Penguin Recovery Tips - a think tank thread

[bostonyear]

Since the main Penguin Update thread has 700 posts and counting, I'm hoping to start a new thread solely focused on Penguin recovery tips. I have a site that was hit by Penguin and I am trying to work my way out of it.

I think reason I was penalized was my content. I was inadvertently keyword stuffing. This is just the way I have been writing content for years. I have updated the content on my main pages where I have fixed the blatant keyword stuffing. My density levels are much more in line. My main question is:

I have over 80 blog posts that have some instances of keyword stuffing. Do I need to go back and fix all of these pages? Some of the posts are over 3 years old? I also have some really old pages that are buried in my site that may have poor content. Should fixing these old pages be a priority?

[diberry]

You then need to clear your cache and delete all Google cookies to get back to "normal" results.

I tried this - it does change the results a little, and I'll have to watch and see whether the change is enough to match up with what my analytics is reporting (otoh, I think just trusting my analytics is a way to go).

But it doesn't come close to explaining why searching Google through a proxy returns an unrelated mishmash of sites... unless Google is detecting proxies and returning junk results for some reason?

[blackpixel]

@diberry

try searching on AOL.com

[swampdeer]

I find using private browsing in Firefox gives you anonomous cookie-free search results. It is possible the results are still affected by IP address though.

Shift Control and P

[Wilburforce]

searching Google through a proxy returns an unrelated mishmash of sites

Server location makes quite a difference from here (UK): even using a proxy with a different UK location can throw up quite big variations, and if I use a US or european proxy I can get results for some search terms that would probably be more relevant on the moon.

[Leosghost]

It is possible the results are still affected by IP address though.

Definitely are..

[bsand715]

For what its worth:

For years in my niche my site with loads of original content, 100s of pages and 1000s of natural links, none paid and only a few traded links with no black hat, tried to do it Googles way, was #1. Within the site I built my blue widgets service page that brought me personal paid services. I had enough business that I could refer business to friends that were in the same line of work.

In time friends wanted their own website so they could post their info with pictures and asked me if I would build it. I did, short 5 page sites that I still control.

When google started this mess my site dropped to #5 or 6 and top sites were very low content sites with few pages. So help me one is more of a link page to the guys facebook.

2 of my friends sites that I control were optimized in the manner I built the big main site. They were on page 2 before panda or whatever started, both of them small 5 page sites.

I lowered the content of these and replaced all but one or two keywords phrases with adverbs.

Now one is number 1 and the other is number 3.

I have read other say low to no content sites are ranking on top.

Is a lot of good content pages dead with google?

Should websites now look and read like a yellow page add?

[Garya]

bsand715
In my niche the first 6 sites on google have very little content on the home page. Less is better. I went from 1 to 7. google has lost their mind.

[Roaming Gnome]

Is a lot of good content pages dead with google?

I guess large sites have a lot more "content" that could trigger flags. The small / straight to the point sites are doing well.

[diberry]

The problem is, Google keeps redefining "spam." Panda hated short and to the point sites, like eHow, at first, but then suddenly eHow was back and I don't see that anything changed. The articles are still unreliable crap, much of it written poorly (even to the point where I can't understand what they're telling me to do), and yet they rank even on searches where they're not relevant (but share a keyword or so).

[diberry]

Here's a question: a lot of us are seeing at least a few sites ranking high that really shouldn't be. One I'm seeing, for example, is totally MFA, with several pages that go to a page with no content, and one page of content. There is no way Google or any reader would not consider this site way spammier than a lot of sites below it since Penguin.

Are these high ranking spammers just getting lucky and slipping past the algo for now? Or is there something they are doing right that the algo can't catch up to?

[legaleagle]

You then need to clear your cache and delete all Google cookies to get back to "normal" results.

You can instead just "disable customization based on search history" in google prefs

This is easier than continually deleting your cookies and web history

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Re: getting natural results in Google without the gizmos and personal junk...

Google doesn't want you to be able to do that.

[Leosghost]

The pws=0 part hasn't worked for a long time..
was replying to something the Sgt said ..which disappeared whilst I was posting ?

And your IP is still influencing your results even with "search history" in Google pref's, "switched off"..

[Wilburforce]

You can instead just "disable customization based on search history" in google prefs

No, you get the effect with it disabled (and you have to enable cookies to disable it).

[bsand715]

diberry in my niche the new leading sites are not MFA- they simple look like phone book ads with pictures. No adsense. No "alt" tags on any photos.

One interesting thing was 2 or 3 days after my site dropped, I received a free money offer from the google small business team to start running awords again. My main site does run adsense on most pages. At one time I used adwords but dropped it a few years back.

Just a coincidence I'm sure. But I am starting an adwords campaign :)

[diberry]

I sure can't find any way to get Google to send me the results my visitors seem to be getting - let alone anything like what I saw going through proxies.

@bsand715, I got that Adwords card too. It didn't feel like a coincidence to me. ;)

[Martin Ice Web]

Since today goomazon has vanished all ! ecom shops from page 1 and 2. The last one standing ( not mine ) got hit this weekend. I am seeing -50% referals. Only one survining this trip are price compare sites and amzon + ebay. All mom/pop ecoms are out of range.

You can´t tell me that every ecom shop did something wrong or did buy links, keyword stuffing .... This is what google wants and we can do what we want, there will be no change unless you are amazon or big brand. Hope poeple realize that google is no more a search machine but an amazon supporting company.

[gouri]

Gouri some of the sites had link-backs because they were stealing the whole page with navigation others didn’t. I can see the direction of your thinking. If there's no link-back I definitely kill them off if you're wondering.

@outland88,

Thanks for responding.

Let's say you see your content on other websites (and also on several pages of a single website) and from the pages that it is on, there is a url link to the page on your site that it is from.

Do you think that this is ok? Would Google not consider something like this duplicate content since there is a link back?

[diberry]

goomazon

LOL! Thanks for that laugh in the middle of the gloom and doom, because what's happening certainly isn't funny! (BTW, "goomazon.com" is already taken... unbelievable.)

Let's say you see your content on other websites (and also on several pages of a single website) and from the pages that it is on, there is a url link to the page on your site that it is from.

Despite Google's best efforts, there are times they mistake scraper content for the original because it's just not easy to determine. So they have a DCMA complaint form that's really easy to use. I fill a few of those out every couple of months. Google notifies the other website that there's a complaint. Often the website takes that page down, or hastily rewrites it. If they don't, Google removes the offending page from the SERPs.

That ensures that Google will know you're the original source for your pages (and photos).

[backdraft7]

Just throwing in my two cents between the rage posts...
Recovery remains very slow with a weekly ebb & flow towards the positive. Not making any major changes on the site, yet it continues to slowly recover. This proves my theory (in my case at least) that it's not the site per se, but Google that's still broken. Bing results are fantastic.

My Analytics "delta" has gone from -29% a few weeks ago to -15% today, indicating a 14% improvement.

Much of what I am seeing is normal seasonal fluctuation, but there are still the zombie periods, like yesterday with 6 sales in "normal" intervals between 6am and noon, then nothing for 16 straight hours. These patterns concur with observations from other webmasters who I am in daily contact with.

I would have to agree that some of this appears to be manipulation to force increased Adwords spending by supplanting your former organic positions with any existing Adwords positions that you have already set up.
This seems to hold true for my case.

[diberry]

Diberry I was talking to a support specialist at Bing (some are just terrific) and I asked why I dealt with that stolen content problem in Google and not with Bing. She responded very quickly that they scanned for the duplicate content before they introduced the page into the index. I said with all the bright minds at Google why don’t they do the same. Her even quicker response was the stolen content likely had something of value to Google such as Adsense or other advertising. I laughed because that's the history of my rich Uncle Google.

Well, that is interesting! I had assumed it was just genuinely difficult to do, since intellectual property theft isn't always easy to prove offline either. The main point of scraping online does seem to be to make Adsense income, so I'm sure she's right.

And since I do check my most scraped keyphrases in both engines, I had wondered why I only find scrapers high in the rankings in Google, but I never got around to looking into it. Thanks for this info!

[outland88]

Probably their is a pattern that MS has observed or type of site engaged in these activities. The offenders probably don't appeal because they know what they're doing. With the amount of data being collected by all and especially Google DMCA's it's probably obvious. From a legal standpoint I would bar prior to entry based upon submission is no guarantee of acceptance. This sends a message don't waste your time stealing and trying to gain entry with possibly hundreds of pages. Google could argue 1st amendment freedoms but most judges would view that rather dimly if Google was profiting in some manner with the stolen content as they do until banishment.

To clarify though I wouldn't look at this as a specific way to get out of a Penguin penalty with the vast majority.

[aleksl]

Let's go back to Penguin recovery tips, of which there are none easy logical ones for an average small business. Except maybe develop more good links where Google found bad ones, quickly and in numbers. Which, apparently, Google dislikes. And at this point black hats are reporting being able to successfully nuke sites at will thru simple linkfarms.

[edited by: tedster at 11:23 pm (utc) on Jun 19, 2012]

[aleksl]

Oh, did I not mention the click fraud networks that aren't being cleaned up? Oh, the one conveniently called "your competitors clicked on your ads"? Right, about 20% of the time , sometimes more. Holy molly, my competitors must be employing staff to do that, aren't they the bad guys?...

< continued here: [webmasterworld.com...] >

[edited by: tedster at 2:32 pm (utc) on Jun 24, 2012]