Google Webspam Algo Update 24/4/12
-
Having just checked our clients rankings 95% have not been affected, in fact many have moved up rankings. 1 or 2 have had big drops
Who has been effected by this? The forums are full of people talking about sites being floored from the serp's.
it will be interesting to follow the aftermath of this and get some insight into what exactly has changed!
-
"Something to note is that the problem could fix itself. Out of that 3-5% of the queries impacted, some sites are gonna get hit incidentally. Google seems to be decent at spotting these over time and fixing it. Sometimes people get the short end of the stick though."
Thats a very good point. We have often notice websites take a hit after an algo date, only to come back a few days or weeks later.
One thing is sure- this seems to have affected quite a lot of sites. The site we have seen drop has a very natural link profile and no "over optimisation" in terms of keyword stuffing etc.
There seems to be alot of poor websites that have benefited, as mentioned- blank sites now ranking #1 on google! Lets hope we some further tweaks in the near future as currently it seems that there have been a lot of "incidental" hits!
-
did you apply any Seo methods that aren't white hat? Perhaps bought links for a couple of bucks? What efforts did you take for optimization?
If you could let us know perhaps we can give some direct advise on how to change the rankings for you again.
kind regards
Jarno
-
Something to note is that the problem could fix itself. Out of that 3-5% of the queries impacted, some sites are gonna get hit incidentally. Google seems to be decent at spotting these over time and fixing it. Sometimes people get the short end of the stick though.
There is one thing I always do in the week or two following an update: nothing at all
Let the fallout happen, and see what other people are saying. While we know they did the update, we don't have a ton of metrics yet on what bigger sites got hit. Once you do you will be better equipped to assess the situation.
I see a lot of people panic when they drop. They want to build links, change the title tags, tweak the KW density and change their menu structure all at once. Even if these were all practical, how could you know which one was the most effective if you did them all within a few weeks of each other?
Cheers,
Vinnie
-
So far, I see two sites that we work with that have notably dropped. Hopefully over the next few days we'll start to figure out specific causes and solutions.
-
Looks like we posted this at about the same time! I will just close mine and discuss it in yours.
A few references:
http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-update-targeting-webspam-in-search-results-119295
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
Cheers,
Vinnie
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
-
Yelp (recrawl Google/Bing)
If Google and Bing show an older version of a site's Yelp rating in the search results, what options are there to help ensure Google and Bing recrawl the Yelp page? Additionally, it appears third-party sites such as MapQuest show Yelp ratings and appear in Google search results; is it possible to request MapQuest to recrawl Yelp and then ask Google to recrawl MapQuest? Any advice would be much appreciated!
Industry News | | Mack_1 -
What Google Analytics Data to Share with Potential Website Buyer
Hi Mozzers,
Industry News | | emerald
We have contacted our competitors to let them know we would like to sell our website (domain and all content). One of them has asked for Google Analytics data. Which parts of this and how is this data best shared in such a case? As this is the opening of offers, I'm assuming some kind of PDF export with a summary of some Analytics data is sufficient to see who is serious. Then for those who are serious more data could be shared. Or is it ever ok to share your full Analytics with a competitor? Would love to hear what data and best practises are used to share this kind of information. Thank you.0 -
Manual action penalty by Google
Hello, We have a big well-known brand - www.titanbet.com. This brand is well established and the site has been live for almost 4 years now ranking very well on some very strong KWs. we received a message from Google on Aug 29<sup>th</sup> saying “Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site” and that “Google has applied a manual spam action to titanbet.com/” The past 2 weeks since the penalty was received we saw some of our major KWs drop in rankings. BUT all brand related KWs were still ranked 1<sup>st</sup> Over the last weekend the penalty has worsen and we no longer rank on any of the brands KWs (we find the site in 5<sup>th</sup> page at best). Moreover, when searching for a sentence from the any of the page on the site in Google, we see other sites ahead of us in the SERPs. Based on the message we originally received from Google we have started cleaning some of the bad links to the site. We found a lot of links from bad sites, some of them are not indexed and probably penalized as well, some are from affiliate websites and some are from some automatic indexation websites based in China and Russia
Industry News | | Tit
we have started reaching out to some of these sites to try and have them remove our links. We are also worried about the duplication of our site. We have found many other sites (mostly affiliate websites) have copied and in some cases completely duplicated our content. Google for some reason has chosen to penalize us for this. Although we do not have control over these other sites. We have run copyscape to try and figure out which pages are the most problematic and we will try to re-write the content on these pages. But what if the other sites copy us again? Any suggestions on the above would be appreciated as we try to understand why Google has penalized us. thank you Titan Bet Team0 -
Google Analytics Tracking Miscount - Originating Around 5/24
Is anyone else experiencing an issue where it seems GA failed to track many of their visitors? This is why I think it's something on GA's end and not mine (and not natural): 1. No changes were made, site wasn't down, tracking code is correct and is "receiving data" 2. Referral, Direct and Organic traffic all dropped at about the same decline over the same period *3. Pinterest Analytics shows me being sent over 10 times more traffic every day than GA shows me actually receiving. In the screenshot, Pinterest shows 584 uniques while GA shows 43 for Sunday. I figure if something was broken, I wouldn't be showing ANY traffic and if it was natural, it wouldn't have happened on the same decline across all traffic mediums and Pinterest Analytics wouldn't be so far off. I saw a few people mentioning similar things on Google's forums and wanted to ask you guys if anyone noticed any issues? y8XAvwz.png pRsRAmK.png
Industry News | | zDucketz0 -
Google Changes Up The Search Results Page
Hi Guys, As you Google has made changes on search results page. I have two points two discuss here : 1. Are we going to see more ads on left sidebar in future ? 2. I think it will also affect the CTR of top three ads in SERP ? Waiting for you guys opinion on it ? Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/google-changes-up-the-search-results-page-2012-11
Industry News | | SanketPatel1 -
How to go about removing bad/irrelevent links?
We have been made aware of a series of irrelevant links on some rather dodgy sites. http://www.designerdogstop.com/level-static/http://www.bestfirepits.net/some-of-the-best-vacations-for-families/2010/05/05/ http://whatcigarsdoismoke.com/cigar-lighters/cigarette-cigar-2/ http://dollfuss.org/build-bear-hawaii/ Absolute rubbish im sure you will agree. These links must surely be causing our link profile some damage. They are currently wordpress sites with no means of contacting the authors. What ways and means are there of removing these negative pages and links? Cheers all, any help appreciated.
Industry News | | TimHolmes0 -
My site was hit by the Penguin Update, Now What?
My site is very young, having only been up for about a month and a half. Despite being nascent we were seeing a ton of organic traffic. Enter Google Penguin update.... Traffic is down 40% or so over the past week. So, assuming the damage has been done, the question is, what do we do next to start moving back towards where we were? If we're doing everything everything right do we just chalk it up to the fact that our site is very new and stay the course on original content and link building? I know you can submit your site for reconsideration which is something that we are going to do this week, but I wonder what else we can do to start edging back to where we were pre-penguin update. Maybe this would be a good Whiteboard Friday topic.
Industry News | | knowyourbank0 -
Google Directory no longer available?
Now, we will forever not know what is in the Google Directory. I just clicked on the link..... and everything is dead and points you to DMOZ. What does this mean for us? Is DMOZ going to get more editor juice, so submissions are actually reviewed for once? The Yahoo! directory has also been glitching - new submissions have been disabled for over a week now. Any comments?
Industry News | | antidanis0