Google penalty, Google penalty recovery

Yesterday, through a large increase in visitor numbers to my website, I discovered that my Google penalty has been lifted. In this article, I’m going to tell you why I was penalised by Google, what I did to have the penalty removed, and how you can avoid a similar penalty for your website / blog.

Last month, I asked for advice regarding a huge drop in my Googlesearch rankings. For around six months prior to the drop, I ranked at #1 when searching for my name, David Airey. The penalty imposed on my website dropped this position from #1 to around #70 and I also lost rankings for a host of graphic design-related terms, making me a lot less findable.

What you thought had happened to my website

There was A LOT of differing opinion on this, found via:

• Comments here on my blog from last month
• A tale of Paid Link pain and woe on Sphinn.com
• Web Desinger Needs “Help” thread on the ihelpyou forum
• Google Punished My Site For Selling Links – Not! by Jim Boykin

I received advice from a number of people in the SEO trade, people likeDanny, Doug and many others in the ‘ihelpyou’ forum I mentioned above.

David Hopkins, of Mutiny Web Design, kindly referred my Google penalty issue to Hamlet Batista, a seasoned search engine marketer. Hamlet wrote a great blog post about my predicament, and offered some stellar advice through our conversation in his blog post comments.

One of Hamlet’s comments, in particular, involved ‘diffusing a Google-bomb’, which I’ll come to shortly.

Why I actually got penalised by Google

First, however, and according to Matt Cutts himself (head of the Google spam team), my Google penalty was imposed for two main reasons:

1. Having paid links to bad neighbourhoods
2. Trying to game my search engine rankings with black hat SEO

On Matt’s blog, he took some time out of his no doubt hectic schedule, to make this comment about my situation:

…so the paid links for business card printing and ink cartridge refills are gone and won’t be coming back? The other thing I noticed is that it looks like you silently changed the terms of your contest and didn’t mention that to anyone.

I believe your original linking terms said:

“You can describe the draw any way you like, as long as you link to my homepage (www.davidairey.com) using logo / graphic design-related anchor text. A few examples of what you could link back with include: logo designer, best logos, Edinburgh graphic designer, graphic design in Scotland, great logos etc.”

What’s interesting about those two paid links that Matt mentions, is that the one for business card printing was automatically placed in my sidebar, after I signed up for Text Link Ads (TLA). When you sign up for TLA’s service, you install a plugin on your blog, and your site details are placed in the TLA marketplace. If someone wants to add a link to your blog, they pay TLA, you get 50% of the money, and the link to the customer’s site is placed on yours automatically. As far as I can remember, there’s no screening process.

The TLA website, whilst having a Google Page Rank of 7/10, doesn’t appear anywhere relevant when conducting a search via Google, so they seem to have a similar penalty imposed on them.

What’s also interesting, is that I had removed the TLA plugin, and stopped using their service, at the beginning of September. My Google penalty was imposed around September 18th, so it’s fair to say that I was doing a few things wrong.

The other paid link that was mentioned, for ink cartridge refills, was a private advertiser, so there’s more personal blame with this one, and I could’ve checked to see how ’safe’ their website neighbourhood was by using the Bad Neighborhood – Link Exchange Tool. I don’t know all that much about this tool, but from what I’ve read, it can help protect you if you’re unsure who you’re linking to. For instance, if you think that Google might look upon a website in a bad way i.e. it’s in a ‘bad neighbourhood’, then best to use the rel=”nofollow” code in your hyperlink, so search engines don’t count your link as a ‘vote’ (thumbs up). I’ve added the rel=”nofollow” tag to my link to the Bad Neighborhood tool, because oddly enough, after running that site through it’s own tool, there are some questionable ‘blog spam’ links shown.

If you have any info about the usefulness of the Bad Neighborhood tool, I’d love to know. Don Lawson at Affiliate Watcher asks some interesting questions about linking to bad neighbourhoods.

You can read more about what Matt Cutts has to say on paid links here. The blog post is a couple of years old, yet I believe it’s still relevant. For a more up-to-date point of view, Chris G recently asked, “Where do you stand on the paid links issue?” which makes for an interesting read.

The second point that Matt mentions, is the conditions I initially stated when running last month’s graphic design prize draw.

I asked entrants to link to my website using specific anchor text, in effect, I tried to ‘game’ my Google search engine ranking positions (SERPs). This is known as ‘black hat SEO’, which, according toAbout.com, is “customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner.”

Ethics are very important to me, and I’ll not be conducting any similar techniques in future. A certain John Chow is well known for hiscontinued Google penalty for black hat SEO.

Actions taken before my penalty was reversed

The first thing I did was to remove the paid links. Paid links aren’t against Google’s terms of service, but paid links without the rel=”nofollow” attribute are, and I didn’t use that tag. What’s even worse is when you accept payment for a link to a website in a ‘bad neighbourhood’.

Next, and on the advice of Hamlet Batista, I emailed all 250 people who published blog posts linking to my graphic design prize draw, asking them to remove any links to my site. I wanted to “diffuse the Google bomb”, as Hamlet put it. Thankfully, and within two days of my email, I received many replies from the prize draw entrants, telling me they’d removed the links. If you were one of those people, thanks so much for helping out, especially those of you who didn’t win anything in my draw.

After sending the link removal request, I filed a reinclusion requestthrough Google’s webmaster tools. Filing this request doesn’t guarantee anything, and you might not hear anything back about your particular situation, but it’s an important part of the process. I provided as much information in the reinclusion request as possible, mentioning that I knew I did wrong with my black hat ‘Google-bomb’ tactic, that I’d contacted all prize draw entrants asking them to remove links, and that I’d also removed any paid links from my website.

For courtesy, I left a comment on Matt Cutts’ blog, informing him of my misdoings, my bulk email to recipients, and my reinclusion request. Very kindly, Matt responded to my comment, saying he’d have someone look into my reinclusion request. I can’t be sure if my request would’ve been granted, had Matt not stepped in, and so I’m really counting my blessings. Thanks again for your time, Matt.

3 steps to avoid a Google penalty

• Don’t participate in any form of black hat SEO
• Add the rel=”nofollow” tag to any paid links on your website
• Be careful not to link to bad neighbourhoods

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m not very clued in on SEO. These past few weeks, however, have taught me a lot about best-practice techniques.

If there’s anything written here that I’m off the mark with, I’d greatly appreciate your comments below. It’s a steep learning curve for me, but one that I’ve only just begun climbing.

A big thank you to everyone who has offered their thoughts and advice.

http://www.davidairey.com/how-i-reversed-my-google-ranking-penalty/

Bob Sakayama, SEO, has successfully unwound the Google penalty for his clients. Clean your site of unsanctioned seo strategies, and build legitimate structural strength for your site’s search goals. Then get back in there and reclaim your ranks.

What Exactly Triggers A Google Penalty?

If you’re trying to avoid a Google penalty, read this is from Google’s site guidelines:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

There are other ways to achieve a Google penalty, like buying and inter-linking too many domains, listing your keywords repeatedly, linking to a bad neighborhood, accidentally exposing (through links) parts of your site that should not be live, etc.

In general, anything hidden from the human visitor but visible to the robots is asking for a Google penalty. So don’t put colored text or links on backgrounds of the same color - Google penalty. Same for teeny tiny font sizes, especially if they carry links - Google penalty. And offpage content that only a robot sees - Google penalty.

If you’re creating content for humans, it is very unlikely that you will trigger a Google penalty. But if you’re making an effort to fool the robots, you’re messing with the potential for a Google penalty, big time. Read more about researching the causes of getting penalized in Google.

Can Too Much SEO Trigger A Google Penalty?

By definition, SEO is an optimization process, and as such should not trigger a Google penalty. But be warned that some practitioners of SEO use unsanctioned techniques that could actually harm the ranks of their sites, and make them vulnerable to a severe (and deserved) Google penalty. I advise clients to implement only “white hat” techniques that are both transparent and compliant with Google’s published guidelines.

Google’s use of automation has not yet evolved to the point where it can recognize many forms of spam. The Googlebot does not recognize most instances of cloaking, redirects, and cannot identify misapplied CSS. If a nonsanctioned technique is delivering high ranks through deceptive practices, those ranks are clearly subject to a Google penalty of exclusion. Yet the desire for high ranks often trumps good sense, and site owners are willing to risk a Google penalty because they know that they could not possibly achieve those high ranks using sanctioned methods. But taking these kinds of risk is not part of genuine SEO. Techniques that “trick” the Googlebot will only last until technology catches up. And when it does - Google penalty.

There are times that overzealous SEOs can do things that may trigger a Google penalty inadvertantly. Making multiple lists of keyword sets, links, or creating content with outrageous keyword densities are some ways to incur a Google penalty while intending to play within the rules. But if you create a site intended for human visitors, with pages/links/content that you would have no problem showing your competitors, and that reads like normal English, you’re very unlikely to trigger a Google penalty. Ethical SEO involves guiding site owners to high ranks through structural strength, relevant navigation and real content, not spamming or trickery.

How Can I Tell If I’ve Incurred A Google Penalty?

Just because you lose rank does not mean you have a Google penalty. Your ranking for keyword sets depends on many factors, including how many others are competing for the same keyword sets, how much content exists for that keyword set, and off site links. Also, the search engines are constantly updating the algorithms that determine rank, and as these change, ranks do as well. I’ve observed sites, and pages from sites that temporarily disappear from the index, but return later for no obvious reason, so don’t be too quick to blame a Google penalty when your ranks are swirling.

But you can definitely tell if your site is still in Google’s index. Simply search for the url (”mysite.com”). If there is no information returned, the url is not indexed. You can also see all pages that have been indexed by searching for “site:mysite.com” If you were ranking before, but show nothing for this search, you have a Google penalty. If you have many pages on your site, but you only see the homepage in the result, something’s very wrong, and you may have incurred a Google penalty.

It is also possible for Google to impose a manual suppression of your site that is impossible to detect, a kind of lower level Google penalty. I recently unwound such a penalty for a client who had been told by Google that there was no penalty imposed, that his poor ranks were a result of his lack of content. The tipoff to the suppression was that all the other search engines showed high positions for the same keywords, and the company’s trade name was not in the #1 rank, but on page 4.

My Site Has A Google Penalty. What Can I Do?

The very first thing you need to do is determine the exact cause of the Google penalty. This is often not obvious. But if you know you have violated one of Google’s published guidelines, that is where you should start. Unwinding a Google penalty means removing the offensive content, links, or strategy, and then informing Google that your site has achieved compliance with their guidelines. A Google penalty will not go away by itself, and a strongly proactive approach is required to both uncover the offensive material, and be certain it is completely addressed before approaching Google.

I strongly recommend NOT contacting Google immediately upon discovery of a Google penalty. You really want to be certain that after expending time and energy arguing your case, that the Google penalty will not be reimposed later because of an oversight on your part. Make sure your site is completely Google compliant before contacting them. A demonstration that you understand why the Google penalty was imposed is instrumental to unwinding it.

Here’s where to go when you’re ready:http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py (Update 9 November 2007: This is now handled from the Webmaster Tools area. You need to sign up for an account and then have your site verified to use the tool. The problem is that in order to make the reconsideration request, you have to admit fault and acknowledge the site was non compliant with Google’s guidelines. If you want to contest an innocent site erroneously penalized, you can try the contact form at the old link, but there is no real forum for reporting victomization.)

If you are uncertain as to the cause, you should seek help. I do not recommend that you contact Google until you can approach them with knowledge. Their contact form will generate an automated reply (if any), and they do not provide a service to diagnose the cause of a Google penalty. Unwinding a Google penalty usually requires an acknowledgement of the problem by the site owner, a clean site, and a statement of compliance with Google’s guidelines. More than one attempt will probably be required to undo a sitewide Google penalty. Even in cases where the Google penalty involves only a limited number of pages from a site, be prepared to commit significant time and energy to setting things straight.

For help in unwinding a Google penalty, email me with “Google penalty” on the subject line.bob@growler.com

Is There Any Recourse Once A Google Penalty Is Imposed?

The consequences of rank loss can be enormous for a web enterprise. If you want to be indexed by Google, you have to play by their rules. They are in some sense all powerful because we rely on their service to drive visitors to our sites, yet we have no say in how their judgments are carried out. There are countless legal issues awaiting precedent, and many businesses have been hurt in ways that suggest legal action is appropriate. But for now, your recourse as a victim of the Google penalty is probably determined more by factors beyond this discussion. If you feel a Google penalty was wrongfully imposed on your site, and created great harm, you join a large number of site owners, many innocent victims. Please write me about your story - I answer all emails that have “Google penalty” on the subject line.

Bob Sakayama, SEO
bob@growler.com

1. Does your site has substantial duplicate content across pages within and outside of your domain?

It is possible you have more than one indexed version of your home page. To spot this, take a sample phrase (one sentence is enough) and copy and paste it into a Yahoo or Google search box. Put quotation marks around it to emphasize that you are making an exact query. Example : “This is my first experience with site building and I hope my instructor gives me a good grade”

It is possible that you have more than one result for this. If you do, it means that you have a duplicate content issue. You should consider blocking those duplicates or 301 redirecting them to your canonical home page. You can, however, check the percentage of similarity for those pages with respect to your home page by using this tool:http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

The result should also tell you whether there are exact duplicates of your pages outside the domain. Take note of this; you can also double check withhttp://www.copyscape.com/

Warning:Do not fall into the trap of assuming that duplicate content will cause a penalty. It simply means that the search engines will filter your pages, which otherwise should rank higher than those duplicates. If any substantial duplicates are found, shut them down or link them to all of your canonical pages. This will sort out this issue.

1. What is the quality of your outbound and inbound links?

Be completely honest. Have you been buying links and placing those links on the footer section of highly unrelated domains, or on spammy link pool pages? This is the time for you to forcefully ask them to entirely remove those links and submit a Google reconsideration request.

Now, does your site link out to completely unrelated domains that provide no value to your visitors? Please remove all of those links, and then check all of the external links on your domain one by one. Unchecked external domains are a sign of carelessness, and one of the main reasons a site does not perform well in search results. This is especially true if you have link pages, directories within your domain, and/or forums that pass link juice. You can use Xenu sleuth, located athttp://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.htmlto entirely scan your domain for external links. During the setup, please uncheck “Check external links,” then filter all external links into a spreadsheet.

Make sure all external links are pointing to highly authoritative and relevant sites that are trusted by Google. When looking at each link, ask yourself this question: “Does it help my visitors?” If not, then remove it.

Put rel=nofollow tags on to forum links, blog comments, and everything that does not need to be associated with your site.

What if you have gone through this check list, and everything seems fine? Then you are not being penalized; you are just losing out to your competitors. Consider doing some ethical SEO work on your site. You can learn more about SEO for free in the SEO Chat forums:http://forums.seochat.com/

Source : SEOCHAT.com

Duplicate content penalty. Ever heard of it? This penalty is applied by Google and possibly other search engines when content found on your website is largely the same as what is found elsewhere on your site or on other websites across the internet.

Search engine spam has been common ever since search engines were first invented. Search engine spam describes the practice of making changes to your website that gets you listed high in search engines at the expense of readability by humans. Years ago, you could get ranked high on a search term simply by repeating it as many times as possible in a document. The primitive search engines of the past ranked the importance of a keyword simply by counting the number of times a term appeared on a page. Today’s search engines are much more complex.

Google has been waging war against all kinds of search engine spam and especially against duplicate content in all forms. There are two main types of duplicate content that Google is concerned about.

The first is a website that simply lists the very same page hundreds or thousands of times with simply a few words changed. This is usually done to attain high ranking on a wide range of keywords. It is most often used to get ranked high on a whole bunch of keywords unrelated to your website but can sometimes be done by a site that is on topic but simply offering duplicate content.

The second type of duplicate content that Google is concerned about revolves around affiliate programs. It has been common practice for high traffic websites to establish an affiliate program. Affiliate programs themselves don’t worry Google. What it doesn’t like though, is for an affiliate program to take a template and then offer it to its base of affiliates to use. Some of the higher traffic websites end up with thousands upon thousands of duplicate websites all promoting the very same things and, according to Google, not offering any real value to the internet community. A website offering this type of cookie cutter website can easily find themselves de-listed by Google as happened to Template Monster a while back.

The third type of duplicate content is simply not included in the Google index. This is content that is found elsewhere on the internet at large. Google and the other major search engines are interested in gathering and cataloging as much quality, unique content as possible for human consumption. To this end, they look to minimize the amount of duplicate content they allow in their index. This is why creating a new website and simply filling it with third part content will rarely if ever result in high rankings in the Google index.

The solution? Don’t rely on duplicate content as your main method of driving traffic to your site. Should you avoid all duplicate content? Of course not. What kind of duplicate content is acceptable? Answering this question is easily another article in itself.

If you have duplicate content by Mobile version or Printed version, Pls using TAG “No follow” or TAG “” rel=”canonical” to avoid Google penalty

Source : searchenginejournal.com

New Google Penalty?   June 7th, 2009

Once again, the tales of a dreaded Google penalty are making the rounds - this time a whopping 50 spot drop in rankings has been observed, which anomaly in Google’s results could indeed indicate a new Google penalty.

Several webmasters have reported that their websites lost top positions on Google and have plummeted to position 50 and below. Confusion reigns, as the normal metrics shows that the websites have not changed substantially - in one case, the website was older than two years, the inbound links did not change and the Google PageRank in Google’s toolbar did not change (although we know the toolbar is notoriously inaccurate at times and slow to update). Yet another website was older than 10 years, yet it too was penalized.

In the related forum thread at Webmasters World, several theories are being tossed around: one is that that the websites could have been penalized because of spammy methods used by a webmaster on another of his domains. It is important to remember that a website you link to might link to spammy websites even if you would never do that. Website widgets, counters and other plug-ins can place invisible links to other sites on your website as well.

Servers can also be hacked and there could be a link that you don’t want on your website. Google has ways of finding paid links, one of which is taking reports from your competitors - but some rivals are black hat enough to try and take you down by more aggressive methods.

One theory about the penalty that seems more likely is the use of paid links from .edu domains. It has been revealed that there are multiple hacked .edu servers that host websites on which these links can appear, and paid links from other sites can also cause problems. Again, this is a place where evil competitors could possibly harm you by purchasing links for your website.

It seems that Google is adjusting its paid link filters, and that paid links from .edu domains and other sites are the reason for most of the problems. Usually people catch on fast and fix their site, eliminating paid or spammy links. Remember to no-follow any links you pay for!

(submitedge.com)