Penguin deindexing spam link pages

[brinked]

I know there was an old thread started by someone here saying they are seeing a lot of web directories are no longer indexed by google. I think it was a good discussion and it was locked for some reason.

The reason why I want to get back into that is because there is in fact a lot of de-indexing going on in regards to penguin. This is beyond just web directories, but this goes on a page by page level.

I only have 1 client that has a penguin related issue and all of his links are from a link wheel scheme. All of those pages are no longer indexed in google. When I say pages, I mean the pages were once indexed in google and now they are not. The website in some instances is still indexed.

Unfortunately, he did the bulk of his link building through a company and all of his links are of the link wheel variety. So naturally its as if every one of his links are no longer there. Not a penalty, just a loss of links.

I think this is a good move by google. Get the spam out of the index completely. Is anyone else seeing this? I have limited data to go on since none of my personal or other clients sites were effected by penguin.

Check your backlinks if you were hit by google. See if the pages your links were on are still indexed by G.

[tedster]

Thanks, brinked. The idea that this is a loss of previously valued links instead of a true penalty is an important distinction!

By the way, we locked the previous discussion because
it looked like a precise study (50% of all directories
discounted) when it really wasn't that, it was more of
a "way of talking."

[edited by: tedster at 4:31 am (utc) on May 29, 2012]

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I concur with the effects being at the page level. I've had a handful of pages demoted and a couple promoted to the high filter level meaning most with moderate search safety won't see them. e.g. a group of women won an award in my niche and I wrote about them but the word girls in the title might have hinted at adult content, the page got picked up by adult site linkwheels as an adult link though it's not in any way.

That page wasn't considered adult before Penguin.

Of the pages I have confirmed gone the new top rankings are all product selling sites with massive affiliate programs. My site is informational and there are none of those above Googles own "shopping" links (which seem to demark the end of the big brand shopping portals).

From #1 to #277
From #2 to #589
From #1 to #117
From #3 to #411

There seems to be no set pattern of minus 50 or minus 100 on these pages, the rest hold solid in their ranks for exact match titles and major keywords. These were not major traffic keywords by any means nor did they have a lot of backlinks. I'm going to single out a few and build better backlink profiles to them by mentioning them to a few related webmasters and I will ignore a few as well to see what difference, if any, there is. I bet Google hates when webmasters do that but hopefully not, what else can you do when pages get removed without explanation?

[brinked]

Thanks, brinked. The idea that this is a loss of previously valued links instead of a true penalty is an important distinction!

I think there is more to panda than just a devaluation of links. If you depend on spammy blog networks for all your links, it is likely all those links are now gone.

I can not comment on on site penguin factors yet because I do not have much to go by. Being de-indexed from google is indeed a penalty, as is when a page loses rankings because of the content that page has and links not being a factor.

Google renamed it the web spam update which makes more sense than over optimization. Websites and blog networks that are made for the sold purpose of links seem to be the target for penguin. This holds true for link directories.

The previous thread was in fact misleading but I understood what he meant. He was probably going by what he was personally seeing in that about half of the directories he had links from were de-indexed.

I am seeing the low quality directories are gone, which is awesome.

I am personally starting to like the penguin more and more. I avoided these types of links for a long time knowing there was just too much risk involved.

[edited by: tedster at 4:32 am (utc) on May 29, 2012]
[edit reason] fixed my own typo in the quote box [/edit]

[tedster]

I think there is more to panda than just a devaluation of links. If you depend on spammy blog networks for all your links, it is likely all those links are now gone.

Oh, yes - a whole lot more. Here's the difference as I hear Google describe it, from the 10,000 foot view:

Panda: Devalue pages whose content is mediocre - not spam but not strong either. These pages were ranking for technical reasons rather than being strong content that visitors really appreciated.

Penguin: Detect a finer gradation of true "webspam" - or at least pages that are ranking ONLY because of technical SEO, and not because of any true value. Pandalized pages have some true value, but it's mediocre. Penguinized pages are supposedly without real value. Of course, reports here are that Penguin gets it wrong a lot.

And by the way, if you do feel your site has been a false positive for Penguin, then here's the URL for reporting that to Google:
[docs.google.com...]

[aristotle]

I have limited data to go on since none of my personal or other clients sites were effected by penguin.

How do you know that these sites weren't affected? If, as you say, many spammy pages have been de-indexed and their links devalued, then it seems to me that this would cause a "chain reaction" that would spread the effects throughout the web. Some sites may have been effected only slightly, and some of these may have even gained in the rankings as other fell, but I doubt that many sites have been totally unaffected.

[brinked]

Panda: Devalue pages whose content is mediocre - not spam but not strong either. These pages were ranking for technical reasons rather than being strong content that visitors really appreciated.

I am going to have to disagree with you there. I have an ecommerce client that was hit by panda. He was ranking #1 for his term for many years. Since panda, he now ranks on the 35th page and the last result on that page. He is now the very last result for that term, a severe penalty and I think I have an idea why.

He is currently being outranked by blank pages, affiliate redirect url's etc. If that is not a penalty, then I do not know what is.

This is more than a devaluation. I think we all can agree that there is a lot that goes into panda. Ecommerce sites might be effected differently than a news story site. I am not disagreeing with you completely that there is no devaluation going on with panda, because I do believe there is. But its a mixed bag of different classes that deals with many different kinds of webpages and how it effects them.

As for panda. I have 3 sites that were effected by panda since it was rolled out. I have been able to recover many clients from panda but not myself and it has been eating away at me. But I noticed that all 3 websites have 1 thing in common. They all received their rankings due to 301 redirecting websites I bought from competitors. It seems that after panda, these redirect benefits were lost. Maybe because I did a crappy job in redirecting, I only did the homepage to homepage and didnt worry about any inner pages.

I removed all 301's over 3 months ago and the rankings were not effected at all. The websites that were being 301'd have regained their original ranking, higher than the sites they were being redirected to.

So in this case, it is likely a devaluation of 301 redirects.

How do you know that these sites weren't affected? If, as you say, many spammy pages have been de-indexed and their links devalued, then it seems to me that this would cause a "chain reaction" that would spread the effects throughout the web. Some sites may have been effected only slightly, and some of these may have even gained in the rankings as other fell, but I doubt that many sites have been totally unaffected.

I don't. No site I monitor has lost significant traffic since penguin. Some have gained and some have lost very little but then recovered, probably not due to penguin. If any of the sites I monitor were effected by penguin, the effect was so minimal that it has gone un-noticed. I am not going to worry about every algo update that has a miniscule effect. Google releases many updates a month that may or may not effect traffic on a daily basis but traffic to all sites has been steady this entire year (fingers crossed). I even have 1 site that doesnt depend on google at all and is blowing up huge so I am excited about having not to depend on google for that one.

[Planet13]

@ brinked:

Could you elaborate a little more on this:

It seems that after panda, these redirect benefits were lost. Maybe because I did a crappy job in redirecting, I only did the homepage to homepage and didnt worry about any inner pages.

Does that mean that the homepage served a 301 response and ALL the other pages served a 401 / 410 response?

The websites that were being 301'd have regained their original ranking, higher than the sites they were being redirected to.

Doesn't this result in duplicate content?

If I follow you correctly, you now have both old and new sites with the same content.

Sorry if I misunderstood and thanks in advance for any clarification.

[brinked]

planet13,

I only 301 the homepage of the purchased site to my own site, the rest of the pages were server not found.

The website had completely different content than my site, so no duplicate content issues. Both websites were about free widgets.

As soon as I removed the 301 redirect, the 301 domain was ranking very high (within 2 days), the site it was directed to didn't lose any rankings which leads me to believe the 301 lost its effect to my site.

To elaborate further...

Site A is my original site and site B was the website I purchased from a competitor. I purchased site B from a competitor and 301'd the homepage of that site B to my homepage of site A. This resulted in great ranking. Top 5 for 2 years for free widgets.

When panda rolled out Site A then dropped to 2nd page, then it kept dropping after each iteration of panda it lost legit backlinks and eventually fell to page 4.

I removed the 301 redirect from site B going to site A. Within 2 days, site B was ranking at #12, higher than it ever ranked, even when I purchased it from said competitor. All while site A did not move at all. In fact A has now slowly begun to raise up and is now page 3 and seems to be moving up a little each week.

Site B was a blank page, ranking high for a highly competitive term when it was re-indexed after the 301 was removed.

Hope that makes sense.

[Planet13]

Thank you, Brinked, for bring that up.

I was hit by the March 23rd, 2012 Panda (and further whacked by Penguin) and I wonder what the effect of 301 redirects are.

I moved half the content from Site A to a new site (Site B) in October 2009.

Site B had been doing quite well in terms of increasing traffic (but it is NOT a competitive niche).

then as I mentioned, March 23rd panda chopped about 30% of traffic off.

I am thinking of removing those redirects because they are all still in place. Those old pages will just return 404 responses then.

Maybe that will appease the master?

[kellyman]

Not sure on the 301 Part there as a seo company that got hit, renamed their site and 301'd the old to the new and now back to position 2 for that keyword "seo uk" in the uk, however i would be reluctant to change much at this time as everything Google is saying not to do is being done by the site ranking position 1 In the UK serps for "SEO UK" if you check its backlink profile out you will see what i mean its appauling that a site like that can rank as high as it does using the really bad methods its total manipulation over 1000 of their own sites

www.bluewidgetsarea1.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea2.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea3.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea4.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea5.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea6.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea7.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea8.co.uk
www.bluewidgetsarea9.co.uk

etc X 1000 sites and more pointing back to their own page

Their site looks good but just not fair when people are suffering real bad out there anything we are doing is just guess work