Bitch Slapped by Google?

maxonix said:

I don't think G will do that. As long as the service is not disrupting any of G's business model (i.e fraud clicks on Adcent$) then I don't the company will care how backlinks are being created any where in the web. But I'm pretty sure they know these types backlinking are taking place all over the web and that's one of the reasons why their Algo keep evolving and getting smarter.

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I agree, they (google) will continue to evolve their rankings to keep up to date...and they will take action when their rankings are obviously being manipulated one way or the other...

It's been officially one week since my rankings tanked and I haven't seen much of a bounce back...

I really hope its something I did b/c if this is so, then I think I will regain rankings, but I am not so sure....

I have taken the advice of some of the members who have commented on this thread and have aggressively tried to diversify my backlink anchor text...

I think I got hit with some sort of google penalty, but I think after the penalty period is over I will regain most of my rankings....again, not sure about this, but I am crossing my fingers and hopping so...

I think another update is taking place because some of my keywords are slowly slipping back to the 2nd Page while new sites are filling in the first page. Hopefully my keywords don't drop off farther than that the 2nd page.

BTW manny, I do hope that your keywords return to their current ranking or close to it. Thanks for keeping us updated.

have you tried deoptimizing site? Removing url content and puting something new?.
Did you run copyscape on your url? I have a lot of people that copied my content. I do not think that is a problem but still..

Marcink99 said:

have you tried deoptimizing site? Removing url content and puting something new?.
Did you run copyscape on your url? I have a lot of people that copied my content. I do not think that is a problem but still..

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I have written all the content for my site, not sure if people might of copied my site, but I don't think so...

Just received this message in m google webmaster tools account:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.-----------.com/,

We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

I am glad I have a specific reason as to why my site rankings have dropped.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Any guidance would be appreciated.

manny521 said:

Just received this message in m google webmaster tools account:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.-----------.com/,

We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

I am glad I have a specific reason as to why my site rankings have dropped.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Any guidance would be appreciated.

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Well,

Now you know what is going on. Is your website completely de-indexed?

maxonix said:

Well,

Now you know what is going on. Is your website completely de-indexed?

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No, its NOT de-indexed and I don't think it will be de-indexed. Could be wrong about this.

The main keyword that I target went from first page to 5th page, but I still have many keywords that I track that are on the first page. For example, they used to be #1 on the first page and now they are #10.

Google applied a penalty to the site. Its my understanding penalties usually last 1-2 months. Not sure, what happens after the penalty has been lifted, if anyone knows, please share if you have had experience with this.

Also, I have the option of submitting a reconsideration request. I read that in this request I should state what caused the problem, how I fixed the problem and why it won't happen again.

There are a few high pr homepage backlinks I can get removed very easily, but besides that, I really don't think it is possible to get many other links removed.

Can anyone make the case for not using google webmaster tools? If I didn't use this, would this make my site more opaque in google's eyes?

Make it more difficult to know information about my site?

Did you have to contact google to get that message in webmaster tools or did they send it by themself?

Could this penalty be avoided if you were not to use analytics and google webmaster tools?

I really don't think so it is about using wmt or ga. It is totally about google crawler engine which finds your backlinks

One of my sites has also been Bi*ch Slapped by Google but it has 100% nothing to do with Webmaster tools because I had not added it till it got Bi*ch Slapped by Google !

Only a week after getting slapped (loosing all my rankings) I added the site to webmaster tools and 10 days after adding it, the message came.

I am now also testing out everything I can think off to get my ranking back and will let everybody know if something helps.

Hope someone of us will find some kind of solution

ILoveCSharp said:

I really don't think so it is about using wmt or ga. It is totally about google crawler engine which finds your backlinks

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I think this is true because because G can obtain your linking info one way or the other.

my suggestion is to just keep up what you're doing..perhaps it's not so much a google slap but a google dance ...big..dance..

Marcink99 said:

Did you have to contact google to get that message in webmaster tools or did they send it by themself?

Could this penalty be avoided if you were not to use analytics and google webmaster tools?

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I doubt it.

I have heard some members here say not to use google webmaster tools if you are doing any black hat stuff, but this really doesn't make sense. Google has this information whether you have an account or not. The purpose of the account is for google to share this information with you.

rockong said:

my suggestion is to just keep up what you're doing..perhaps it's not so much a google slap but a google dance ...big..dance..

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No, its NOT a dance b/c google sent me a message in my webmaster tools account stating so...

I have a penalty of some sort (-50), maybe.

The problem with submitting a reconsideration request is that you need to try and succeed in some aspect of removing these bad links. Obviously, its impossible to remove all bad links, but you need to make google believe you did the leg work to remove as many links as you can and then hopefully google will discount the links that you couldn't have removed.

I feel like it would be a better use of my time if I let the penalty fall off at some point. Trying to remove all the bad links is a job that is not really possible to complete, or even remove 20% or so, not possible.

The only thing I don't know is how long the penalty will last. I believe it will be somewhere between 30-90 days. When JC Penny got caught doing link spam, they had a 90 day penalty. When google got caught paying for links to promote the chrome browser, they self-imposed a 60 day penalty. Overstock.com had a 45 day penalty for their link schemes.

So it seems a 30-90 window is something I am looking at, but I have read as much as I can on the web about this and I have heard about other people who have had longer penalties (note sure exactly for what reason they incurred their penalty).

My other question I have, is if I don't remove any of the links, will the penalty just continue on indefinitely? I don't think this is the case, but I could be wrong.

And here are the press releases (I thought these would come soon):

http://searchengineland.com/google-...-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html

In the second link, there are a list of the 40 updates and #39 is "Spam update. In the process of investigating some potential spam, we found and fixed some weaknesses in our spam protections."

Google probably turned up the dial to be more sensitive for spam or large numbers of links being built. This makes sense as it was very easy to build some pyramids or other techniques and really get a good increase in SERPs.

There is a video of Matt Cutts and he explains when you submit a reconsideration request, if your site has been hit by an algorithm update, then the reconsideration request will not do anything, only if its a manual penalty will they review it.

This makes me think the penalty I received was b/c of the algorithm. So a reconsideration request is out for now, but I could revisit this later if nothing changes and I have no other options.

Also, it makes sense that so many people received messages in their webmaster accounts for back links schemes or paid links.

Now, I do have one other theory as to why this occurred to my site and that is Google BLOOP (Back Link Over Optimization Penalty).

I have to admit I could be guilty of this so I have begun aggressively diversifying my back link anchor text.

If BLOOP is the culprit, I would be happy as this is something that shouldn't be too hard to overcome.

But, I still have penalty against me and I won't see any improvement in my ranks until it falls off.

error? I posted here but meant to make a thread, lol.

Hey Manny,
This happened to my authority site yesterday. Sucks big time. The site was ranking well for quite a few lucrative keywords and yesterday they all fell off except a few long tails. When searching for the domain, it still shows up and when doing a search in Google Europe extensions, the heavy keywords still show up on the first page. I'm hoping its just a Google dance but I'm fearing for the worst. I know of others who've been hit by a penalty and its a lot longer than a few months...
What about your website, do your keywords show up when you search for it in google international?

erimarke said:

Hey Manny,
This happened to my authority site yesterday. Sucks big time. The site was ranking well for quite a few lucrative keywords and yesterday they all fell off except a few long tails. When searching for the domain, it still shows up and when doing a search in Google Europe extensions, the heavy keywords still show up on the first page. I'm hoping its just a Google dance but I'm fearing for the worst. I know of others who've been hit by a penalty and its a lot longer than a few months...
What about your website, do your keywords show up when you search for it in google international?

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Yes, my site shows up in different international google sites.

The penalty period depends on what google is penalizing you for. I have heard penalty times all across the board so I am hoping for a 30-90 day penalty given the research I have performed.

I am no expert so I don't know what the penalty length will be, I am going off past known penalties and the examples I provided are pretty similar to what I had did so this is where I derive 30-90 days, but I could be wrong.

Rumours are rife of a Panda update on the 17th that kicked in around 17-19Feb. Sites with lots of above the fold ads have been targeted and lots of talk about entire home page backlink networks being de-indexed causing sites to fall dramatically. I had one of mine go from pos. #2-#5 for multiple keywords to pos 400-500. Slowly recovering but looks like sites hit this way might never recover! Check your on-page SEO first before you build any more links