Trying to figure out why Penguin has completely buggered us up, and what to do about it
-
Hola All,
This is a update of http://www.seomoz.org/q/gah-unfaorly-hit-by-massive-google-penalty
Updated because:
-
Google webmaster has gotten back to us that there have been no manual actions taken against us
-
Results haven't improved one jot
-
We're completely flummoxed as to why this is happenin
Quick summary:
We run the larest WordPress news site on the web, WPMU.org
We're completely legit, a team of 4-5 great writers, amazing original content, massive fanbase on twitter and facebook, a 60k email list etc, established for years and years.
We're absolutely not and haven't done anything gray or black, the worst we've done is including links in the footers of some themes we've distributed
Since the 24th April our google referrals are down from an 8.5k daily peak to 1.5 - see the attached.
Articles which have consistently attracted several hundred referrals per day have disappeared from the rankings to be replaced by republications or just links to the, for example, here's one on the dangers of searching for free WP themes, decimated:
http://wpmu.org/why-you-should-never-search-for-free-wordpress-themes-in-google-or-anywhere-else/
Check out how legit we are!
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=wpmu.org
And the problem:
How to get our google traffic back?
We're completely stuck
We can't find issues within the site content, or even particularly within the backlinks (we've removed all links from Edublogs)
We haven't been manually whacked, so we can't get that changed.
Absolutely nothing within the penguin update should have hit us... in fact by their reckoning we should have had a massive improvement over all the trash that competes with us in the WordPress space.
Help / Ideas / Feedback / Criticism / Anything desperately sought.
Thanks for your time,
James
-
-
Thanks again for the feedback.
I see what you;re saying but to be honest I cannot fathom as to why they would be of any significant importance, and so them being taken away shouldn't count a jot really.
Our content is v popular (just check out facebook.com/wpmudev where's it's reposted plus other stuff, we've got stunning social metrics as well as a vast array of quality, genuine, interested organic links.
And we never went about it in any serious way, and stopped in 2009 or so when we were picking up 300 visits per day rather than the 20k we were prior to the 24th
-
Hi Me again!
You wrote:
"the worst we've done is including links in the footers of some themes we've distributed"
So, perhaps you should start with the worst and see if that is it?
I have a feeling that these Client Footer Links used to provide rankings and now don't because of adjustments to the algorithm. I think that rather than view it as a penalty, you may be best to view it as a previous gift that is now gone. I am formulating theories as to why, and I am currently somewhere beyond my original hunch (which was that they look like paid links), and not yet to my actual theory (which is much broader, but I haven't fully formulated, so I will keep to myself for a bit).
Anyway, I have figured out how it would be quite easy for search engines to devalue Client Footer Links, along with the blog networks and paid links they have been taking down, by using some available metrics. So, when my theory comes together, if the search engines are not using it, they will be forced to sometime in the next few years. (Stroking my own genious ego here, I know).
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
-
Complete website redesign: original domain vs subdomain vs new domain ?
Hello dear community fellas!
Algorithm Updates | | PayPro
The story goes like this: my company has a good ol' website launched back in 2008 and since then nothing much was updated there. Our rank dropped significantly because, well, barely any SEO was done for it. Me and my team decided to redesign the whole thing: content, structure, visuals, links, everything but this time really making it right. However, with our oldie we managed to get a nice user base, so we still want to get all the traffic juice out of it. Now the questions is where do you think is the best place to publish our new website: Our original domain www.companyname.com? Create a subdomain new.companyname.com? Totally new domain www.namecompany.com? Cheers!0 -
Penguin hit | Immediate?
Last year we fell off google rankings fairly quickly (mid-2013), out of the blue. We thought it was Penguin; but after looking at Analytic data of organic google visits; there seems to be no drastic loss of traffic at any time. Our site's loss of traffic is a gradual decline, not immediately noticeable, as in this video (~33:00 minutes in ). If there is no drop in organic google traffic that's noticeable, can I safely assume our drop in rankings wasn't due to an algorithm update?
Algorithm Updates | | godreamvacations0 -
Panda, Negative SEO and now Penguin - help needed
Hi,
Algorithm Updates | | mlm12
We are small business owners who've been running a website for 5 years that provides our income. We've done very little backlinking ourselves, and never did paid directories or anything like that - usually just occasional forum or blog responses. A few articles here and there with some of our keyword phrases for internal pages. Of course I admit we've done some kwp backlinks on some blogs, but our anchor text profile is largely brand names and our domain name and non keywords (excepting for some "bad" backlinks). Our DA is 34, PA 45 for our home page. We were doing great until last Sept 27 when we got hit by Panda and have been working on deoptimizing our site for keywords, we made a new site in Wordpress for good architecture and ease of use for our customers, and we're deleting/repurposing low quality pages and making our content more robust. We haven't yet recovered from this and now it appears we got hit May 22 for Penguin...ARGH! I recently discovered (hard to have time to devote to everything with just two of us) that others can "negative seo" a site now and I feel this has happened based upon results below... I signed up for linkdetox.com yesterday and it gives a grim picture of our backlinks (says we are in "deadly risk" territory). We have 83 "toxic" links and 600 some "suspicious" links (many are in malware/malicious listed sites, many are .pl domains from Poland, others are I believe foreign domains, or domains that are a bunch or letters that make no sense, or spammy sounding emd domains), - this makes up 80% of our links. As this is our only business, our income is now 1/3 of what it has been, even with PPC ads going as we've been hit hard by all of this and are wondering if we can survive fixing this. We do have an SEO firm minimally helping us along with guidance on recovering, but with income so low, we are doing the work ourselves and can't afford much. Needless to say, we are quite distressed and from reading around, not sure if we'll be able to recover and that is deeply saddening, especially from Negative SEO. We want to make sure we are on the right path for recovery if possible, hence my questions. We haven't been in contact with Google for reconsideration, again, no penalty messages from them. First of all, if we don't have a manual penalty, would you still contact all the toxic/malicious/possible porn looking sites and ask for a link removal, wait, ask for link removal, wait then disavow? Or just go straight to Google disavow? For backlinks coming from sites that are "gone" (like a message saying the account has been suspended), or there is no website there anymore, do I try and contact them too? Or go direct to disavow? Or do nothing? For the sites flagged as malicious (by linkdetox, my browser, or by Google), I don't want to try and open them on my browser to see if this site is legitimate. If linkdetox doesn't have the contact info for these - what are we supposed to do? For "suspicious" foreign sites that I can't read the webpage -would you still disavow them (I've seen many here say links from foreign sites should be disavowed). How do you keep up with all this is someone is negative SEOing you? We're really frustrated that Google's change has made it possible for competitors to tank your business (arguably though, if we had a stronger backlink profile this may not have hurt, or not as much - not sure). When you are small biz owners and can't hire a group to constantly monitor backlinks, get quality backlinks, content, site optimization, etc - it seems an almost impossible task to do. Are wordpress left nav and footer link anchor text an issue for Penguin? I would think Google would realize these internal links will be repetitive for the same anchor text on Wordpress (I know Matt Cutts said to not use the same anchor text more than once for internal linking -but obviously nav and footer menus will do this). What would you do if this was you? Try and fix it all? Start over with a new domain and 301 it (some say this has been working)? Just start over with a new domain and don't redirect? Thanks for your input and advice. We appreciate it.0 -
After penguin 2.0, 20-25% drop sitewide, no google unatural links message, What could be causing it?
Hi,Since Penguin 2.0 we've taken a 20-25% knock but not recieved an unatural link message from Google. After sending a bunch of removal requests, I decided to submit a disavow file anyway two weeks ago and tried to make sure I rooted out some links that were built way back when our site started and link building best practice was a bit shadier. Analysis of our backlink profile points to about 40-50% links coming from general directories, wondering if perhaps their weight has been adjusted and this is why the drop occured? Having said that we have some high quality links from government sources and highly trusted sites so not too spammy. Can anyone shed some light or offer suggestions? Thanx
Algorithm Updates | | Mulith0 -
What our next step after hitting by Penguin 2.0
Hi Everyone, Any idea about what the next step after hitting by Penguin 2.0 We go for more link building or content optimization or some thing else..?
Algorithm Updates | | lucidsoftech0 -
Was I hit by panda or penguin?
My site, graciousbridal.com was hit pretty hard by google at the end of April. I actually noticed our traffic decreasing around February, then towards the end of April, it got really bad. Our sales this may were half of what they were in may 2011. We have never done any black or gray hat seo, wouldn't even know how to. I know in the past we did blog commenting, but changed up our keywords so it wasn't all the same, maybe we didn't change it enough?? We have another very similar site that I'm now wondering if we were penalized because they are too similar. We always have changed up the copy, but they have most of the same products. This second site barely gets traffic or sales and has about half of the items graciousbridal does. But, I'm wondering now if it's to similar and that is why we were penalized. I can't figure out what we did wrong to have this big of a drop. I really need help with this as this is supposed to be our busiest season of the year. Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated..
Algorithm Updates | | Craig2100 -
A rating on report card - Massive drop in rankings (Is it Penguin?)
Hi All, I would really like a second opinion on my current issue and I'd be very grateful for the communities knowledge please . I have a been running a successful campaign for one of my clients, increase in natural SERP's, etc. But since the 24th of April they were hit and hit hard and continued to decline now. They had many top 5 listings for terms and now most are not in top 50 serps. Openly I know they have a bad or not great backlink profile which was inherited from the past agency, but we're working on this using white hat techniques, contextual copy, brand etc. The copy is a great, contextual and no where near spammy at all... Very nicely written, factual, etc. What I don't understand is this SEOmoz's On-Page report card gives an A rating for the target term which is also a secondary term but was ranking high. Factor Overview <dl class="scoreboard clearfix"> <dt>Critical Factors</dt> <dd>4 / 4</dd> <dt>High Importance Factors</dt> <dd>6 / 7</dd> <dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt> <dd>7 / 9</dd> <dt>Low Importance Factors</dt> <dd>8 / 11</dd> <dt>Optional Factors</dt> <dd>2 / 5</dd> <dd> On-Page Keyword Usage for </dd> </dl> Title 1 URL 0 Meta Desc 1 H1 1 H2-4 0 Body 1 B / Strong 1 IMG ALT 0 Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 5 Fall from grace is SERP 5 to 25 and still going down. So the questions are: 1. Has this happened to you? 2. Could it just be down to their bad backlink profile which now needs much more attention? 3. Is this Penguin for sure? 4. What would you recommend? If anyone requires any further info please let me know and thank you in advance. Cheers,
Algorithm Updates | | JosephGourvenec
Joseph Gourvenec
SEO and Search Specialist0 -
Geolocation: Google only crawls from the US
A question was previously asked about geo-location and specifically if Google crawled from other countries. I could not locate the original question but wanted to share the below information. As of earlier this year Google only crawls from US IP addresses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7paVYBgH0Hw
Algorithm Updates | | RyanKent1
