How long will it take for Google to forgive us?
-
Hi all,
The last few weeks we started working on several affiliate websites. All was fine, the number of pages indexed in Google increased, rankings increased, visitors increased but;
After two successful weeks Google noticed what we were doing and decided to crash our party.
What we did;
Create an affiliate website presenting shoes for ladies (15.000+ pages)
Create an affiliate website presenting brand shoes only (25.000+ pages)
Both sites were new domains and we linked them to each other.Biggest boo boo's we think we have made;
- We didn't put a no follow on the affiliatelinks
- We linked the websites to each other causing google to spot 25K new links to a new domain.
- Stuffed the index with 40K new pages out of nothing
- Didn't exclude the correct parameters in webmastertools so all items got indexed a multiple times.
The above resulted in a drop of 95% of visitors and 3 weeks down the road we gained 10% from our low point. All boo boo's are corrected the last few day's and now we are wondering;
How long will it take for Google to forgive us? And are we correct in concluding we messed up big time?
Hope to hear your insight and let this story be a warning to others trying on this endeavour.
Kind regards,
Gerwin
-
For now we are still "included' and get some nice traffic. But most results are on page 3 instead of the first page and 4 to 5 grouped together. Looks like some penalty tools are correct; they say we have a penalty of -30.
Google sitemap learns that daily more pages are indexed but the number of searched where they appear are almost non existent.
-
Hi Gerwin,
I can't give timeframes but I had a client who had 100+ property sites interlinked (nothing to do with my advice!) and these guys starting to see the sites with no other links in their portfolio get smashed for rankings. One was pretty much de-indexed and was not ranking for its meta title. I sent a re-inclusion request via Google WM tools and after around 5 weeks the site started to rank again. It ranked worse after the drops but I think you'll find that the rankings and traffic were won by an artificially inflated link graph so if you get a re-inclusion request filed and all is forgiven it will be lower down in the SERPs as the site should not have been so high in the first place.
Thats what happened to me anyway but how G react depends on how many other non-reciprocal links you have. When you file a re-inclusion request grovel and come clean. Thats what I did and it seemed to work.
Thanks
Bush
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
-
Google is mixing a product name with a technical term (both have same name)
Google is mixing a programming term name with a home product and ranking that programming website on top. And there is another 2 search results from the same website (DA - 56, PA - 55, Links - 71K, RD - 4500). Their positions are 1, 2 and 3. But the question/ answer section is showing question/ answer for both of the products, and there is local section, top stories, images, videos, Wikipedia, amazon, ad and an e-commerce site which is showing the home product. There are in total 7 results, and 1 ad. Google also showing description of both of the products on the right. 1,2,3 - Programming website, 4. Amazon, 5. Wikipedia, 6. Wikipedia, 7. E-commerce How difficult it could be to outrank the top result?
Affiliate Marketing | | Rafialam040 -
How to track Affiliate Clicks to Google Analytics
Hi, We would like to track the affiliate link clicks. Is there any way to track it from Google Analytic? Rajiv
Affiliate Marketing | | gamesecure0 -
Does Google look at Domain Registrar owner information when counting links into a site?
Question: If the domain registrar owner info is the same on two websites, will Google/other search engines discredit any linking between the two sites when calculating page rank? We have two company sites. One is our main ecommerce domain which we have been linking into from information domains in the past. We recently cut ties with the company that hosted them for us and wish to host them ourselves to preserve the inbound traffic. We are worried, however, that the traffic will be discredited now that we own both domains. Thanks for looking!
Affiliate Marketing | | tennisexpress0 -
In what ways would an affiliate site be okay with Google?
I know Google has slammed affiliate sites hard. But affiliate marketing can be a real business and had an idea for one, but I would like to know if ALL affiliate sites are looked at as evil in Google's eyes, or if it's just those with thin and duplicate content in the product descriptions. I know they want brands to come up ahead of affiliates of that brand, and that makes sense. If I sold Acme Widgets products, Acme Widgets itself should come up ahead of my site. But what if the site sold widgets in general, with the term widgets not a branded keyword? If all product descriptions are unique and well-written content, on a site that is high quality, would it still be downgraded by Google just because there are affilate links in it? I guess overall the question could be boiled down to, are affiliate sites hit because they have horrible content or because they have links to affiliate programs in them?
Affiliate Marketing | | bizzer0 -
Will giving a blogger an affiliate url to my site reduce her links' seo value to me?
If a blogger were to write a post about one of my products and link to my product page, would giving her an affiliate url to link to rather than the normal link spoil the seo value of the link? So instead of mysite.com/product-one it would be mysite.com/affiliate/blogger/product-one Google would think... this is a transaction not a vote of confidence?
Affiliate Marketing | | Brocberry0 -
Who are the top google adsense websites
hi, i remember reading about the top 100 google adsense websites but i cannot seem to find the list or the report and would like to know if anyone remembers seeing the article or the report and if so, can you please paste a link here so i can read it again.
Affiliate Marketing | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Affilate links - Google Panda 2.1
With the recent update from Google Panda would links from affiliate Coupon Sites now have an negative impact in Organic Rankings or site value? A reason for this question is because many Coupon Sites usually have poor content and a poor quality score. Thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | Tonyd230 -
My new site experienced a sudden drop in Google rankings
We launched a new affiliate site at the beginning of April this year dealing in reviews, vouchers and price comparison for a niche product. We had a pretty good start, with some of our target keywords ranking #8 #10 #7 but this week they have suddenly dropped off dramatically - like 36 or 42 places. We haven't made any changes to the site apart from publishing new content pieces, such as news posts and reviews - does anyone know why this would suddenly happen? Thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | JohnHillman0