to the index page, since probably no one would ever 401 their home page.

And I know that you could remove those 401s once the penalty was lifted.

But still, in a case where you couldn't remove bad backlinks, I wonder if that would help at all?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I don't think it matters if the sites are on the same IP, Google knows you own them regardless of where you host them.

If you've been penalized Google will continue to check to see if the problem is resolved, try and resolve any potential problems.

I just took a site that is almost 4 years old but was only receiving 100 visitors a day and I turned it inside out with improvements. At one point I noticed that as I made each change Google was loading up 180 pages inside of a few minutes, repeatedly. I noticed because I had to clear the cache with each update and Google was creating a lot of pages quickly.

To me that implies that googlebot noticed my making changes and decided to watch the site closely. 3 days later my GWT account showed a massive spike in crawl activity. Google's watching, fix your stuff!

[Love2Blog]

Wondering out loud here...

In a case where you built many spammy backlinks to INTERNAL pages, whether 401 those pages would help your case.

I know that wouldn't help in the case of spammy links to the index page, since probably no one would ever 401 their home page.

And I know that you could remove those 401s once the penalty was lifted.

But still, in a case where you couldn't remove bad backlinks, I wonder if that would help at all?

Hmmm.. that is very creative, I will have to try it and report back