Again penalized... this time by massive inbound links

[martinacastro]

My last penalization was in october 2010.

I made big changes in my site, like removing lots of links to affiliate, delete duplicate content, increase content, delete thin pages. In december 2010 my site was again Top, but was hit a bit by some Pandas, but deleting more thin content and increasing content at the end of august I reach the best positins

Yesterday nighy (11/6) again my site was penalized, most of the kw loose 45 - 70 positions.

Watching GWT I see that one site that links to me, now have 13000 links from the footer to my site. Seems that the owner of that site made a mistake and now send me massive links. Could this be an issue?

Any ideas ?

Thanks

[martinacastro]

Does minus 40 penalty exists?

Because my site for most of the kws that ware in Page 1 or Page make a yoyo effect between position 40 and 80 everytime. For example I search now for KW1 and it is in position 40 and 30 mins later is in position 58, and so on..

Thanks in advance for the comments!

[trakkerguy]

Does minus 40 penalty exists?

Is the -50 penalty with a slight change to the symptom. It now allows some pages to creep up into the 40's.

But same thing. And you can still tell for sure if NOTHING on your site ranks higher than that. Long strings of text, or unique words in your titles, or domain name (if unique) all pushed to 40 or higher.

[martinacastro]

Thanks!

The actual -50 penalty seems to be relative to site content? or also to backlink profile? It is automatic or manual?

[martinacastro]

One question, when I search for my domain in google like this:

my-domain.com

my site come first in Google, but for other kws yes, my site come since position 40.

Is that a minus 50 penalization?

[Planet13]

What happens if you take a unique string of text (that DOESN'T include keywords) and search for it on google? Do you rank at or near the top of the SERPs?

(Note: With google's expanded use of synonyms in the algorithm, you may see sites with similar - but not exact match - for a string of unique text.)

From what I have heard, if you are minus 40 or minus 50 for SPECIFIC KEYWORDS then it is likely to be an Over Optimization Penalty. I haven't experienced one myself, so I I can't tell you more than what I have heard from others.

What is the anchor text that is pointing to your site like? Is it all keyword anchor text?

My site has a pretty natural backlink profile (I believe) and the anchor text to inbound links to my site looks something like this:

80% Domain Name (or variations on it)
10% Irrelevant text (like "click here" or "on this site" or "see this page". etc.,)
8% Long (non-optimized) text string containing a keyword
2% Keyword text

These are approximations, but are pretty close.

Also, I would say the distribution of links inbound is important. Probably around 70% go to the home page. About 23% are split up among 5 or 6 really popular internal pages. The remaining 7% are spread out amongst another 100 or so pages that might have only 1 link each.

I hope this helps.

[martinacastro]

Hi Planet, thanks for your comments

If I search for a string I dont rank near the Top, I rank page 6, and for lots of KW I rank page 5, 6, 7 or 8. Most of the kws that were in page 1 makes like a yoyo effect between postion 40 and 70.

Using GWT approx the 60% are variations of my domain name (with a third kw, in singular, etc), my domain name is the plural of an important kw.

Until last tuesday my site was top 50 for approximate 30 different kws, so I think that I have a good variation...

[martinacastro]

One more thing to share.

My subdomains in spanish and portuguese are also penalized, so is a domain....

Any more ideas?

[martinacastro]

Someone experience this type of symptom? My site that Is penalized since last tuesday, move between the position 40 to the position 68. When I search one time and is in position 40, the next time that I search is 51 and the next one 68, and the next one 48 and the next one 42 and so on...

Also subdomains in spanish and portuguese are penalized ...

At friday night I deleted a wide range of pages with affiliate links, I think that this was an issue...

Any more ideas to help?

Thanks

[martinacastro]

Someone knows if a subdomain bad practice could penalize the whole domain?

[mikeavery11]

You may inform G that you didn't developed those crazy links.

[martinacastro]

10 days after I deleted the pages with dup content and affiliate links, my site drop to position 180 for one kw that was top 2, for the name of the site is now ranking position 120 but for a inside page and not the home page....

Extrange is that for high competitive kws still ranks in the same position (70 / 80)

Any idea what is happening? Seems to be an algorithm penalization and not manual?

Thanks for the response

[martinacastro]

Im adding new pages (near to have 100+ original content) since last wednesday but google did not index them...

Could be a symptom of penalization because dup content? and googlebot takes more time to index new content?

Before the penalization, new content of my site were indexed quickly, less than 5 days...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

ASK for a reconsideration request when you're done cleaning up a bit. If there is NO penalty they will usually reply telling you there is no penalty. Careful though, the request will bring eyeballs to your site and it's possible you end up with a penalty being handed out at that point.

Personally I think Google needs to advise ALL sites whenever it penalizes them along with provide a general idea why. NOT to be doing this is borderline irresponsible given the computing power at Google.

Also, Martincastro, what does your social network look like? Are you automatically publishing your posts to your twitter/facebook accounts?

[martinacastro]

Careful though, the request will bring eyeballs to your site and it's possible you end up with a penalty being handed out at that point.

@Sgt_Kickaxe sorry my English, but if I understand, you mean that if I have an algorithm penalization and my site have something else wrong I will get a manual penalization plus the algorithm penalization?

Also, Martincastro, what does your social network look like? Are you automatically publishing your posts to your twitter/facebook accounts?

no, but one of my actualizations (not yet in production) include the possibility of comments by the visitors to the new content using facebook

[martinacastro]

I discovered that the videos that I made and published in Youtube are disable. The videos were published using another gmail account (exactly the name of the site) and the videos have the domain name written.

Seems that my youtube account and also gmail account were disable in august and my site was penalized in september.

My webmaster tools account is different of the youtube account disable, so I can use the emails and watch the dashboard, but is strange that the other gmail account that the domain name is block/disable.

Could be this a coincidence? could be that spam team of youtube and gmail communicate about this to the web team?

[Robert Charlton]

martin - When you say the video is disabled, do you mean that you can't access the account, or is the video not running?

The management of multiple Google accounts became even more difficult when YouTube decided to merge legacy YouTube accounts with Google accounts (not necessarily Gmail accounts). If you have multiple Google accounts, it's very possible you linked your YouTube account to the wrong Google account. The situation is extremely confusing, but access (if that's your issue) may have nothing to do with your penalty. Here are two of many Google support threads that might be useful...

Connecting a Google Account to your older YouTube account
[google.com...]

Linked to a Google Account and need help? Support options here!
2/18/11
[google.com...]

Also, try searching on Google for...
google youtube accounts

[martinacastro]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your comments

I mean that my videos with links to my site were removed, the youtube account disable and also the gmail account related to the youtube account is disable. When I try to access to the account I recieve the following message "Account has been disabled "

[martinacastro]

Today, the third site that linked my site from the footer with 3700 links, deleted the link!

So now the 3 sites than send me more than 27k of backlinks have deleted the footer links...

I hope that this plus the new original content will help me... :)

[martinacastro]

Im finishing lots of improvements to my site, but I want to know the opinion of the forum about subdomains for language options.

I read Google Guidelines and seems that having the same content in another language is not a problem.

My penalized site has also their languange subdomains in spanish, german and french are also penalized. These subdomains only have a 5% of the content of the primary site.

Can this be a problem, because dup content or thin content / thin affiliate?

Thanks for comments

[martinacastro]

Hello

I finished the improvements weeks ago and I sent the reconsideration, recieving the same day the ack of the reconsideration: (We've received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site)

Today in the message box of GWT I found this message (the same message 2 times) but it was not in the dashboard, it was in the message box:

------
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: mydomain.tbd

We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.
------

I don't understand if they complete the review of my site or if they only view the request? Because they said: "We've now reviewed your site" and then "we'll reconsider our indexing of your site"

I read that some people recieve this message and later they recieve the final message if the site was manually penalized or still violates guidelines.

Someone knows about this message? It is the final message if my SERPs does not improve or I must wait some weeks to recieve a final response?

Thanks
Martin

[tedster]

It's not a definitive message, but this boilerplate does indicate that some person on the team reviewed your site. The good part is that you did not receive a boilerplate message saying that your site still violates some guidelines.

Many futures are possible. Depending on what kind of penalty your site received, and also on the site's history, the penalty may still be applied for a period of time even after you fixed the problems. As far as I know, Google never communicates officially about extra time in the "penalty box" with regard to any specific Reconsideration Request.

In other cases, the penalty may be removed very quickly. It all seems to depend on how severe a violation Google feels your site had - in other words, whether they feel you have in general been trying to manipulate the rankings, or whether this was a one-time error in judgment.

[martinacastro]

Thanks tedster!

So you think that I must wait some weeks before making more changes and sending another Reconsideration?

Thanks again

[tedster]

If you know of any further guidelines violations, definitely fix them now. Otherwise, just keep developing and marketing your business as you normally would while you wait.

[martinacastro]

Thanks tedster, I reviewed several times my site, make many updates to correct guidelines violations. I think that all is ok now.... but who knows...

[martinacastro]

for those who follow this thread, can see in [webmasterworld.com ] that G response sometimes with this message and seems that some sites with this response are not penalized.

[jimmyperkins35]

Yes you can get penalized for building so many links. What I feel is you are getting links from automated submissions. In my views, you need to adopt white hat manual practices and also try to reduce the number of back links you are getting each month.