Penguin Recovery Problem - Weird
-
I had an old URL and the link profile of this URL wasn't good - I had been using article syndication and Penguin threw me to the wolves.
I decided to start over with a new URL and build a new natural link profile. I specifically did NOT do a 301 redirect to the new URL and did not make any request to Google to transfer domain as I didn't want old site being associated to the new one. To redirect our old users, I put a link on the old URL index page (nofollowed) that say that we have moved.
I was very surprised to find that in GWT all the links of the old URL have now been associated to the new URL....why is that? I started over to have a clean natural profile and follow Google guidelines.Has anyone heard of this before? All I can guess is that Google itself "decided" to do its own pseudo-301, since the site was the same, page for page.This has Major implications for anyone attempting a "clean start" to recover from Penguin.
-
Nakul -
Re: "other then seeing those links in GWT, are there any other red flags that you are seeing in terms of not ranking, any penalty messages, unnatural links warning on the new?"
No - no red flags. My "new" site has only been live for about a week and is already reached page 2 or 3 of google serp for my main keywords.
But since I know those backlinks cause my old site to go from #2-3 of page 1 to past page 20, I freaked when I saw them following me.
or was there any messages on the old domain when you got penalized ?
No - I crashed on April 24 and never recovered, even though I removed all the pages that had been syndicated and asked Google for reconsideration, they said there was no manual penalty.
-
Thanks for your thoughts, Marie.
** And I think that sometimes Google gets it wrong as to who is the more authoritative.**
I am confident that they are very often wrong.
-
I personally think it is just a WMT glitch. When the link is shown in WMT it says, "Via this intermediate link..." and the intermediate link is the original page.
However, according again to Dejan SEO, if you copy a site's page and your site has a higher PageRank, you can actually outrank the original page. Here is the article on how they did this (with permission) for Rand Fishkin's blog and other pages:
http://dejanseo.com.au/hijacked/
That makes me think that it's possible that link juice is granted to the more authoritative of the two sites. And I think that sometimes Google gets it wrong as to who is the more authoritative.
While I still think that these links would not cause Penguin to affect a site, I wouldn't chance it!
-
**Basically, when Google sees a duplicate of a page they will assign the page's links to that site. **
Oh.... do you think somebody could grab an article from your website, post it on theirs and kidnap your linkjuice?
-
Those pages can still be in the cache. That was my theory as to what was going on with the previous site. When we used the url removal tool (not the disavow tool by the way) to remove them from the cache this seemed to solve the problem.
-
Considering what's done is done and the point that your old domain is penalized, can you possibly do/try any of the following ?
1. Ignore the fact that those links are appearing in your backlink profile for the new domain. See whether this new website works/ranks.
2. If it doesn't (at all), can you possibly disavow those "article marketing" links for the old domain and do nothing at all for the new domain (since those links are not really linking to your new domain).
Coming back to point 1, what I'd like to ask is, other then seeing those links in GWT, are there any other red flags that you are seeing in terms of not ranking, any penalty messages, unnatural links warning on the new or was there any messages on the old domain when you got penalized ?
-
Thanks Marie - I will try your suggestion.
I did a search using the regular operators to see if my old site was still indexed and Google returned a "we can't find it on this server-that's all we know" Sergent Shultz response, but knowing Google that does not necessarily mean pages are not still in their index.
-
I had this happen with a client I worked with. The client's previous site had a severe Penguin issue so he decided to start over. We did everything properly and did not do any redirects from the old site to the new. But we were surprised when suddenly the WMT console for the new site was showing all of the links that went to the old site!
What happened? It's complicated but it has to do with something that is described here by Dejan SEO: http://dejanseo.com.au/mind-blowing-hack/
Basically, when Google sees a duplicate of a page they will assign the page's links to that site.
What I don't know is whether those links are carrying any link juice and also any penalty with them.
What we did was go back into the WMT console for the old site and use the url removal tool to remove every single url from the index AND the cache for the old site.
It took about 2 weeks for the links to disappear from WMT for the new site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 redirect recovery
Hello Please understand that English is poor. I used to run a site called A This time, I am running a site called B. I need to set up a temporary 302 redirect from A to B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jinseok
I accidentally set a 301 redirect Site A has many spam links
For now I have removed the 301 redirect source to B. Will A's spam links affect site B?
For your reference, Site B is putting a lot of effort into SEO. Help me.0 -
Site dropped after recovery
Hi everybody! I've been working for http://www.newyoubootcamp.com for some time now. They came to me as they had dropped heavily for their main term, "boot camp". This turned out to be due to a manual penalty, which was in part due to their forum being hacked, as well as some bad link building. Here's an example of the dodgy forum links - http://about1.typepad.com/blog/2014/04/tweetdeck-to-launch-as-html5-web-app-now-accepting-beta-testers.html. The anchor is "microsoft". They've all been 410'd now. Also, we cleaned up the other bad links as best we could, and got through the manual penalty. The site then returned to #5 for "boot camps", below its pre-crash peak of #2, but OK. Over the past few weeks, it has started to slide though. I'm certain it is not down to a lack of quality links - this site has great PR and links from national newspapers and magazines. There's been a few on-site issues too, but nothing outrageous. I'm getting a bit stumped though, and any fresh eyes would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Is it Penguin or is it just a shoddy website?!
Right, I'm struggling and could really do with a different perspective on a website I am working on http://www.data-contracts.co.uk/ This is an Analytics image for March through to July of organic unique visitors http://imgur.com/Y2zaekP The page for concrete repair is struggling in the rankings and is currently residing somewhere like page 15 on Goooooogle. Is there anyway back??? Y2zaekP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hughescov0 -
Potential problems with my site
Dear Mozzers I hope you can help me with the following problems: My site is up and running for a year now and may be there has been problem with the homepage, because it ranks on first page for a competitive keyword on Google.com and Google.com.au only, however in other countries it just shows up as internal page and does not rank well. google.com/Google.com.au: homepage ranks top 10 (example.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveTran2013
Other countries (.co.uk, .ca..ect) an internal page shows up, example.com/internalpage.html - shows on page 3-4. I can not find the homepage of example.com anywhere around top 1000. Can you please tell me what are the potential problems. Thank you very much. BR/Tran0 -
Is it a problem to have too many 301 redirects within your site
my website is translated into 10+ languages, but our news articles are often only published in 1-2 languages. Currently, URLs are created in the unpublished news languages that then 301 redirect the user to main news page since the content doesnt exist in that language. Is this implementation okay or is there a preferred method we should be using so that we don't have a large number of pages on the site with redirects? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
URL Error or Penguin Penalty?
I am currently having a major panic as our website www.uksoccershop.com has been largely dropped from Google. We have not made any changes recently and I am not sure why this is happening, but having heard all sorts of horror stories of penguin update, I am fearing the worst. If you google "uksoccershop" you will see that the homepage does not rank. We previously ranked in the top 3 for "football shirts" but now we don't, although on page 2, 3 and 4 you will see one of our category pages ranking (this didn't used to happen). Some rankings are intact, but many have disappeared completely and in some cases been replaced by other pages on our site. I should point out our existing rankings have been consistently there for 5-6 years until today. I logged into webmaster tools and thankfully there is no warning message from Google about spam, etc, but what we do have is 35,000 URL errors for pages which are accessible. An example of this is: | URL: | http://www.uksoccershop.com/categories/5_295_327.html | | Error details In Sitemaps Linked from Last crawled: 6/20/12First detected: 6/15/12Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. Is it possible this is the cause of the issue (we are not currently sure why the URL's are being blocked) and if so, how severe is it and how recoverable?If that is unlikely to cause the issue, what would you recommend our next move is?All help is REALLY REALLY appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840 -
I have a duplicate content problem
The website guy that made the website for my business Premier Martial Arts Austin disappeared and didn't set up that www. was to begin each URL, so I now have a duplicate content problem and don't want to be penalized for it. I tried to show in Webmaster tools the preferred setup but can't get it to OK that I'm the website owner. Any idea as what to do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OhYeahSteve0 -
Weird situation with our local listing.
A couple of weeks ago I was having problems with my real estate local listing. I made some changes (like removing anything remotely like keyword stuffing and a few other things). Then, we re-emerged. But now, instead of having 4 citations we have 221. It looks like Google has merged our listing with all of the other agents in our office. So, now if you type in to Google: ABC Realty in OurCity the very first listing is a 1-box that has our listing: Jane and John Doe, Sales Representatives, ABC Realty and our phone number. We actually rank higher than the ABC Realty office's own web page. We are getting phone calls from people who think they are calling the main office but instead call us. (This is not at all bad for business...but perhaps there is an ethical issue?) My problem is that if you click on our places listing, there is one photo on there of a realtor who is not us. Additionally, we lost our two reviews that we had, but we have one review for another realtor who is not us. The rest of the listing is totally ours - our photos, our description, our website, our phone number. If I go to edit the listing, the option to remove that photo is not there. So, now we have a conundrum. One one hand, it's great to have this boost. We are appearing #1 for searches for our office and this brings us business. But, I want to be ethical. Realtors can be nasty and I don't want other realtors thinking that I have done bad manipulative stuff to steal other peoples' business. Can anything be done? What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0