The Ebola Google Update [October 2014]

The Ebola Update is upon us! Google calls it "Penguin 3.0" for some reason, but that's not a suitable name for this complete disaster. First of all, penguins deserve more respect. Also this update is about killing innocent sites.

So what do we know about The Ebola Google Update right now?

1) GSA SER got hit bad. Like 100% correlation. See http://forum.gsa-online.de/discussion/14362/penguin-3-0-hit and http://forum.gsa-online.de/discussion/14363/penguin-3-0-is-rolling-out

What does this mean? It means you can destroy your competitor's websites using GSA.

(Pro tip: That other tool also will destroy your competitor sites.)

2) General link blast services will destroy sites, everyone who bought blasts of any kind. You know what this means, see above.

3) Lots of collateral. I have a 100% clean, non-commercial, non-profit, charity site I contribute to - gone. This one is main reference to try and understand what's going on : innocent sites often reveal what an algorithm change is all about.

4) Personal identification being used en masse. Your Gmail and Google accounts are giving them your whole list of sites. Once they take one down, they take ALL down. Notice most reports around the WWW "all my sites are down". They're tracking you, folks! I've been warning about Gmail and trackers for a long time. One of the world's foremost black hat link sellers has analytics and google tracking code in their site! If you bought black hat links there you are busted today.

5) Some of the top results for very expensive keywords are javascript redirects. Don't wanna out they kw's I checked but the well known one with initials BV #3 result is a redirect. The other well known one with initials PL #3 result also 100% black hat links.

6) SSL sites got a major boost.

So far this is what I got to share with ya. What are your observations on the Ebola Update?

just one thing , SSL sites got hit too ,in fact ssl i think is just bullshit.ssl = money are in motion

The GSA blasts don't seem to effect every site going... I have a few which are blasted and are currently holding pos 1.

But I have also seen some of my sites drop to page 2 which were blasted.. I would like to know peoples views with the websites on page 2! Do you think they have dropped a few ranks due to the links holding them have lost value?

and 1 site has completely gone! which I know means it's gone to never return lol....

Good topic btw Bartosimpsonio

The bloggers I did Churn and Burn (GSA) to are still ranked pretty good while other sites with real high quality content and good links are completely gone so yeah

Everywhere I see people complaining about sites being gone of the SERP for the main keywords, and as a result site stops getting traffic.

I wasnt aware there are so many MNS believers over here, may be this is what Google targets? MNS sites?

For my experience is always different when it comes to Google updates. Some do not affect my non-MNS sites. Others, change the traffic source (slightly different keywords). The total traffic doesn't change however.

Only one update really hit me, but it wasn't Google's fault. Its was Twitter's.

Keep in mind that the OP's points are NOT facts but simply an experience.

SSL sites do get hit as hard as any other. New or old SSL, doesn't matter.

Innocent sites rise and get hit at the same time. Nothing new here, that's Penguin.

And so on...

If you ask me, they just push out a bunch of updates and monitor who actively tries to fix things by building new links/blasts/rebuilding sites/etc.

I barely reacted to an update (good or bad effects), and over time I always re-gained my rankings if they dropped on untouched sites.

Sites that I went nuts on with links, social signals etc. to see if it would work, never came back.

I did buy GSA contextual blast service where they built 3k-5k contextual links with GSA and also added some social signals. All the 5 sites which used this service are penalized.

Where as sites with PBN links still dominating the first page.

I noticed decrease in serp for all the websites i'm monitoring. Just searched on google to see if was some recent google updates and found your thread. I hate all these updates.

As usual those who lost ranks are complaining but we're not getting word from those who gained.... That's why these threads are always similar: folks who gained positions don't talk about it, they stay safe...

I'm sorry bro but,

points 1 and 2 are complete conjecture.

SER is just a tool that can create certain types of links... many of those same links can be created with SENuke, Magic Submitter, Turbo Ranker, etc.... or if you're really anal you can even log in and manually post your links on all those sites and try to call it whitehat

The point being those statements do not mean anything without knowing what link types, how frequent, Tier, no Tier etc. spun, not spun... just far too many variables to throw around such a general statement.

Your point #3 is a direct contradiction of points 1 + 2 ..... if this targets just automated link building on certain platforms why is you squeaky clean site affected... calling it collateral damage simply avoids dealing with the underlying issue.

The threads in this forum are full of people who got hit.... but also quite a few who have maintained rankings and some have improved even using blackhat automation methods, so again points 1 +2 don't seem to resonate with everyone.

I personally have been running contextual automated links for a couple of largish clients over the last couple of months... their rankings are solid and keeping all the gains I've made for them in that time period.

### You can't point at threads on the GSA forum as evidence of 100% correlations that this targets SER..... everyone on that forum uses SER, that's the SER forum, and if you really take a look, there's not very many posts in those threads either

I appreciate what you are trying to do, and it would be great for all to report their findings to sort through this mess and have some real data to analyze.

I will reiterate what I said... the only serious work I've been doing lately is building quality automated contextuals (not using SER in this case) for a couple of clients; their rankings are holding solid.

Those contextuals are across wide array of platforms, using highly unique (proprietary scrape and spin methods) relevant content, but those platforms and sites posted to are not in anyway relevant to the sites being promoted.

Those are my observations.... have not really been doing much personal SEO and marketing lately so no other data to report.

A TON of PBN linked sites have also been penalized too. I really do not feel that this is about the tool used as much as something else about the linking campaign that was done. There are many aspects of linking: what links you use, where you point them to, the anchor text, how many links, the content around the link, the consistancy of the linking. The root could be any one or several of these issues. It obviously isn't just against GSA or PBNs or Sape in general because I've seen sites with these both jump and fall. There is no simple one thing answer. I opened a thread where people can post in the details of sites they lost in an attempt to find a more detailed correlation, but it needs a lot more data.

What a funny name for an algorithm update. I don't like the word 'ebola', so I'd rather call it Penguin 3.0. One of my sites got hit, that's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

GSA links have always caused penalties, so it's not surprising to see sites getting hit for using them. The site of mine that got penalised also had GSA backlinks.

Interesting observations there SEO_Alchemy, let me just comment on a few points.

First , of course these are just conjectures. If I were inside Google's brain I'd know better

Secondly, point # 3 doesn't contradict 1,2 IMO. The fact that sites got hit with automated links doesn't mean all sites which got hit had been doing automated links. In case of #3 it's collateral damage and I'm already checking why this happened. Or maybe the update hasn't finished and it'll show up in the days ahead.

As for your other points, those are interesting observations. I'm taking down such reports from fellow users in order to improve my understanding of this update.

Nope...most my SER sites still standing strong and some even had improvements.

Some (not many) of my SER sites lost rankings but so did some with great PBN links. Its to be expected when update occurs when you have a large number of sites your SEOing.

LOL @ The "Ebola" Update...

Makes you sick to your stomach, gives you diarrhea and a fever as all your rankings crash and then it just flat out kills you. Sounds like google for sure.

My site that has SAPE + GSA SER still standing strong.

My sites are all doing fine. I don't use GSA. I also took google analytics out a long time ago.

It`s strange that some people are pissed because their money sites with HQ tier 1 links are outranked by spammed sites, but on the other hand there are some that say SER is good at only neg seo nowadays. I`d say things are a lot more complex than the quality of your backlinks.

bartosimpsonio said:

4) Personal identification being used en masse. Your Gmail and Google accounts are giving them your whole list of sites. Once they take one down, they take ALL down. Notice most reports around the WWW "all my sites are down". They're tracking you, folks! I've been warning about Gmail and trackers for a long time.

Click to expand...

Agree 100%. If you think that Google wouldn't use all of information at their disposal to "improve" their search engine, you are kidding yourself. I also strongly believe that they use misdirection to gain information. Like putting out an update and seeing how people react and what they try to do to fix it. Not that this is the only reason for the update... but that they would use all the information they can. The fact that Cutts has specifically mentioned certain BH tactics and networks proves that they are spying and targeting certain things. If he wasn't looking to gauge a reaction... he would never let you know that he knows about a specific site, method or tactic... it would be the equivalent of showing your cards while playing poker. A perfect example of shady tactics is allowing negative SEO to exist and their disavow linking tool. The disavow tool is a huge phishing expedition.

Two years ago all of my income came from SEs, Though I still have sites ranking here and there. I have become so disgusted with Google over the years that I prefer direct selling and SMM. At least if you are building an income with social media... you see results immediately and not over several months. Anyway, though most of what people on here claim they know is pretty much just stabbing in the dark... I truly believe that Google is more blackhat than anyone on this forum.

kegnum said:

Agree 100%. If you think that Google wouldn't use all of information at their disposal to "improve" their search engine, you are kidding yourself. I also strongly believe that they use misdirection to gain information. Like putting out an update and seeing how people react and what they try to do to fix it. Not that this is the only reason for the update... but that they would use all the information they can. The fact that Cutts has specifically mentioned certain BH tactics and networks proves that they are spying and targeting certain things. If he wasn't looking to gauge a reaction... he would never let you know that he knows about a specific site, method or tactic... it would be the equivalent of showing your cards while playing poker. A perfect example of shady tactics is allowing negative SEO to exist and their disavow linking tool. The disavow tool is a huge phishing expedition.

Two years ago all of my income came from SEs, Though I still have sites ranking here and there. I have become so disgusted with Google over the years that I prefer direct selling and SMM. At least if you are building an income with social media... you see results immediately and not over several months. Anyway, though most of what people on here claim they know is pretty much just stabbing in the dark... I truly believe that Google is more blackhat than anyone on this forum.

Click to expand...

This is a true point I believe. I mean how many of us are using chrome nowadays? Even I switched to it, and to be honest I don't feel comfortable checking on this site, or say any SEO tool related sites at all. Even less when I'm logged in to either my or my clients Google Accounts.

So far I've been lucky, but I wouldn't be surprised if this data is used against us. I'm holding track of most things, even built some 'fake' sites. If they go down along with others in an Analytics account, I'm going to sue Google. I know that might be big words, but if I can prove that even fake sites get 'hit' because they're simply in a Google account to force AdWords upon us, they're gonna be in for quite a challenge.

Hope more people will do this, data is all you need to bring this monster down (or let it grow).