Google update just now? 10/4?

[Hilaus]

What can we do If we have been affected by Penguin 2.1?

 

[mdmostfa]

I confirm the point of those web 2.0 sites, The 3 sites that got hit had over 50% of links from Web 2.0 sites some with unique content and some with spun content.. But all of them were manually built

 

[Initial Effort]

What can we do If we have been affected by Penguin 2.1?

Assume you don't have a brand domain. Wait 3 days and see if there are corrections to the update. If no, enable webmaster tools and tell google to remove your domain from the index. Then move your site's content to a new domain - KEYPOINT - that has NEVER been registered by anyone ever before. Check this in whois. Do not use a dropped domain. Then upload your content there, get the site indexed and start over with your good content on a fresh domain.

 

[madinina]

as said, wait a bit, still can come back in coming days

What can we do If we have been affected by Penguin 2.1?

 

[Jasona]

Who wants to punch Matt Cutts in the face?

 

[Russian425]

I never seen sites recover within a week after an update when they went from top3 to nowhere.

 

[Hubba]

How many of the sites that got hit were using Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin?

 

[goosefrabah]

Some of my sites seemed to have dropped, but still holding strong. I will wait a few days to see what happens before jumping to any extremes. It seems as if web 2.0 links are bringing down a few of my sites as well. The sites with a majority of links coming from guest posts are all doing fine on my end.

 

[madinina]

from top3 to nowhere no, but top3 to page2 yes

I never seen sites recover within a week after an update when they went from top3 to nowhere.

 

[pompano]

How many of the sites that got hit were using Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin?

Can you explain how it makes a difference? lol

 

[moneyneversleeps]

2 of My sites were in top 3 for different keywords in a local service related niche for last 1 year . Both sites have completely vanished from google !! WTF ......

 

[blackberry]

Another one? Groan

 

[Initial Effort]

How many of the sites that got hit were using Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin?

Yoast is not the issue. This is a pretty solid plugin. More importantly make sure you have your tag, author, date, blog archives set to no index. Also consider category if you aren't using categories as this makes a lot of duplicate content! It just depends on the silo-ing of your website. This is the #1 problem I see for people trying to rank. I also recommend writing unique excerpts for your /blog page or setting it to noindex,follow to avoid duplicate content on that page too.

 

[EbayUltimate]

It's crazy, 2 of my new sites haven't been hit. I'm guessing new sites that are 3 months or younger are safe

 

[Expertpeon]

Yes this is what I noted on a previous page. Some sites can handle more spam links then others based on their threshold. See the buy viagra online example some just used. Also probably goes for youtube videos, some forum pages and amazon products. I consider web 2.0 - wikis, elgg, jcow, auto-approve article directories etc. You'll find most of the links are from PR0 domains.

If this even occurs, it would only be "freshly built" web 2.0s... though I don't think it matters, like at all. I have tracked a massive amount of sites dropping and many, many of them had no web 2.0s at all.

 

[DunDidIt2X]

I am seeing the exact same. Old sites tanking and new sites staying stable or improving for most of my sites.

 

[ttmschine]

I think I'm going to have to go and get a job, problem is Google are fucking up so many businesses income I doubt anyone will be hiring lol.

No on second thoughts I'm going to come up with a way to totally game Google - got a couple of ideas I'm going to try out moo ha ha ha.

 

[brooktroutballer]

I just went from front page to nowhereland! This is a huge problem! Totally vanished as of about 1-2 hours ago..

 

[ttmschine]

Well, just discovered a 3rd site has gone from 2/3 to ??? - it was there a couple of hours ago, just updated it.

That site has NO web 2.0s, but did have a 301 redirect and a mountain of fiverr links.

LoL oh well back to the drawing board.

 

[Initial Effort]

Here is my written summary about Penguin 2.1

If you built Web 2.0s - wiki, elgg, jcow, auto approve articles on PR0 domains with spun content to your money site you may have been affected. Each site can take a certain amount of spam links, but once it crosses a certain threshold your rank. This score is based on factors both onpage and off like domain authority, bounce rate, # of pages, quality of content. Now there will always be exceptions to the rule, but for the most part this appears to be the primary issue. I've noticed that sites that used all unique, hand-written content on Web 2.0 links were not affected regardless of the Web 2.0s domain PR. However when spun content was used on domains with lots of authority, the link actually helped to increase rankings and increase the sites spam threshold. Any example would be an article directory like ezinearticles that uses ezinesarticles.com/innerpage and NOT a site like blogspot.com that uses subdomains which are still PR0 like subdomain.blogspot.com. At this point I'm not sure if site age is an issue as newer sites might be staying because they have less spammy links compared to the older sites that some people are saying that are tanking. But across industries for keywords like SEO services we're seeing mainstreethost.com and attracta.com move up and these are some of the oldest domains in the industry.

What can you do to fix the problem? Assume you don't have a brand domain. Wait 3 days and see if there are corrections to the update. If no, enable webmaster tools and tell Google to remove your domain from the index. Then move your site's content to a new domain - KEYPOINT - that has NEVER been registered by anyone ever before. Check this in whois. Do not use a dropped domain. Then upload your content there, get the site indexed and start over with your good content on a fresh domain.