Google Launches Update Targeting Spam... Again? Penguin Update

[netmeg]

Matt Cutts "In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics."

[insidesearch.blogspot.com...]

Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 4:31 pm (utc) on Apr 25, 2012]
[edit reason] added quotes - updated link [/edit]

[Jez123]

my rankings are back on page 1 after making a few minor adjustments over the past few weeks.

That's it. I am going to threaten Matt Cutts too! :-)

Seriously BBG, congratulations. I hope it sticks for you.

[BaseballGuy]

@Jez123

I already broke both his legs, so you need to find another body part ; )


-----------------------------------------------------------------

Here is what I did:

1. Removed affiliate links (there were about 10 on one page). Now the page has 2 affiliate links.

2. Reached out to the heavens, raised my arms, and commanded a few "high quality" links be pumped into the "offending web page" that got dinged. In reality, I reached out to a few friends for a few links back to my sites, from their sites. Nothing spammy, no exact match anchor text. Stuff like "click here" etc.

3. Lowered keyword density. Replaced with similar keywords.

4. Took a good hard look at the moron who has had the #1 spot for a particular keyword for the past 3 years. Despite Penguin, despite Panda, despite every single major (and minor) Google algorithm change, he continually ranks #1.

5. Copied how his page was set up. I'm guessing this is why he has avoided getting dinged by Panda.


He buys links on other websites, as well as uses either Xrumr or other automated link building software. He also owns a few old single page websites. He also only has 2 affiliate links on his ranking page. His entire site is nothing more than a thinly veiled affiliate program, to the trained eye. To the untrained eye (read: a Google manual review), the site looks wonderful.

The 2nd most recurring instance of anchor text in inbound links to his site is his main keyword. The 1st is a variation of that.

[BaseballGuy]

I also want to make note:

My rankings are on PAGE 1, but my site is NOT in position #1.

This is not a "fix all". There is something still definitely wrong here, and my traffic levels are confirming it. Traffic is still down. It's the highest it has been since Penguin came into existence.

My personal thoughts are as follows:


There is no general "do this and your rankings will return". Each site is a unique case/situation. What works for me, may not work for you.

However, I do suggest you start making your changes to your site if you decided to wait until the fluctuations died down.

Over the past 3 days, been noticing some huge gains, and some huge losses when checking my rankings every morning. Upwards of 50 to 60 spot jumps.

When I log into my client's analytics program, they're pretty much staying the same. So something is happening.

[mike2010]

It seems Google's Panda Update and Penguin Update are fueling a growing anti-Google sentiment within the SEOes and Webmasters communities. Very sad situation, indeed.

Now if only the rest of the public would go along as well, we could solely concentrate on Bing / Yahoo.

If enough migrated over, Google would think twice about implementing such pathetic updates that penalize innocent sites.

[tedster]

I think the main message is that what we used to consider innocent was actually more manipulative than that. If a site is trying to create "popularity signals" of any kind that don't actually originate in the market, from real independent people, then those signals may now be considered webspam, especially if there are few of the truly natural signals.

Think about it.

[textex]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4450969.htm [webmasterworld.com] by tedster - 10:06 pm on May 8, 2012 (EST -4)

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Scrapers are outranking me! Aggravating! Is this part of the Penguin update; to allow crap scrapers to outrank for our unique content? What in the world is the benefit of that? Are we expected to rewrite our entire site? Or is the thinking that we get out ourselves out of the filter/penalty and this issue with the scrapers will dissolve?

[tedster]

Scrapers outranking you? Usually short term - at least for any particular scraper. But it's also usually a sign that you've lost Google's trust somehow. It's worth some deep thought about why that might have happened - even though each situation may have its own unique components.

[BaseballGuy]

Building on what Tedster said:


For what it's worth...

Pay attention to your code/image weight on the home/internal page(s) and a plethora of other "on site" SEO issues.

Been saying this ad naeseum for the past few years.....I have had clients get verbally violent with me over the phone because my on site suggestions cost them a few thousand bucks in coder costs and they didn't see any immediate result from it.

[unikat]

I have a travel website.
My home page is optimized for keyword "Holiday in #*$!" and I was at the second position in SERP. Also I was at the page #1 for the more general keyword "holiday" in my country.

Now after Penguin for my long-tail keyword "Holiday in #*$!" I'm in the 7-8 position and nowhere to be found for "holiday"?

Isn't it strange given the fact that 90% of my backlinks contain "Holiday in #*$!" and only between 1-5 links contain just "holiday".

I've also observe that for holiday related keywords like "Hotels in #*$!" Google deindexed my main pages (eg. www.#*$!.com/hotels) but still shows my website in SERP with URL like www.#*$!.com/hotels?page=2 - it's actually the same page with the same meta tags and content, but just different offers. Note that I don't have backlinks to all of my main pages but anyway Google prefers to show /hotels?page=2 instead of /hotels.

[tedster]

unikat, it sounds like the anchor text for links that "you" built is being seen as artificially manipulated and therefore devalued.

[Jez123]

Pay attention to your code/image weight on the home/internal page(s) and a plethora of other "on site" SEO issues.

Are you talking about images and navigation etc appearing "above the fold"? If so, my WP based site might have an issue with that. The site is very image heavy as this is what the customer wants to see! They want to be stunned by the quality of my work first and foremost (I expect).

I can move the images and navigation with CSS so that the text is above the fold to the robots. Will this help? There are no ads of any sort which is what I always assumed the issue with "above the fold" content was.

Is this not designing your site for search engines and not people and therefore manipulation therefore blackhat SEO? I just don't know any more.

[Alternative Future]

My site has lost 75% of its traffic, my rankings are falling each day. The site is 14 years old, has fresh content put up each day, has never bought links or even attempted any form of black hat SEO techniques. The sites that are taking over the top rankings are sites with lots of pages full of nothing i.e. a site that creates a page about [town/city] with no content just has a header with the [town/city] name.

Come on google sort this one out.

[Jez123]

My site has lost 75% of its traffic, my rankings are falling each day.

Then you are a filthy spamming blackhat. If you listen to some here that is ;-)

I am seeing my sites rankings replaced by a low quality site and sites that have not been updated since 2005 / 5. I feel your pain.

[Shaddows]

has never bought links or even attempted any form of black hat SEO techniques

Then you are a filthy spamming blackhat. If you listen to some here that is

The thing is, most checklist SEOs define blackhat as "stuff I don't do". As usual, its all about word games.

So, the narrative goes like this.

Google says links are important. Therefore Google is telling me to build links. I have built links. Google is punishing me for building links. Capricious Google has deliberately led me astray and life is so unfair.

Of course, Google never said to build links. The early SEOs created a checklist that said building links were important. Checklist SEOs followed the recipe. Myth and FUD have become so entwined that is almost impossible to have a meaningful conversation with anyone who doesn't already subscribe to your own world view.

It's like an Atheist and monotheist debating what it means to be a "Good person". The frames of reference are just not compatible, though there is massive overlap on the practical issues.

So when you suggest that "some" will accuse you of blackhat spamming, you are wrong. They just will not blindly accept that you have not done anything that Google considers blackhat, just because you think you're plain vanilla.

[Jez123]

They just will not blindly accept that you have not done anything that Google considers blackhat, just because you think you're plain vanilla.

My point is, who are they to judge? I expect that given all powers that I couldn't find someting on their sites that I thought spammy, blackhat, sneaky or underhand? Or that their site will not suffer in the next update (and mine will return). You are right though Google's guidleines are open to interpretation and there are many different views of what is accepatble.

I guess what I am trying to say that it's not productive to point the finger when someone's site gets dinged by one of these updates. It's bad enough to lose the income without being judged by the "holier than thou's"

[Alternative Future]

*removed*

[edited by: Alternative_Future at 10:35 am (utc) on May 9, 2012]

[Shaddows]

My point is, who are they to judge?

They are no one to judge, they do not judge, Google does. What they do is opine, and I'm sure you are free to opine in return.

You are right though Google's guidleines are open to interpretation and there are many different views of what is accepatble

My point is, some people base their views on What it Written and What is Known. The Gospel according to St Matt of Cutts, or the interpretion of Father/Rev/Imam John Doe. How many keywords can dance on the end of a title? [en.wikipedia.org]

Others read what is written, listen to what is said, then GO AND FIND WHAT WORKS.

Own your destiny. Much better to say "I tried this and got it wrong, my fault" than "I was told this and was misled, someone should sort it out".

Very, very few regular contributors are "holier than thou" but if they come off that way, it is likely they do not subscribe to your Faith at all.

Edit speeling and emphasis

[jkdt0077]

Edit speeling and emphasis

Try again :)

[Shaddows]

er, yes, that is the common joke.

[Jez123]

Edit speeling and emphasis

lol, you could have fixed mine in the quote too :-)

[jkdt0077]

er, yes, that is the common joke.

Heh, it's not that common.

[menntarra 34]

In the last couple of months i did a lot of improvements on my page:
- page speed improvements
- zero duplicate content(before i had like 5times duplicated content)
- removed any and all links that might be spammy, also cleaned up pages so that they don't contain duplicate words
- and much more...

Result is funny: After this Panda update i lost 20% of my traffic, while in bing and yahoo, i'm on the first page with every keyword that is important for me...
Question: Should i forget google?

[Shaddows]

Question: Should i forget google?

Assume the answer is yes.

What are you going to do differently in your brave new world?

[diberry]

I used to believe Google's algos were pretty good and most people claiming to be false positives weren't completely owning up to their tactics. Panda changed all that, and Penguin's just reaffirmed me. In these updates, I've seen people penalized who weren't using Xrumer (what is that? Is that the piece of crap that leaves spam for me to delete from my blogs every morning? If so, I hope you guys choke on it) or leaving comments all over the net with their links, or even writing or posting guest articles. I've seen people penalized who had refused to do giveaways to build traffic for fear Google would think it naughty.

What they HAVE been doing is:

--Writing high quality articles for popular keyphrases that were relevant to their sites when they could have written high quality articles for less popular ones. I wouldn't call that black hat.
--Using natural keyword density - remember, in English class, we were taught to repeat certain phrases some, but not too much, to keep our essays and thesis papers unified and on topic.
--Providing "too many" (as defined by the ever-changing rules in Google's heads) genuine, unpaid, unreciprocated links.

That kind of thing. I don't think those kinds of things are blackhat, or else you're saying the only way to stay on the right side of Google is to write badly about stuff no one cares about and for heaven's sake, don't link out! LOL!

I just had Google email me that monetization on one of my YT vids had been disabled because they couldn't confirm that I held copyright on everything in it. It's a vid of me sitting at my desk talking. No background music or TV. Not even a picture on a wall. I don't hum a few bars of anything. I don't even, say, hold up a book to discuss. It's just me yapping. It would be funny if it weren't so worrying, that somehow their algo - at least I assume it wasn't a human reviewer, because no rational person could possibly see anything copyrightable in that video - thinks there's a possibly copyright violation in that video. The appeals process involved me writing in and telling them essentially this. I had to struggle to refrain from making snide remarks about algos.

I stand by my earlier theory: Google's recent algos are catching more false positives and FAILING to catch a lot of bad sites, and they need to go back to the drawing board.

And I'm not someone who thinks Google owes us a living. For the most part, Google's been good to my sites, and this site they recently penalized does have issues (just not spamming issues), so I'm not even too upset about that. I'm just saying this as someone who can look at a SERP like a human visitor: the algos aren't what they used to be.

[Shaddows]

you're saying the only way to stay on the right side of Google is to write badly about stuff no one cares about and for heaven's sake, don't link out! LOL!

Literally no one has said either of those things.

I just had Google email me that monetization on one of my YT vids had been disabled

Annoying, but not strictly relevant to the main algo in general, or penguine in particular, which is what this thread it about.

Google's recent algos are catching more false positives and FAILING to catch a lot of bad sites...

Not sure about more false positives (maybe different ones), but definately not catching all bad sites, but that doesn't mean...

...they need to go back to the drawing board.

They need to continue to refine their filters. In the mean time, it's worth noting that dropping a few places doesn't mean massive penalisation. A fundamental change to scoring methodology should be expected to change the order of a few million possible result combinations.

the algos aren't what they used to be

No. They are parsing more far more info, under more extreme exploitation from spammers than ever before. And they are serving an ever-less technical audience as the internet serves an increasingly mainstream function in orginary people's lives. Like TV, for better or worse, the lowest common denominator often gets served.

[diberry]

Shaddows, either you just sort of skimmed my post or you're deliberately creating a straw argument. I never said anyone HAD said that. I said that if you label the above listed things as spam, then you're saying that writing well about popular topics and linking are bad things. It's geometrical: if you say X is wrong, then you are saying the opposite of X is right.

The point about the YT algo is relevant, if we're trying to assess whether we have actually done something "wrong" or the algo is just not performing as well as past ones.

I think we're all well aware of the rest of your points. We just don't all agree.

[totalodds]

I feel the latest information I've discovered deserves it's own thread in order to help people get a better understand to the latest Google algorithm update "Penguin". Many people in the SEO industry agree that this latest update is basically an over optimisation penalty.

But how can Google's algorithm detect over optimisation?

This is the question I've been asking myself since the infamous update & today I've discovered some startling results.

I've found a phenomenon that can confirm your website is officially "penalised" & forced into over optimisation in order for
Google's algorithm to detect.

Follow these steps if you think your site has been penalised by this latest "penguin" update.
(If your site has disappeared or lost ranking by 30-70 pages)

1. Type in your domain name into Google - mysite.co.uk

2. Now tell me what page title it shows for your site in the serp?

3. Now tell me what your actual page title is for your website?

Is Google trying to tell us something or is this the only way Google's latest algorithm update can detect Over Optimisation?

Thanks,
J

[netmeg]

It's geometrical: if you say X is wrong, then you are saying the opposite of X is right

But it's not geometrical, and if X is wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean the opposite of X is right. It stopped being that black and white some time ago.

[jkdt0077]

@totalodds, what should we be seeing?
The title shows correct for my site.

[totalodds]

@jkdt0077 I doubt you have been penalised then*

Google is showing the wrong page title in it's serps for over optimised sites. It's letting you know your site is over optimised.

Example - Google - paydayloansdebitcard.co.uk
Now look what Google show's as the page title in the serp.

Then click the site & look at what the actual page title is*

This is a classic example of an over optimises website.

I have 100's of examples, so check your own sites & confirm this for yourself.