Is Google not Penalizing aggressively anymore for on page manipulation?
-
I wanted to throw this out where we have been seeing so much emphasis on Google cracking down on bad linking, have they let up enforcement on manipulative on-page tactics that have faded in current years? I've been seeing hidden text popping up again and ranking. Here is an example. Google "landscaping Portsmouth NH" and find the #1 result. Now find "Portsmouth" on the page. So what I find interesting, the site has a clean backilnk profile, but that's a pretty blatant manipulation hiding those keywords.
What I find interesting is I filled out a report on it a year ago. (I'm not a big "fill out spam report" guy, I was curious if Google would take action). A year later it is still #1 for the competitive keyword. So I'm curious if others have seemed similar trends like font-size:0px, or text color as the background popping back up and ranking.
I would love other's thoughts on it.
-
I would be very surprised that the hidden text is actually working, and I would think that google is just ignoring it and other factors are making it rank. Something like font size = 0 or same colour as the background, would be so easily picked up by a bot/algorithm compared to some complex things it can pickup on.
-
I didn't think Google still let anything like this though any more? I have tweeted Matt Cutts with this and a link to this post as I hate to see anything like that myself.
-Andy
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
-
Duplicate content warning: Same page but different urls???
Hi guys i have a friend of mine who has a site i noticed once tested with moz that there are 80 duplicate content warnings, for instance Page 1 is http://yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html the warning page is http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html another example Page 1 http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/ same second page http://yourdigitalfile.com i noticed that the whole website is like the nealry every page has another version in a different url?, any ideas why they dev would do this, also the pages that have received the warnings are not redirected to the newer pages you can go to either one??? thanks very much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ydf0 -
More than 450 Pages Created by a hacker
Hi Moz Community, I am in charge of the Spanish SEO for an international company, related to security. A couple of months ago, I realized that my Spanish/keywords/post all vanished from Google, Yahoo, Bing and Duckduckgo. Then I noticed that somebody in command of the main website used a disavow all! I was in shock, as all of you can imagine. Knowing that all the inbound links were spam score under 4, highly relevant and so. Later on, I was informed that the website was hacked and somebody took that action. Of course, it did not solved the issue. I continue researching and found those pages - "Online%20Games%20-%20Should%20Parents%20Worry%20Or%20Celebrate%3F" - all of them like this one. I informed the owner of the website - he is not my client - my client is the Spanish Manager. They erased the pages, of course plus sent all those, to avoid the 404 responses, to the homepage with a 301. My heart stopped at that point! I asked them to send all those with a redirect 301 to a new hidden page with nofollow and noindex directives. We recover, my keywords/pages are in the first page again. Although the DA fell 7 points and no inbound links for now. I asked for the disavow file "to rewrite it", not received yet. Any better ideas? Encountered a similar issue? How did you solved it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Mª Verónica B.
Thanks in advance.0 -
How Do You Know or Find Out if You've been hit by a Google Penalty?
Hi Moz Community, How do you find out if you have been hit with a Google Penalty? Thanks, Gary
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gdavey0 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
One page sites
HI Guys, I need help with a one page site What is the best method to getting the lower pages indexed? Linking back to the site(Deeplinking) is looking impossible. Will this hurt my SEO? Are there any other tips on one page websites that you can recommend?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Google messages & penalties
I just read the following comment in a response to someone else's question. The Responer is an SEOMoz Authority whose opinion I respect and have learned from (not sure if it's cool to mention names in a question) and it spurred my curiosity: "...Generally you will receive a warning from Google before your site is penalized, unless you are talking about just specific keywords." This is something I have been wondering about in relation to my own sudden ranking drop for 2 specific keywords as I did not receive any warnings or notices. I have been proceeding as if I had over used these keywords on my Home page due to an initial lesser drop, but identifying the cause for the huge drop still seems useful for a number of reasons. Can anyone explain this further?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gfiedel0 -
Can you set up a Google Local account under a PO Box?
I have a client that wants a Google local listing in a town he serves but does not have a physical location. Is it an issue to share an address with an existing company? Is is it better to use a P.O. Box? or is there a forwarding address company? Is this considered a black hat Local SEO tactic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BonsaiMediaGroup0 -
When to give up on a website with a Google penalty?
I recently had a Google 60 penalty hit my website. The main two issues were that I had a person helping me with SEO and they bought some links. The second issue is that I own about 90 URL's in the my vertical. I created about 60 one page sites for these keyword targeted domains. I then linked these sites to main site. Big mistake! I kept these URL's all on the same server as my main site. In October 2010 I noticed my site hits dropped dramatically. I started looking for the issue. I didn't know which issue caused the penalty. I fixed both issues in November 2010 and asked Google for reconsideration in early December 2010. I kept link building for my site by finding quality links.I was extremely honest with Google. I gave them all of the domains I own and I told them the name of the person that bought links for me and the websites where those links were placed. As of late February 2011 a Google search for my domain still showed up in approximately the 64th position. I recently asked Google again to lift the penalty. I basically told them that I fixed all of my issues that led to the penalty and let them know I have been waiting for almost 3 months. I told them I have put the past 2 years of my life into this website and begged them to forgive me. I also asked them to let me know if my site was never going to be forgiven? I got the typical canned response from the Google team. As of today the penalty is still in effect. I just want to know when you should give up on a site. I have spent about $20,000 on this site and about 2 years of hard work. I don't want to give up, but I don't want to keep putting my hard work and time into the site if it will never escape the dreaded Google penalty. Do you think I should continue to wait and if so how long? Anything else I can do to persuade Google to release me from this penalty hell? If I do abandon the site and start from scratch what steps should I take? Do I need a new server? What if any content can I take from my current site and transfer to the new site? If I can how do I do this without getting another penalty or lose the credit for the original content. I created about 2,000 pages of original content for this site. I'd love to be able to transfer this content if I have to start from scratch. Any ideas or detailed help plans would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tadden0