Website Hit by Penguin Update Rising Back From The Dead?

[sbrault74]

I have a website that had been hit quite hard by the Google Penguin update, losing about 75% of its traffic. The website dropped to positions 300 - 400 for it's most significant keywords.

The website had some unnatural links but not that much, maybe about 10 to 20 unnatural links and I've had them all removed about a month ago by the SEO company (submitcomfort.com).

Another issue with this website is that it was hacked in early 2012 and hackers used a writeable directory to store porn stuff (my website has absolutely nothing to do with porn!). That said, the website acquired lots of backlinks from porn and warez websites.

But today I noticed that impressions are now up by 23% and clicks are up by 54% according to Google Webmaster Tools and it's now ranking in positions 30 to 50 for it's main keywords.

So my question is: was that a penalty that's just been lift off? How can it come back from the dead like this?

I'm investigating before reinvesting time and money in this website because I'm not sure if this is temporary.

Thank you

[MarieHaynes]

I think you could be right.  I've seen a lot of people saying their SERPS are moving (either up or down) and of course everybody starts to wonder if something is happening Penguin wise.  But as the day moves on, I'm seeing more Panda related issues in the forum than Penguin.

[usef4u]

@marie I don't think it's a penguin update happening now, it might be a panda refresh, as last week itself matt cuts said next penguin update will be after few months because it's an early stage. Check seoroundtable's blog about it

[sbrault74]

There were indeed some duplicate content issues as I set a lot of pages to "noindex" (I forgot to mention this earlier).

That said, the website was hit on April 24 so I assume that the Penguin update was the major cause of drops in rankings.

[AndreVanKets]

Link Research tools by Chris Cemper has just released a "link detox tool" that you can use once for a tweet.

It highlights the most suspect links (based on a number of factors) making it "quick and easy" to identify dodgy pages with links to your site

Our websites haven't been hit by any penalties, but there are over 100 suspect links reported that i will manually go through to confirm, and then send removal requests where necessary.

http://www.linkresearchtools.com/news/link-detox-clean-backlink-profile/

[MarieHaynes]

If it wasn't ranking for it's brand name it certainly sounds like a manual penalty rather than Penguin.

Regarding the unnatural links messages Google definitely did start sending them before June of 2012.  The big batch of 700,000 that got sent out to people happened in Jan/Feb 2012.

I'm thinking that there was something else going on here such as a malware issue, accidental noindexing, a robots.txt problem or something else.  Another possibility is if there was a duplicate content issue.  For example, let's say there was a lot of text on your homepage that was duplicated elsewhere.  Then, if the issue was corrected you could have regained your rankings.

At this point, really, it's a mystery, but the good news is that you are ranking again!  Woohoo!

[Webrevolve]

Interesting to hear a possible positive story of a site begining to recover from Google changes.

It sound like you have taken some positive action in rectifying the issues you became aware of, which is what Google is saying webmasters should do - so well done.

It would seem Google has picked up on this and re-indexed the site accordingly.

[sbrault74]

By the way, the website wasn't even ranking in the top 10 positions for it's own brand name... Now it's back to #1 and all it's social networking pages (FB page, Twitter page, etc.) are following just after.

[sbrault74]

No I didn't get the unnatural links warning in WMT but that was at the time Google didn't send any warnings (late April 2012). Google started to send warning only in late June I think.

[MarieHaynes]

I'm confused.  Did you have an unnatural links warning in your WMT?  Did you have a warning of malware in your WMT?

I'm guessing this is more to do with the porn on your site and recovery was connected to the removal.

With that being said, there are some grumbles around the SEO forums of something going on.  It certainly is possible that a Penguin refresh is happening, but no official word yet.

[sbrault74]

Did you send a reconsideration request to Google? => No

[sbrault74]

I used the same company that had built the links (submitcomfort.com). They charged me $250 to do so but this isn't only for the website discussed here, it's for 4 of my websites.

It was easier this way as they had access to the accounts they used to post the articles / backlinks (articlesfactory.com, articlealley.com, etc.)

[sbrault74]

Honestly, I did nothing but ask the SEO company to remove the links.

This wasn't one of my most lucrative websites so I stopped updating it and focused on the most lucrative ones.

Come to think of it, I also removed a WP plugin which added keywords from incoming searches to the sidebar. I was concerned it could be perceived as keyword stuffing by Google.

My website had been hit twice by the Penguin update (1.0 and 1.1).

[eyepaq]

Congratz on the recovery. Can you share more on the service you've used to remove the links ? (process and all).

Thanks.

[William.Lau]

Good job in recovering.

If you were effected by penguin, there are a few things you have to consider.

You can have been effected and notified by Google in GWT that your site has a unnatural link profile thus they are penalizing you till they are removed.

Another is that the penguin update caused your's link profile to be less valuable thus pushing down your rankings.

If you did remove those links, it should be a reason why rankings have increased to near or close to where they were before.

Another thing is that even though someone hacked the site, Google won't go penalize you for it. If you removed all the harmful malicious things, they won't punish you. As to the porn and warez links, they are usually and mostly nofollow links.

Continue removing any and all bad links and continue link building and your ranking will improve. Getting from 2nd page to 1st page can hugely increase your traffic.

[chrism2671]

All penalties from Google expire - none of them last forever. So it's quite possible your penalty has expired. It sounds like the unnatural link removal has been noticed by the algorithm. While you won't receive a message about this, it will silently lift the penalty if the problem has been resolved.

[AndreVanKets]

What have you changed on the website other than remove the bad backlinks and get rid of the porn directory?

Did you send a reconsideration request to Google?

Have you been updating the site with new content?

Has the SEO company been building more links?

From what I have read, It looks like you are starting to recover.There is no way to know for sure unless you give it a month or 2. Just keep getting great back links with brand terms and check your progress in a month or two. If all looks good, i would say its safe to assume the penalty has been lifted..