WTF Google?

Heraclitus · Dec 17, 2014

I know there have been TONs of such thread but this is freaking insane. I had a website with no blackhat content, all tier 1 manual, no tier 2 (didn't got around that), no sape links, no pbn links, no 301s..

My Backlinks: ~10 manual comments(n0 and d0 follow), ~5 web2.0 properties, ~10 forum links. That's all! Just 30 backlinks.
My Content: 15 hand written articles with 500-1000 words, with all images resized etc.

Now my question is, why the f*ck is a site like this pulled down from the serps when I have 3-4 other competitor sites with 5k spam links to their site. W T F GOOGLE?

Was it a negative backlinks spam from a competitor? - No, ahrefs and moz doesn't show a single extra backlink.
Did I get any manual action or a notification from webmaster tools? - No, not a single thing showing wrong there.

I'm so upset atm, I was hoping to make a good, whitehat website, spend 2 months on it and this what I get from the freaking thiefs...

Russian425 · Dec 17, 2014

Sorry, but you can't rank with 5 web 2.0 properties, few forum profiles and blog comments. Just wont happen, unless your keyword is very low competition.

Zwielicht · Dec 17, 2014

Algorithmic penalties do not appear in Google Webmaster Tools, so that could be the issue. You may have received it for building the do-follow links (many people don't know this, but "Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines."). Were the links relevant to your website or were they posted on a website that was recently penalised? It's really a shame that happened so quickly to your website, and you're right, I've seen websites with spammy backlink profiles that are still ranking highly, so I can see why you're disgruntled.

Heraclitus · Dec 17, 2014

Russian425 said:
Sorry, but you can't rank with 5 web 2.0 properties, few forum profiles and blog comments. Just wont happen, unless your keyword is very low competition.

Well as you can see from the screenshot I freaking ranked, I had great content and those backlinks were enough.

Heraclitus · Dec 17, 2014

Zwielicht said:
Algorithmic penalties do not appear in Google Webmaster Tools, so that could be the issue. You may have received it for building the do-follow links (many people don't know this, but "Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines."). Were the links relevant to your website or were they posted on a website that was recently penalised? It's really a shame that happened so quickly to your website, and you're right, I've seen websites with spammy backlink profiles that are still ranking highly, so I can see why you're disgruntled.

Thanks for the link, but my website didn't have lots of backlinks or anything suspicious, it was a damn white sheep, and google slaughtered it just because.

lord1027 · Dec 17, 2014

Russian425 said:
Sorry, but you can't rank with 5 web 2.0 properties, few forum profiles and blog comments. Just wont happen, unless your keyword is very low competition.

He can't, but he used to.

Maybe it's just a dance?

Heraclitus · Dec 17, 2014

lord1027 said:
He can't, but he used to.

Maybe it's just a dance?

I hoped that too until I searched for site:mywebsite.com and I only get 1 page in the result, it's an inner page. Would it be possiblefor a dance to put you 300+ position and back? I mean that's not a dance, it's a freaking skydiving. Anyway...

Scritty · Dec 17, 2014

Are you saying your site is 2 months old?
The dance is "up" as well as down. Sometimes a new site ranks very highly after just a few weeks - then dips away. I see sites pop into my niches all the time, high on page one for a month or two then go. Most never to be seen again.

The dance isn't just a "down" dance. You're high positions might have been an "up" fluke that happens to new sites quite often. Then Google is settling your site into the position it thinks it deserves. It might move around quite a bit over the next couple of months. Sites under 6 months are really pretty volatile

Also, check out "Rank Transition Algorithm" that's another possibility.

Heraclitus · Dec 17, 2014

Scritty said:
Are you saying your site is 2 months old?
The dance is "up" as well as down. Sometimes a new site ranks very highly after just a few weeks - then dips away. I see sites pop into my niches all the time, high on page one for a month or two then go. Most never to be seen again.

The dance isn't just a "down" dance. You're high positions might have been an "up" fluke that happens to new sites quite often. Then Google is settling your site into the position it thinks it deserves. It might move around quite a bit over the next couple of months. Sites under 6 months are really pretty volatile

Also, check out "Rank Transition Algorithm" that's another possibility.

Thank you for your post first of all.

I doubt this is a dance, I went from page 1-5 to nowhere to be found in 1 day. Also my rankings where for very low competition and searches keywords so it wouldn't seem unlogical to achieve such rankings with this small amount of backlinks.

I will check that rank transition algorithm for sure, thank you.

upstarter · Dec 17, 2014

Yeah, I feel for you OP. I have a manual and original article with 500+ word, 10 se-optimized photos, plus a video included but a blogspot page with 3 photos and not even a word on it is beating my page for the keyword in the serps. But you know what, it doesn't matter if you're on number 8, 9, or 10 as long as your site has;

A brandable name = so that first time visitors will easily remember the site (even when they're offline).
Great site design and UI = an impressive look combined with great user experience translates to great first impressions and you know what they say about first impressions, right?
Good quality content = the first two coupled with this will make your visitors comeback.

With the algo and the quality of the serps (at least with G's results), it really is time to think more about the users.

Heraclitus · Dec 17, 2014

upstarter said:
Yeah, I feel for you OP. I have a manual and original article with 500+ word, 10 se-optimized photos, plus a video included but a blogspot page with 3 photos and not even a word on it is beating my page for the keyword in the serps. But you know what, it doesn't matter if you're on number 8, 9, or 10 as long as your site has;

A brandable name = so that first time visitors will easily remember the site (even when they're offline).
Great site design and UI = an impressive look combined with great user experience translates to great first impressions and you know what they say about first impressions, right?
Good quality content = the first two coupled with this will make your visitors comeback.

With the algo and the quality of the serps (at least with G's results), it really is time to think more about the users.

Thing is, I worked so hard for 2 months to get this up and it had just started to bring in 1$-2$ every day so it' unimaginably disapointing.
If I lost rankings and went to #80 that's ok cause I'd still keep trying, but now I can't really keep on working on something that is gone.

As for the 3 things you mentioned above, people coming to your site will only remember your website if you gave them something truly amazing, like a huge discount or a very cool program... If you're trying to sell them something or make a lead out of them, you're not getting them back that's for sure.

Crewchief007 · Dec 18, 2014

OP, I have to be honest, your comments are disturbing.

Heraclitus said:
Thing is, I worked so hard for 2 months...

Oftentimes, I read these posts with utter disdain and then respond with caustic sarcasm.

I will refrain from such conduct this time around but, I will say this... you put in "2" months of link building into this site and expected to maintain the top positions?

Really?

If that is YOUR perspective of SEO, you need to get out NOW!

If that caused you to be UPSET < SEO and IM is not for you.

P.S. How much time have you spent on BHW?

Either bow out now before you have an aneurism, or, learn SEO from the EXPERTS!

No professional SEOer is going to blow their stack over lost rankings. Not even if they had been working on the site for 3 years+!

Take your time and learn the game!

casemurder · Dec 18, 2014

Websites simply vanish for no reasons and come back for even less reasons. Some rank for no reason, some get banned for no (obvious) reason. That's the game. Cross fingers and pray to get lucky - neither Google nor pretty much anyone else but yourself gives a f... about your websites and their corresponding rankings. If the CNN website tomorrow won't show up anymore for 50% of its keywords, people won't start riots threatening Google to use Yahoo. They'll just click on whatever shows up instead, most likely BBC after Google buying it lol.

Tom189 · Dec 18, 2014

Doesn't sound like the keywords you were targeting are very competitive at all, if you ranked #1 with just 30 low quality backlinks then it shouldn't be hard to do again.

liwern · Dec 18, 2014

I feel for you OP. Maybe your situation is similar to mine, as in On-Page?
In my situation, it was because my on-page was under-optimized, therefore G doesnt know what keyword to rank for. My highest position was #10 during the initial weeks, then dropped off lowest to #44. Now after all adjustments it's slowly climbing up. You can check my rant here lol:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/723421-dilemma-ranking-one-my-inner-pages.html

Heraclitus · Dec 18, 2014

Crewchief007 said:
OP, I have to be honest, your comments are disturbing.

Oftentimes, I read these posts with utter disdain and then respond with caustic sarcasm.

I will refrain from such conduct this time around but, I will say this... you put in "2" months of link building into this site and expected to maintain the top positions?

Really?

If that is YOUR perspective of SEO, you need to get out NOW!

If that caused you to be UPSET < SEO and IM is not for you.

P.S. How much time have you spent on BHW?

Either bow out now before you have an aneurism, or, learn SEO from the EXPERTS!

No professional SEOer is going to blow their stack over lost rankings. Not even if they had been working on the site for 3 years+!

Take your time and learn the game!

I appreciate the tie you took to comment, thank you.

When I say "2" months of work I mean 2 months of writing content, building a few backlinks (as you might have noticed in the OP 40 backlinks is not the work of 2 months) and improving the design and performance of my website. I'm studying computer science atm so in the last 2 months I had 3-4 hours per day of free time to work on this project.

Of course I didn't expect to rank in this time frame, I had plan to work for 1 year in this site, 2 months full time and 10 months part-time. And btw these "rankings" are for 300SPM keywords so I don't claim to hae achieved anything, I'm just very upset to get thrown out of the game having put so much effort and time into this, I could start building tons of links and getting tons of trash content on it but I decided to go with whitehat(safe) approach this time. But I got screwed, big time.

Heraclitus · Dec 18, 2014

casemurder said:
Websites simply vanish for no reasons and come back for even less reasons. Some rank for no reason, some get banned for no (obvious) reason. That's the game. Cross fingers and pray to get lucky - neither Google nor pretty much anyone else but yourself gives a f... about your websites and their corresponding rankings. If the CNN website tomorrow won't show up anymore for 50% of its keywords, people won't start riots threatening Google to use Yahoo. They'll just click on whatever shows up instead, most likely BBC after Google buying it lol.

Yes I understand, but trashing 2 months of university free time isn't nice... I guess the lesson I learned was to never work too hard on something others control.

Heraclitus · Dec 18, 2014

Tom189 said:
Doesn't sound like the keywords you were targeting are very competitive at all, if you ranked #1 with just 30 low quality backlinks then it shouldn't be hard to do again.

That is true, but I had gone on to develop a "brand name" in that niche, watermarking images and stuff, it'll be hard to start over again. But I guess I shouldn't have devoted myself on this website so much...

Heraclitus · Dec 18, 2014

liwern said:
I feel for you OP. Maybe your situation is similar to mine, as in On-Page?
In my situation, it was because my on-page was under-optimized, therefore G doesnt know what keyword to rank for. My highest position was #10 during the initial weeks, then dropped off lowest to #44. Now after all adjustments it's slowly climbing up. You can check my rant here lol:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...23421-dilemma-ranking-one-my-inner-pages.html

Interesting scenario, thanks for posting. In my case I didn't drop in rankings, I went from 1-5 page to "-" page... and I had rpetty much perfect on page optimization, yoast gave me a green mark every time...
Next time I'll work with this technique, NFG, no f*cks given

upstarter · Dec 18, 2014

Heraclitus said:
Thing is, I worked so hard for 2 months to get this up and it had just started to bring in 1$-2$ every day so it' unimaginably disapointing.
If I lost rankings and went to #80 that's ok cause I'd still keep trying, but now I can't really keep on working on something that is gone.

As for the 3 things you mentioned above, people coming to your site will only remember your website if you gave them something truly amazing, like a huge discount or a very cool program... If you're trying to sell them something or make a lead out of them, you're not getting them back that's for sure.

OP, how about those sites that had years in them, raking in hundreds of dollars/day and go just down the drain because of the changing rules/algo/negseo/black and white animals? Now that is UNIMAGINABLY DISAPPOINTING. 2 months won't be enough to be that successful in IM but it's enough to give everybody a preview of how harsh and hard it is to survive.

As for the 3 thing I mentioned, if you're into selling something, either service or item, the fourth thing that you will need to build is TRUST. Of course you cannot keep customers if you try to sell them something pointblank. Try pitching it in, like what those guys Matthew Woodward and John Chow is doing.

I know you can rank again once you get more hold of SEO and IM. Perseverance will be rewarded. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Have a Plan B and C just in case.

WTF Google?

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