*Google Slapped today?* Let's figure out why certain sites got slapped!

Site 1: PR4


1. Your domain : EMD or Non-EMD?

Partial Match


2. How many indexed pages did the site have?

165


3: did you get slapped, Yes or no?

Yes


4: still in big G? still there? completely disappeared?

Still indexed but gone for every search term


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Site 2: PR3


1. Your domain : EMD or Non-EMD?

Partial Match


2. How many indexed pages did the site have?

189


3: did you get slapped, Yes or no?

Yes


4: still in big G? still there? completely disappeared?

Still indexed but gone for every search term

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These sites were on page 1, generally top 5 listings for MULTIPLE exact searches of 75,000+. Some top 5 for searches of exact 100,000+

The domains urls had a word in front of a keyword or after the keyword. For the keyword in question, I did not even "over optimize it". I used a ton of different anchors as well as mostly URL variations and generics. All of the content was written by American college students.

Ironically, 10 old EMDs that I abandoned last year, are all holding strong or INCREASING. I am mind fucked.

jdmarket said:

Ironically, 10 old EMDs that I abandoned last year, are all holding strong or INCREASING. I am mind fucked.

Click to expand...

Like many others...

jdmarket said:

These sites were on page 1, generally top 5 listings for MULTIPLE exact searches of 75,000+. Some top 5 for searches of exact 100,000+

The domains urls had a word in front of a keyword or after the keyword. For the keyword in question, I did not even "over optimize it". I used a ton of different anchors as well as mostly URL variations and generics. All of the content was written by American college students.

Click to expand...

Compare the sites that decreased in SERPS to the sites you abandoned a year ago which are still holding positions. What did you do differently?

As far as off page SEO goes, what was your link velocity and the source of your backlinks?

proweb said:

Compare the sites that decreased in SERPS to the sites you abandoned a year ago which are still holding positions. What did you do differently?

As far as off page SEO goes, what was your link velocity and the source of your backlinks?

Click to expand...

The sites that I abandoned that still hold rank are all 1-5 pages of Indian written, broken english with a ton of affiliate links. The source of the backlinks are mostly sitewide links with 1 or 2 anchors.

For the 2 sites that got hit, my link velocity has been slowly and steady since I started the sites with a few periods here and there of increased velocity and periods of slower as the sites are somewhat seasonal. The source is high quality directories (yahoo, botw, starting point, etc), PRs, guest postings (a ton of them), web 2.0, as well as some private homepage blog network packages. I only got premium ones where the OBL was under 15 or so and the sites were on different shared servers and it was from a pool of like 40 sites so no one had the same domains.

On a side note. This isn't my site but another member of a forum publicly put it out there that he has been penalized on this. (pregnancy . co . uk) This should not be penalized in my opinion and is a very quality site.

How old were those domains? It sounds like you're doing everything right, although I'm just going by the little details you've given me as there are a lot more variables to look at.

Google is still tweaking their update and I've noticed a lot of high quality aged domains that were hit are starting to bounce back and are ranking better. I haven't seen any younger domains bounce back...yet.

jdmarket said:

On a side note. This isn't my site but another member of a forum publicly put it out there that he has been penalized on this. (pregnancy . co . uk) This should not be penalized in my opinion and is a very quality site.

Click to expand...

That site has already bounced back.

An important EMD with hyphen site of mine (financial niche) got hit:

PR3

60 pages of unique articles that range from 300-800 words with new articles added every few days.

Age: 3 and a half months.

Backlink profile: 30% Raw URL, 30% main kw, 40% generic.

proweb said:

How old were those domains? It sounds like you're doing everything right, although I'm just going by the little details you've given me as there are a lot more variables to look at.

Google is still tweaking their update and I've noticed a lot of high quality aged domains that were hit are starting to bounce back and are ranking better. I haven't seen any younger domains bounce back...yet.

That may be it. They are under a year old

That site has already bounced back.

Click to expand...

That may be it. They are under a year old

Results are still changing since yesterday... Things haven't settled down just yet it seems. What I noticed so far is the fact that newly entered top10 sites have a great number of ******** backlinks, like over 60/70 or even 90 percent and their anchors are extremely diversified... With as low as 2 to 7 percent exact match anchor ONLY.

Anyone else noticed this?

18 Year old exact match City Geo Domain Dot Com
Dmoz listed, Sitelinks in Google
8k indexed pages
No Ads or Affiliate links
Lots of Unique Content including videos
Google Slapped Yes
Still Indexed but Search Terms not being found
Went from top 10 to about 400 in Google for its keyword

Sweet Jesus!

Site 1
EMD?: Yes
PR 4
Total searches Google global for EMD = 2.2 million per month
Commercial Niche: YES (overtly commercial)
Inbound links to root domain 73 (Average PR 1.87)
Site inbound links: 66,000 approx (19,000 recognised by Google webmaster tools) no average PR available
Daily UV average to Root URL: 112,000
Daily UV average to Site : 214,000
Age 1998 (14 years and 5 months)
Indexed URL's: 913 (about 1.2 million words - 100% unique)
Update regularity: WEEKLY (previously daily)
Multimedia: Photo every page - Video every 3-4 page (bespoke)
Suffix: ".com"
Social: Average 1.44 Tweets per page, 1 in 5.5 URL's has Facebook link. Average of just onder 1 Digg per page (some other bookmarking not recorded)
RSS followers: 22,500+
Subdomains: Yes (11) Unaffected
Previous rank for EMD term = 12
Todays rank for EMD term = 1

Site 2
EMD?: Partial
PR1
Total searches Google global for EMD = 3,300
Commercial Niche: YES (overtly commercial)
Inbound links to root domain 22 (average PR 1.33)
Site inbound links 1,430 (200 recognised by Google webmaster tools) no average PR available
Daily UV average to Root URL: 212
Daily UV average to Site: 411
Age: 2012 (9 months - January 2012)
Indexed URL's 184
Update Regularity 3-4 x per week
Multimedia: Photo every page, video every 1.9 pages (bespoke)
Suffix: ".com"
Social: Average 0.29 tweets per page. 1 in 1.4 URL's has Facebook link. Average of under 0.4 Diggs per page (some other bookmarking nor recorded)
RSS followers: 8
Subdomains: Yes (1) UNaffected
Previous rank for EMD term = 4 (note this is the rank for the proper EMD - not the partial/barstardized EMD of the site itself)
Todays rank for EMD term = 2

Site 3
EMD?: Yes
PR2
Total searches Google global for EMD = 11,000
Commercial Niche: YES (overtly commercial)
Inbound links to root domain 104 (average PR 1.28)
Site inbound links 3,600 (295 recognised by Google webmaster tools) no average PR available
Daily UV average to Root URL: 416
Daily UV average to Site: 627
Age: 2010 (25 months - Auguast 2010)
Indexed URL's 44
Update Regularity Every 3 months
Multimedia: Photo every page, 1 video on site (bespoke)
Suffix: ".com"
Social: Average 1.05 tweets per page. 1 in 5 URL's has Facebook link. Average of just over 0.8 Diggs per page (some other bookmarking nor recorded)
RSS followers: NONE
Subdomains: NO
Previous rank for EMD term = 7
Todays rank for EMD term = OUTSIDE TOP 100

Scritty

Blaatje said:

Results are still changing since yesterday... Things haven't settled down just yet it seems. What I noticed so far is the fact that newly entered top10 sites have a great number of ******** backlinks, like over 60/70 or even 90 percent and their anchors are extremely diversified... With as low as 2 to 7 percent exact match anchor ONLY.

Anyone else noticed this?

Click to expand...

Yeah. I also noticed it! Pretty unusual! I am seeing new sites with loads of backlinks+extremely diversified anchors are doing extremely well!

valhalla777 said:

18 Year old exact match City Geo Domain Dot Com
Dmoz listed, Sitelinks in Google
8k indexed pages
No Ads or Affiliate links
Lots of Unique Content including videos
Google Slapped Yes
Still Indexed but Search Terms not being found
Went from top 10 to about 400 in Google for its keyword

Sweet Jesus!

Click to expand...

Hopefully it will be back! The update just happened. If it doesn't get back, do the right thing - Contact Google.

Partial EMD
Age - 1 yr plus
Yup I got hit by google Again.
Was from #5 today #276

Cant believe my eyes when I manually search the keywords.

Update on slap: Had both EMD and non-EMD sites. Went from 300-700 visitors per day to under 100. All my sites had over 100 pages. One had over 1,000.

Some sites were new. Some over a year with a PR 2.

Many pages from these sites were indexed on page one and some were number one for low traffic specific keywords and went from page one in various positions to page 18 or more.

Some sites on low velocity backlink automation and article builder drips, some not.

As of today, unfortunately no change.

I have set up another server with another company (Was currently on hostgator) and trying to rebuild, but it's too early to tell if it will make a difference.

Anybody bounce back or otherwise have good news?