http://vimeo.com/42939368

An interesting video that proposes that Penguin is strictly onsite, rather than offsite. It proposes some unique theories, most of which have aligned with my research as well.

Key Takeaways:

Panda = Broad Algorithm
Panda looks for low quality content

Duplicate text
Duplicate design
Thin text content
Broad text content
Nonsense/HTML text

Spam Flag Theory

Pages can be marked as "spam" and then discount the trust/linkjuice passed along
Discounting pages means that your backlinks could be discounted as well, thus reducing your rank

Fixing Panda Penguin

Need to fix onpage issues
Penguin based NegSEO is not possible
No need to delete links
Add quality links on your keywords


I thought I'd share this and build some dialogue around the research Josh proposes in this video....

http://vimeo.com/42939368

Shared like 3 times today

Thanks still, the more people that see it the better. *if the solutions he is talking about is true.

Some other factors:

Site metrics... how fast ur site loads, how long people stay on ur site, how often they return etc.
Navigation (copy amazon)
Add value to site (video, images and internal linking to related topics).

Thanks for the video .. Good Explanation

I think there are some things in the video that are true, but I believe penguin is both on-site and off-site seo.

Why does everyone have to think its one or the other? Why can't it be both?

I think this makes the most sense.

Originally Posted by IamNRE

Shared like 3 times today

Thanks still, the more people that see it the better. *if the solutions he is talking about is true.

Some other factors:

Site metrics... how fast ur site loads, how long people stay on ur site, how often they return etc.
Navigation (copy amazon)
Add value to site (video, images and internal linking to related topics).

LOL - I figured it probably had but didn't see it when I searched for it. Regardless it's being passed around the SEO world and thought people could benefit from it

nice share mate.

This is an excellent video. I've seen every type of hypothesis on these boards, other sources etc and this video pretty much wraps up everything into one segment. It explains why negative seo is more complicated than just tossing bad links at a site. Math problems always have to work both ways. If you have the answer, you can deduce the math problem, if you have the problem, you can deduce the answer. Math only works both ways. This hypothesis works both ways and explains why a site looks like it's carrying a site wide penalty when it could be as simple as one bad sub page.

Thanks for the link and I hope others watch this as well. No one is above the theory crafting in this video.

edit: I almost disregarded the video due to the fact it claims Penguin is on-site SEO. After watching it you can see that he doesn't mean on-site for just your site but on-site for your backlinking sites as well.

Originally Posted by Mortz

This is an excellent video. I've seen every type of hypothesis on these boards, other sources etc and this video pretty much wraps up everything into one segment. It explains why negative seo is more complicated than just tossing bad links at a site. Math problems always have to work both ways. If you have the answer, you can deduce the math problem, if you have the problem, you can deduce the answer. Math only works both ways. This hypothesis works both ways and explains why a site looks like it's carrying a site wide penalty when it could be as simple as one bad sub page.

Thanks for the link and I hope others watch this as well. No one is above the theory crafting in this video.

edit: I almost disregarded the video due to the fact it claims Penguin is on-site SEO. After watching it you can see that he doesn't mean on-site for just your site but on-site for your backlinking sites as well.

1) Negative SEO is easy as hell, I did it successfully even before this most recent update, but now it's literally a joke to accomplish very good results with it
2) What the hell does "backlink" SEO even mean? The entire notion that someone backlinking to you from a bad neighborhood harming your rankings is the fundamental definition of negative SEO
3) Penguin is 100% offsite... and 100% a punishment algorithm. My site with over 10,000 indexed and stable web 2.0s linking to it, and tons of other various links is not even #1 for its exact brand name anymore (and the brand name is not shared among any other retailers at all). The site's facebook page, with no links, outranks the site.

That is the very definition of a "punishment" algorithm.

Just a whole bunch more "smoke and mirrors" and "buy my service" crap.

Originally Posted by Expertpeon

1) Negative SEO is easy as hell, I did it successfully even before this most recent update, but now it's literally a joke to accomplish very good results with it
2) What the hell does "backlink" SEO even mean? The entire notion that someone backlinking to you from a bad neighborhood harming your rankings is the fundamental definition of negative SEO
3) Penguin is 100% offsite... and 100% a punishment algorithm. My site with over 10,000 indexed and stable web 2.0s linking to it, and tons of other various links is not even #1 for its exact brand name anymore (and the brand name is not shared among any other retailers at all). The site's facebook page, with no links, outranks the site.

That is the very definition of a "punishment" algorithm.

Just a whole bunch more "smoke and mirrors" and "buy my service" crap.

I tend to follow what you and another member "Lancis" have to say in various threads. I have respect for both of you. I'm not saying Negative SEO isn't possible but rather it has to be targeted towards what will work against the competitors on-site SEO.

The video suggests that backlink sites with bad SEO are devalued. Lancis mentioned this in another thread. That's why pumping more backlinks to your site after Penguin still works (or works until the next passing of Penguin). It's going to be more hit and miss.

Interesting video, but the part about alt texts seems regressive. I thought that properly filling them out was to help accessibility issues, so people can understand what the image is, and obviously this is usually your keyword (at least for ecommerce).

And so meta tags can be used against you? I thought they weren't taken into account anymore?

EDIT: this also seems to go against the analysis micrositemasters did which seemed to prove it was influenced by offsite. Confusing!

Originally Posted by ben10023

Interesting video, but the part about alt texts seems regressive. I thought that properly filling them out was to help accessibility issues, so people can understand what the image is, and obviously this is usually your keyword (at least for ecommerce).

And so meta tags can be used against you? I thought they weren't taken into account anymore?

EDIT: this also seems to go against the analysis micrositemasters did which seemed to prove it was influenced by offsite. Confusing!

i don't think the micrositemasters analysis proved it was off-site seo causing the problem, but it was a well done analysis and its a really good theory...

Thanks for the info

I see, so putting keywords in image alt tags, meta description, and meta keywords is absolutely off limits...aside from the fact that:

• The meta keywords tag is still supported by current HTML standards, and as such, I would expect a site's keywords to be in the keywords tag.
• The meta description is a snapshot of what the page is about, and Google uses this in the SERPs, and I imagine it's quite possible that your keywords may just show up in your description since that is what the page is about, after all.
• Given that current HTML validation standards require every image to have an ALT tag, I suppose there is a high probability that one of the images may be about your keyword, and therefore you should describe it as such.

Guy's claim of that kind of ruined his credibility for me.

nice share, thanks!

Thank you watching it

Originally Posted by artizhay

I see, so putting keywords in image alt tags, meta description, and meta keywords is absolutely off limits...aside from the fact that:

• The meta keywords tag is still supported by current HTML standards, and as such, I would expect a site's keywords to be in the keywords tag.
• The meta description is a snapshot of what the page is about, and Google uses this in the SERPs, and I imagine it's quite possible that your keywords may just show up in your description since that is what the page is about, after all.
• Given that current HTML validation standards require every image to have an ALT tag, I suppose there is a high probability that one of the images may be about your keyword, and therefore you should describe it as such.

Guy's claim of that kind of ruined his credibility for me.

Meta keywords has been dead for a long time. Bing and Yahoo may still put weight in it but Google stopped putting emphasis on it. People used to abuse that.
Meta Description is a snapshot of what the page is about but your title tag is the basis of the page.
Image tags will almost always have your keyword since it's relevant to the page but I believe the point is to make it more natural.

The point is don't spam the money keyword through everything. If it's noticeable you're trying to manipulate rank, then you probably are. That's the point.

Originally Posted by manny521

i don't think the micrositemasters analysis proved it was off-site seo causing the problem, but it was a well done analysis and its a really good theory...

Manny, you're one of the few that showed positive signals after Penguin 1.1. Are the ranks still holding? I know from talking to you in PMs that you put a lot of focus in "deoptimizing" your pages and of course spreading diversity.

@Expertpeon : Far from me the idea to wake the beast in you, however i'm wondering a few things.

First, you mentionned several times that your websites went fine, and now you mention one of your website has been hit, did it come with the Penguin Refresh ? Did you change anything this month ?

Second, you seem to be convinced that penguin is a punishement algorithm and to be honest, i tend to buy that theory, however, you said it is extremely easy to perform a negative SEO campaign thanks to penguin, but i believe you wouldn't have been able to perform it as Penguin is refreshed once a month apparently.

Once again it isn't to remove credibility or so, but to try to see clearer in that damned update.

Dealing with OP post, my conclusions seems to tend to a link devaluation in some case but not in others. What trigger the link devaluation is all the question though.

For the fun if any, in order to mess more with my mind, i had a DMCA complain on one of my personal website which i have understood as a Penguin slap as the website vanished and it confused my theories...

All my analysis has shown that it is definetely both - onpage and offpage.

If you have high keyword density and/or overly good onpage seo (title, h1, alt etc. contains keyword) then you really have to have a good link profile without excessive usage of matching anchors and/or good social presense. On the other hand, if your onpage seo is more "general" you can get away with a lot more exact anchors.

Best way is try to stay in the middle of all.

Originally Posted by Mortz

Meta keywords has been dead for a long time. Bing and Yahoo may still put weight in it but Google stopped putting emphasis on it. People used to abuse that.
Meta Description is a snapshot of what the page is about but your title tag is the basis of the page.
Image tags will almost always have your keyword since it's relevant to the page but I believe the point is to make it more natural.

The point is don't spam the money keyword through everything. If it's noticeable you're trying to manipulate rank, then you probably are. That's the point.

I understand all of that, but the point is that the guy clearly stated that "you cannot have any keywords that are hidden" and prior to that statement he explains that any keywords in the actual code are considered "hidden text," including meta tags and image tags.

If the point was to make it look more natural, he would have said so. Instead, he said you can have anything in your "hidden text" except for​ your keywords.

Summary: Please continue paying $147/month for our crap software!!

I was wondering if people like Areeb are gonna find another career. But looks like he's tying to hang in there.

Originally Posted by artizhay

I understand all of that, but the point is that the guy clearly stated that "you cannot have any keywords that are hidden" and prior to that statement he explains that any keywords in the actual code are considered "hidden text," including meta tags and image tags.

If the point was to make it look more natural, he would have said so. Instead, he said you can have anything in your "hidden text" except for​ your keywords.

I agree, he's confusing at points but his theory shouldn't be discredited yet. One other thing to note on that topic is he states you can have it in 1 area but not all. So, it would seem wise to use it in your title tag and not necessarily in your meta description. I definitely wouldn't use the keyword tag since it's not relevant to your user experience.

All in all, I would never go with numbers in the sense of "use X% keyword density" or only use your keyword "X" amount of times here or there. As always, diversity is king but in this theory, over optimization is what Google set out to eliminate and it leans credit to the theory.

Originally Posted by Mortz

Manny, you're one of the few that showed positive signals after Penguin 1.1. Are the ranks still holding? I know from talking to you in PMs that you put a lot of focus in "deoptimizing" your pages and of course spreading diversity.

sure, so far my rankings are holding, plus or minus a few spots, but this is normal up and down movement...

i think my rankings should hold at least until the next refresh, i could be wrong, but this seems to be the way google does this...

i didn't do much de-optimization of the pages on my site, i did a bunch of de-optimization of my off-site seo anchor text...i did reduce the main keyword i target on my money pages...i felt my pages were more natural with the word being mentioned more, but with so many people were talking about reducing keyword density, i thought i would try it...

another thing i did was add a shit load of new blog posts, all 100% original content and all written to a post graduate level of writing...these were super high quality articles, ranging anywhere from 500 to 4,000 words...

next, i started to interlink all these blog posts as they all talk about a topic that is narrow in focus so its very easy to interlink these pages and have a great diversity in internal linking anchor text...i am about 3/4 of the way done with this as i have over 1,000 posts and some of the articles are really long so it takes time to do this, but this has been taking up all my time right now...

i have said this before, but i took a long hard look at wikipedia, amazon, and searchengineland.com and all these sites have a ridiculous number of interlinks within their respective pages...wikipedia probably links to itself more than all links from other sites pointing to it...when one page of your site links to another, this actually does count as a link, so this is a super easy way to add links to your site...

i want to believe this interlinking is what helped my site recover, but in the end, i really don't know for sure...there are too many variables in this to make such a conclusive statement...

in the end, i believe penguin targets both on-site and off-site seo...

Originally Posted by Barbarossa

Summary: Please continue paying $147/month for our crap software!!

I was wondering if people like Areeb are gonna find another career. But looks like he's tying to hang in there.

it really is crap software...

Another question to ask, is why google favors wikipedia and amazon and these other big sites?

#1 - The number of pages they have is so numerous that its hard not to consider them as relevant for so many topics

and I believe #2 is the interlinking they do...

I am trying to build an authority site, with my 1,000 pages, I hardly believe I have achieved this, but this is really relative to what niche you are targeting...

If there are authority sites in your niche with 15,000 pages or 40,000 pages then this is probably where you need to be to compete with them...etc...

I don't agree with a lot of what he said.. some of it makes some sense, though little when I look at my sites. I was absolutely anal about onsite quality and I got my ass handed to me.

I do believe It is more off page and it is all about the content surrounding your links. If it is similar and on 500 blogs/web 2.0s you get nailed. You can spin an article all you want but that article still has common traits that can ring a few bells.

I also think he gives Google way too much credit. Google is not that smart.

LOVE THAT SHIRT.. WOW! LOL

Originally Posted by abysse

@Expertpeon : Far from me the idea to wake the beast in you, however i'm wondering a few things.

First, you mentionned several times that your websites went fine, and now you mention one of your website has been hit, did it come with the Penguin Refresh ? Did you change anything this month ?

Second, you seem to be convinced that penguin is a punishement algorithm and to be honest, i tend to buy that theory, however, you said it is extremely easy to perform a negative SEO campaign thanks to penguin, but i believe you wouldn't have been able to perform it as Penguin is refreshed once a month apparently.

Once again it isn't to remove credibility or so, but to try to see clearer in that damned update.

Dealing with OP post, my conclusions seems to tend to a link devaluation in some case but not in others. What trigger the link devaluation is all the question though.

For the fun if any, in order to mess more with my mind, i had a DMCA complain on one of my personal website which i have understood as a Penguin slap as the website vanished and it confused my theories...

One of my sites was hit during Penguin (it was hit on Feb 26th's update as well)
My new websites and all of the others are all fine so far.

I haven't done any negative SEO post penguin, but I did it last year, and it worked very well even then.

Penguin is not 100% onsite. This guy doesn't really know what he is talking about. I am glad he shared his theories with us, but i am not glad he convinced some people his theories are truthful. It is much easier to make up things instead of testing it.

I don't claim to be an SEO "expert" and most of my knowledge comes from experience, but it seems to me that this SENuke guy is just full of cr..p!
"Thin content", "garbage pages", "broad" vs. "specific" updates, really? Ufff, my brain almost hurts now. This sounds more like search engine optimization science fiction, where all the characters, names and places are imaginary and far from realistic.

I also don't agree with this video. Penguin is for sure off page...this guy is out of his mind and just trying to get a bit of publicity...
Think about it...how hard is it to NOT do on page SE0...not that hard is it.
I can't listen to him anymore...this dude is coming from somewhere else and out of his mind...turning off at the point of the CSS being "hidden text." Nuckin Futs.

I've had 50+ sites hit with Penguin. I had 30+ #1 rankings for long tail easy to rank keywords in my niche. Now I have three.
All sites were EMDs.
Some of the incoming links were from ALN etc.
Other than that, all content is 100% unique, and sites are 4-5 pages. Some sites with around 8-10 pages.
One site had various #1 rankings for small keywords with little to no backlinks to those pages, and those rankings were wiped out.

I have no idea why I was hit. And I have no idea what to do to get them back

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

I've had 50+ sites hit with Penguin. I had 30+ #1 rankings for long tail easy to rank keywords in my niche. Now I have three.
All sites were EMDs.
Some of the incoming links were from ALN etc.
Other than that, all content is 100% unique, and sites are 4-5 pages. Some sites with around 8-10 pages.
One site had various #1 rankings for small keywords with little to no backlinks to those pages, and those rankings were wiped out.

I have no idea why I was hit. And I have no idea what to do to get them back

probably the only thing to do is wait until the next refresh...

Manny, don't forget that Google also favors Wikipedia because it is an encyclopedia/reference. Adding diversity to their index used to be one of their goals and Wikipedia always seemed to fit the mold regardless of what the topic is. That's part of the reason why Wikipedia enjoys such high ranks, but as you note their interlinking is quite effective and something many IMers fail to realize.

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

I've had 50+ sites hit with Penguin. I had 30+ #1 rankings for long tail easy to rank keywords in my niche. Now I have three.
All sites were EMDs.
Some of the incoming links were from ALN etc.
Other than that, all content is 100% unique, and sites are 4-5 pages. Some sites with around 8-10 pages.
One site had various #1 rankings for small keywords with little to no backlinks to those pages, and those rankings were wiped out.

I have no idea why I was hit. And I have no idea what to do to get them back

From what I picked up in the video and similar posts I have read, I would think your sites were hit because they were all pretty much built the same way and all were all considered low quality in Google's eyes in terms of user experience. That plus you may have had links coming from sites that have been hit by penguin and that have turned out to be "spam/low quality links" therefor all your links are considered low value and you have lost ranking.

I hope I make sense...

Good luck.

Originally Posted by assphuck

Manny, don't forget that Google also favors Wikipedia because it is an encyclopedia/reference. Adding diversity to their index used to be one of their goals and Wikipedia always seemed to fit the mold regardless of what the topic is. That's part of the reason why Wikipedia enjoys such high ranks, but as you note their interlinking is quite effective and something many IMers fail to realize.

Yeah, I agree...interlinking is something I looked to help boost my link profile and its really easy to do as its my site and I get to choose exactly what links I want to put on it...

This video is nothing more than a sales pitch from senuke, trying to tell people their spam bot still works.

Do they think we're stupid? God, their software might still work, but the things they say are retarded.

What I don't get is that there is shit sites everywhere still up top. How the fuck do almost all of my sites get hit, and there's so much shit out there still.

Originally Posted by IamNRE

From what I picked up in the video and similar posts I have read, I would think your sites were hit because they were all pretty much built the same way and all were all considered low quality in Google's eyes in terms of user experience. That plus you may have had links coming from sites that have been hit by penguin and that have turned out to be "spam/low quality links" therefor all your links are considered low value and you have lost ranking.

I hope I make sense...

Good luck.

Quite frankly I can't trust anyone who sells products like these to give me an honest opinion. They might actually be giving me an honest opinion, but I will always be questioning it. There are plenty of other experts out there that have no bias that are saying it is offsite and plenty saying it is both. However very few of them are saying it is only onsite.

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

What I don't get is that there is shit sites everywhere still up top. How the fuck do almost all of my sites get hit, and there's so much shit out there still.

I completely agree. With a search query for an automotive part, I was presented with irrelevant websites in the top five positions. Wikipedia, How Stuff Works, Wise Geeks, an old newspaper article and a blog post from 2010. In Bing, I hit relevancy at position number three. Google not only screwed many webmasters with Penguin, but also the end users.

With cash in hand to actually buy a part, I'd find relevancy through Bing first. And after all of this Penguin fiasco, I made it a point to originate my e-commerce related spending activities through Bing anyway. Hopefully others here will do the same. While Google can continue to ignore webmasters, they must listen to shareholders. And if shareholders see revenue fall, Google can explain to them what these zoo animals are all about.

@jon_xx_x : By Any chance, your similar websites are they hosted on the same web hosting provider ? Do you use unique IP still on the same web hosting provider? Is there a pattern possible down that road ?

@Expertpeon : Thanks for the reply, rep given.

I agree. It's both.

The ease with which some of you can be taken advantage of is alarming.

I know it's cynical and sucks and a lot of you are really sensitive to such suggestions; but - as a general heuristic principle (i.e. a 'rule of thumb') - one is almost always assured an accurate appraisal of these things when disregarding them outright: When provided with 'free' information, algorithm reverse engineerings that are nothing of the definitive sort, to disregard them outright when any sort of financial motivation is attached to their presentation is the proper - and trustable - course of action.

ExpertPeon gets 'wordy' and it is often difficult to pull a salient take-away from his posts; but - he couldn't be more correct and true, here: Penguin is an utterly negative update/algorithmic run. Invented to punish those that have exploited the gaping holes in Google's link-based model; not to "reward" (as per Cutts' PR spin) "high quality" websites. And this is painfully obvious to those in-the-know.

Originally Posted by abysse

@jon_xx_x : By Any chance, your similar websites are they hosted on the same web hosting provider ? Do you use unique IP still on the same web hosting provider? Is there a pattern possible down that road ?

Separate IPs, designs etc.
I did put a ad banner on the sites, but changed the name, made a few different sizes, etc, I don't think that would have mattered.
I mean they were all quality sites, with 100% unique written content.

Reviving this thread. Regarding on-site penalty for over-optimization... How can a site/page be considered overly optimized, if it contains the keyword in URL, title, H1 and first paragraph? To me that sounds like it's exactly what's needed in order to determine what the damn text is all about, so why would that get penalized?