Can one site's IBLs cause another's fall?

[Kristos]

Hi fellows,
I had a client who, while blog posts helped years ago, was able to boost the domain.co.uk site to the top in the uk version of google. He decided to just develop the domain.com site with a UK subdomain. On the order page, as soon as the entered UK as country it routes them over to that subdomain. the domain.uk site Does Not link the the domain.com site

recently he tanked on the domain.com, and i mean it's nowhere.

In desperation he recently contacted someone at google he describes and a senior guy in this sort of thing and he told him that why the domain.com tanked- all those blog posts on the domain.co.uk.

He is finding all the blog posts and getting the whois to contact the owner to get them removed. not a quick or easy process for the thousands that where done over the years, he quit promoting UK site two years ago.

As you all know, G became a registrar years ago and does not sell domains

could it be that they are now using whois to identify single owner networks they way use identical C bloc ip?

Does anyone have any info?

thanks!

[tedster]

Ever since Google became a registrar, they say they are not using the Whois data this way. There are many other "footprints" they use to find common sites to one owner.

a senior guy in this sort of thing

How fortunate you were to get this kind of information from Google. Was it someone on the Search team, or another division?

I'm not clear on what the exact feedback was, however. I understand there is a way for a user to go to the UK domain from the order page. That sounds like an obvious way for Google to see the connection. However, why did content on the UK site hurt the .com rankings outside the UK? Even if the content is essentially duplicated, that is OK on a country code TLD in my experience.

I know that you are only trying to relay something your friend told you, but what you posted so far isn't very clear. If you can learn more details, it would help.

[Kristos]

Hi tedster,
thanks for the response
he told me that the UK site does not link to the US site at all. but i will seek more information before I add to this thread further. It seems to me that it must be forwarding to the us site with the uk subdomain
yes it is duplicate content.

so i think you are right
google is making the connection,
the google engineer told him flat-out that the old paid blog reviews from years and years ago on the uk site are causing the us site to disappear.

[tedster]

old paid blog reviews

Ah yes - PAID can be a very big problem.

[RegDCP]

I think they are using registrar information.
I have a client that got hit really hard by Penguin.
They tried to repair their link profile without any effect.
We also carefully redid on page to focus on a single phrase.

Nothing worked.

In desperation we got a keyword rich domain name (the original was a branded one), but the client cross linked from the old site.

The new site will not even show for the domain keywords, something I have not seen before.

I am thinking that the penalties followed the domain name switch as registration details are the same for old and new.

[1script]

Ah yes - PAID can be a very big problem.

Still: what is the format of the review? Is it all the same text, same anchor text leading to the same destination URL or is it more like customized reviews of different products having links with different anchors leading to different product pages?

I mean, I understand that a Google engineer would instinctively wince at the notion of money changing hands in relation to a link, but paid reviews (paid both in money and in kind) are nothing new and all big brands are using them.

You can be sure than when a new product hits the market, 90%+ of the reviews are paid for because only professional reviewers would see the products before the release and you can bet they're being paid for their trouble. Unpaid user reviews are normally trailing the product release by months, sometimes years. Talking about "normal" un-hyped products, obviously. Something like a circular saw and NOT a new iPhone, hope the distinction is clear.

So, if you can divulge the format of those blog reviews, I think it would be a very useful piece of information here.

[Kristos]

thank you everyone for your input.
these reviews, done three years ago then stopped, where done through a sponsored review broker.
All different sites, owners, reviewers and IPs.

like I said they were done 3 yrs ago when this junk worked...because it wasn't junk back then.

~~~SIGH~~~
that was then as this is now.

[tedster]

but the client cross linked from the old site.

You don't need to access whois information to see cross-linking or redirects.

[scooterdude]

Ever since Google became a registrar, they say they are not using the Whois data this way. There are many other "footprints" they use to find common sites to one owner.

perhaps this is another of those items of 'faith' that might be somewhat rocked by future clarification of why major Corp might pay for registrar status for no reason we on the outside can discern.

Some folks actual experience might contradict the above quote, but such claims are currently not worthy of weighty cognisance :)

[Kristos]

FYI
I have two other friends I support that I did the exact same type of thing through sp*nsored reviews dot com and they haven't been hurt at at... still in the top 3 and even #1 for target terms
i told the man mentioned above that basically, they HAD to toe the "PARTY LINE" and give him they stock answer no matter what so he will go adwords.

[Kristos]

the caveat is that I have two other friends I did this for (I stopped using this altogether over two years ago) and both of them are still in top three for their niche.