Google Dance or Google Slap ?

Hi everyone,

This afternoon I discovered that several of my websites had dropped massively today in Google from page 1 to page 5 or 7.

Website 1: 2 years old, PR2, regular solid position (page 1, 5th position) and no recent backlinking campaign
website 2: 1 year old, PR3, have been doing small backlinking recently
website 3: 2 years old, PR2, regular solid position and no recent backlinking campaign
Website 4: 3 months old, PR1, regular backlinking and quick increase in serps during the last weeks
website 5: 4 years old, heavy backlinking recently and major serp improvements

These websites are hosted on 2 different hostings. I actually thought at first that all my websites had been penalized by Google, but actually other websites I have on the same hostings are still ranking well.

Also what is extremely strange is the 5 websites above are now all on page 5 or 7 and all have 3 links displayed + the "more results from this domain", which is weird for a website on page 5 or 7!!!


So what do you guys think this could be ? Google Dance or Google Slap ? Or Google Panda ?

Anyone here to help ?

I guess they might recently have changed relevancy for something where you have done backlinking through, how do you baclink and do you diversify your linkbuilding, so that it is based on articles, comments, blogposts, social bookmarkings, forum links etc?

If not, start doing so!

Yes I have very diversified link building including:

1) Web 2.0 websites
2) Articles submission pointing to web 2.0 and money site
3) Relevant Directory submissions
4) Blog commenting to moneysite on relevant websites
5) Xrumer blasts and comment blast to web 2.0 websites and article websites
6) Profiles links to articles, web 2.0 websites
7) Links from other websites in same niche.
8) Videos with links to moneysite

All my websites have links from different websites to diversify risks.

Furthermore website 1 has not had any xrumer/profile/blog commenting blasts at all, as I didn't want to take any risk for this website.

Very weird...

Unfortunately things like this can happen, and since the shifts were so new its somewhat hard to tell.

I'd recommend isolating a few of your websites and test building new backlinks/content specifically to those. I'd suggest choosing one from each of your different hosts as well.

Monitor the results closely to see if you see any type of volatility. Generally if you just "stick" around Page 5 or 6 without any movement, that could have been a penalty. Although if you see some movement, even if its lower, thats a good sign generally and probably just a Google dance.

I am still seeing it move back and forth between to sets of results so be patient and see if the current set stick or not.

SuperLinks said:

Unfortunately things like this can happen, and since the shifts were so new its somewhat hard to tell.

I'd recommend isolating a few of your websites and test building new backlinks/content specifically to those. I'd suggest choosing one from each of your different hosts as well.

Monitor the results closely to see if you see any type of volatility. Generally if you just "stick" around Page 5 or 6 without any movement, that could have been a penalty. Although if you see some movement, even if its lower, thats a good sign generally and probably just a Google dance.

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Hi there, thanks for your feedback, I will try and do some link building for 2 of the websites concerned (on different hostings) and see what happens.

Hopefully its only a Google dance, but I am a bit worried as website1 has been in the same position (page 1 pos 4/5) for at least a year, so it's quite strange it should drop like that ...

google dance is normal for site that build hard backlink

Googles funny did they feel pos your site did not have that much to offer content wise. Perhaps your keywords are not 100 percent the actual content on the page. The thing is with google is they fan do what ever they want and a lot of the times there actions make no cense as long as your not deindexed your ok just add a shit load of new content to your site with a keyword density to the new meterial of a 3-4 and see what happens do this for about a week or so and keep pininging the site. After you will find your self back at the top and google happy. At this point keep adding new links and you will remain safe.

sorry but i think its google slap... same thing happened to one of my sites for more than 8 months now! and ranking isnt better yet

Hi everyone,

Thanks for getting back to me.

After analyzing more carefully my websites, have noticed that actually half of my 30 websites have been affected by this slap.

All websites have lost around 50 positions at least on the same day. So what could explain this ?

My ideas:
1) Interlinking websites
2) Not enough anchor text diversity
3) Same html/wordpress template for 12 out of 14 niche websites.
4) Heavy link building on 2 of the 14 websites which have a different template.
5) MFA websites with bad design for 12 websites (white page, with content, images and ads only)

Nevertheless some elements show me that my ideas are not the reason:

1) I tried to find websites which linked to all/most of my websites which have been slapped. BUT they actually also link to other websites I have which haven't been penalized ...

2) Anchor text diversity: have not been doing a lot of linkbuilding for some of the websites and can't see this as an issue for at least several of the 14 websites

3) This does seem plausible, but I haven't heard Google penalizing websites from the same adsense account because of using the same template...

4) Maybe the fact that I did heavy link building on two of my websites, got it penalized, and therefore Google decided to penalize other websites I had ? BUT one of the two websites doesn't link to any other website ... The other does, but also links to other websites which haven't been penalized.

5) Yet again, why penalize some of my websites and not all ?

Any other idea would be appreciated. My Adsense revenues have dropped by 50 %...

You can never tell with women, one minute its merry and dancing,, next minute the slap!

richieb799 said:

You can never tell with women, one minute its merry and dancing,, next minute the slap!

Click to expand...

Yes I am bit affraid with this slap, as half of my websites have been affected on the same day. I can't see how this can be a google dance, it is definitely a google slap imo. Does everyone agree with me ?

All websites seem to stick between page 5 and 7 apart from one which has even gone down to page 13.

Just wondering, why would Google impact half of my websites all at once ?

Best guess is:

1) Interlinking (but why not penalise some other websites I own..)
2) Can google penalise several websites, because I have been doing heavy link building on one ?

Hi Dollarjames,

Have your websites come back yet? If yes, what have you done to make them come back please? As all 10 keywords of my site also got a -100 slap yesterday. So frustrated.

The blogs which are in the blogger platform are totally OK but others are not. most of the sites are getting this type of result for few days. i think before taking any action you should wait for a while.

Ouch, you have a -50 penalty...I am confident you have this as I have experienced the same as of Feb 17th...

I have recovered some of my keyword rankings, but nothing to write home to mom about...ha...

This will be a long road to recovery...there are a couple of possibilities as to why this occurred...

Not enough anchor text diversity is a good place to start, check out this theory: http://www.audiencebloom.com/2012/03...ow-to-recover/

Now, that link is just a theory, but I want to believe its true b/c if its true then you can fix the problem...if it's not true, then we are all fucked!...ha...

So, the theory says you need to de-optimize your anchor text, using anchor text like "click here" "visit site"...etc...you can make hundreds of these variations, be creative...

Use naked urls like http://www.mysite.com/

Another possibility is that any site found in rouge private blog networks got this penalty...My site was guilty of this as we were in many private blog networks...if your site was in private blog networks, most likely those links were de-valued, but it is possible that a penalty was given too...who knows if this is true, only google employees know, this is just speculation...

So, what is my advice to you?

do you have a google wmt account? if so, check and see if you have a message there for a penalty...you might not receive it right away...many members here have reported to receive the message up to a month after their rankings dropped...or they receive the message and then a week or two later their rankings drop...so its pretty random...

now, this is where it gets interesting...in the past mat cutts has stated that if you received a manual penalty then your site would be penalized for a certain period of time and given google's past history these 'time out' periods last anywhere from 30-90 days...again, this is where a manual penalty comes into consideration...

but if your site is penalized for algorithmic reasons, then your site will NOT come out of the penalty until you fix the problem...

Now, google sent out over 700,000 over-optimized link penalties in january and february, how could they do this manually?...they couldn't, they had to do this algorithmically, there is no way to send out so many messages in this short of time when done manually...

so how did google do this?...i think they turned up the dial on the google BLOOP (back link over-optimization penalty) and BOOM all these wmt messages were sent out...

so this takes us full circle back to the link that was provided and the theory on how to de-optimize your anchor text...i think this is a good place to start, and again, if that doesn't work, then we are all fucked!

also, increase your social signals on facebook, twitter, google+, and pinterest and any other social networks you can think of...this will help getting you out of the penalty, long tail keywords will come out first...i haven't seen my short tail keywords come out of my penalty yet, but it hasn't even been two months yet, so i am being patient...

Lastly, this -50 penalty seems to be a very common penalty that many people are receiving...at least who i have talked to...

balls in your court, what do you say?

dollarjames said:

Hi everyone,

Thanks for getting back to me.

After analyzing more carefully my websites, have noticed that actually half of my 30 websites have been affected by this slap.

All websites have lost around 50 positions at least on the same day. So what could explain this ?

My ideas:
1) Interlinking websites
2) Not enough anchor text diversity
3) Same html/wordpress template for 12 out of 14 niche websites.
4) Heavy link building on 2 of the 14 websites which have a different template.
5) MFA websites with bad design for 12 websites (white page, with content, images and ads only)

Nevertheless some elements show me that my ideas are not the reason:

1) I tried to find websites which linked to all/most of my websites which have been slapped. BUT they actually also link to other websites I have which haven't been penalized ...

2) Anchor text diversity: have not been doing a lot of linkbuilding for some of the websites and can't see this as an issue for at least several of the 14 websites

3) This does seem plausible, but I haven't heard Google penalizing websites from the same adsense account because of using the same template...

4) Maybe the fact that I did heavy link building on two of my websites, got it penalized, and therefore Google decided to penalize other websites I had ? BUT one of the two websites doesn't link to any other website ... The other does, but also links to other websites which haven't been penalized.

5) Yet again, why penalize some of my websites and not all ?

Any other idea would be appreciated. My Adsense revenues have dropped by 50 %...

Click to expand...