Anyone else get hammered by a penalty today?

[gorang]

One of our sites just dive-bombed from 8 to 191.

But I don't see a reason for the penalty.

I don't believe there is clear over-optimisation, the site doesn't have a huge backlink profile.

Majestic SEO shows 38 external backlinks in historic index.

There was a spike of 150 discovered backlinks in March, that is the only possible problem i see. However I have sites with much larger spikes that have no penalty and this spike was months ago.

 

[mazgalici]

maybe is just another stupid google experiement, wait for a few days

 

[Briansstocks]

I havent seen any changes lately even with the reports of something going on the last few days.

 

[JimmyConway]

No droppings for me. They're have been reports of other people's rankings falling though. You're not the only one. As to what you've done wrong, I can't say.

 

[ugjunk]

Maybe someone did Negative SEO on your site. One of site's ranking dropped because of that reason

 

[KayTeePK]

Did't noticed any update yet , might be its google dance

 

[verilix]

You get penalties all the time via backlinking. Just keep going, no penalties here, or anywhere I've been able to see.

 

[poweronics]

I did not notice any such issue. Wait and see if it is just a google dance or else.

 

[Rua999]

yup im down about 10 places on 2 keywords, haven't checked the rest but i haven't had the time to build a link since penguin so i doubt it's your link building that did it

 

[Chicilikit]

Hehe SEO is really funny now, its like playing Russian roullete with google..except you cannot win Every day something can kill your site and you dont even know what it was...

 

[gorang]

Hehe SEO is really funny now, its like playing Russian roullete with google..except you cannot win Every day something can kill your site and you dont even know what it was...

I am actually scared to look at rankings sometimes because it feels as thought it is just a matter of time before one of the sites get hit.

 

[vezznay]

I've seen it, big drop also!

I've only got a small back link profile but many of them are from strong educational (.edu or .ac.uk) website.
I thought because i had good strong links pointing to the page i might be able to point of low quality directory links also to page (more referring IP's) - i wish i never did it

I'm going to do some blog posting and vary my anchor text to brand for a while, then if that doesn't work remove some mentions of the key term in the body content.

Would you say there was a small algo update last night then?

 

[gorang]

I've seen it, big drop also!

I've only got a small back link profile but many of them are from strong educational (.edu or .ac.uk) website.
I thought because i had good strong links pointing to the page i might be able to point of low quality directory links also to page (more referring IP's) - i wish i never did it

I'm going to do some blog posting and vary my anchor text to brand for a while, then if that doesn't work remove some mentions of the key term in the body content.

Would you say there was a small algo update last night then?

From what I know about Panda/Penguin, they don't run constantly like the normal algo. Instead Google collects data and then does a refresh every few weeks or months.

Each refresh is different too, so maybe you were not hit by the first refresh, yet you changed nothing on the site and you didn't create anymore links but the next refresh will hit you. It feels like a lottery.

RE: Getting your site out of the penalty. I remember watching a Matt Cutts video and i'm 90% sure he said that if a site made changes that would lift any penalty concerning Panda/Penguin then the site would need to wait until the next refresh before it can be re-evaluated and a penalty lifted.

 

[IamBlackhatter]

Yes there was an update today and one of my clients site moved from page #3-1 happy on my clients success ty Mr.G....

 

[gorang]

Yes there was an update today and one of my clients site moved from page #3-1 happy on my clients success ty Mr.G....

Gotta get those wins when you can!

How whitehat is the site's backlink profile? On a scale of one to ten, how optimised/keyword heavy is the on-page SEO?

 

[marcus528]

Yes I can also confirm that there was an update. Lost one or positions, very small movement but still there was a change in SERP.

 

[gorang]

It is quite amusing to watch these updates. They make no sense.

One of our clients microsites is quite thin, has spammy backlink profile and the on-page is likely a little over optimised. It just jumped from 106 to 7 for one of its keywords.

Looking over the full list of sites, we've had a few big movements since yesterday. I think it is certainly an update. Usually Matt Cutts will confirm it soon.

 

[IamBlackhatter]

Gotta get those wins when you can!

How whitehat is the site's backlink profile? On a scale of one to ten, how optimised/keyword heavy is the on-page SEO?

They are not too heavy but can rank quite easily overall this is not an update but a G dance i suppose the site was in page 2 before then to page 3 and now page 1 who knows tomorrows result but i am just happy that the site is in page#1 now as you said its true Get wins only when i can lolz....

 

[james406]

One of our sites dropped 10 spots (was 11th/12th for two very competitive keywords, thought I was about to make a ton of money), to 20th for both.

About 2 weeks ago, I bought just a handful of homepage links from DigitalPoint, relevant to the niche and at great expense. I double checked all of them individually beforehand to make sure none of the sites were penalized...

Apart from that, there are about 50 guest blog links, and 25 links from a small private network listed here but that's it. Those links have been pointing to the site for over a month though.

 

[gorang]

One of our sites dropped 10 spots (was 11th/12th for two very competitive keywords, thought I was about to make a ton of money), to 20th for both.

About 2 weeks ago, I bought just a handful of homepage links from DigitalPoint, relevant to the niche and at great expense. I double checked all of them individually beforehand to make sure none of the sites were penalized...

Apart from that, there are about 50 guest blog links, and 25 links from a small private network listed here but that's it. Those links have been pointing to the site for over a month though.

Just a thought, check if the links you bought are still live.