Google Penguin Penalty
-
Howdy Guys,
We have been battling our way the Google penguin penalty and have just received our 3 knocked back reconsideration request.I posted a find on here the other day about a simple change of page title made our site jump back up...
In the meantime I've built 1 hight quality link back to our site and we have moved again from #50 to #46.Have Google ever removed a penalty without telling you?Should we ask for another reconsideration request?Thanks,
Scott -
Sry guys - must have posted while others were writing. Even if you didn't get the original email - if Google is saying you have unnatural links, then you need to deal with that problem. Submitting recon makes no difference if you dont get rid of the bad links
You will almost certainly need to take action by linkmining your website, identifying 'unnatural' links or links from blatantly bad neighborhoods, submit requests for removal from the webmasters, and so on. Document all of your work and then add that information in with your reconsideration request. If you do not put the work in you will not get a positive response.
-
Hi Scott -
Eyepaq has it right in that you need to understand if you are under a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty to know exactly what course of action to take.
Manual Penalty - You'll get an email in WMT if you are under penalty, This will be due to bad links. You will need to clean up your links, and then open that email and click on the 'reconsideration request' link.
Algorithmic - You'll usually see a sudden drop in positioning, in some cases it will affect a string of your best keyword variations while other low lying fruit as it were still rank well. For this penalty, check anchor text % first, then go through the other penguin stuff (you can find tons of info in the SEOMoz blog). There is a form online you can use if you "feel your website was unfairly demoted" but I am no longer sure of its efficacy.
Position 46 > 50 or vice versa. This really means nothing at all so don't take it as an indicator. Google is always messing around so 4 positions out of 50 is insignificant. For example, your site used to be top 10, but when it moved to 50, about 40 websites moved "up" a spot. Consistent movement from week to week is a better indicator.
-
By "knocked back" - I mean we have submitted a reconsideration request and they have said we still have unnatural links...
** But then this is not penguin - it's something different - even if is still related with links.
As far as I know there is a policy now and they are sending out notification via WMT for this type of filters. For you not getting one it either means it was applied a long time ago when they didn't send out all notifications for all filters applied or you've skiped the message somehow
Or it's not a manual action - it's algo based.
Questions:
-
did you manage to identify bad links pointing to your site ? If so, are those "bad" links pointing to home page or deep, to inner pages ? (important as far as solution to deal with those)
-
did you include in the reconsideration request you've sent out so far the action taked in order to cut those bad links out ? Did you actually do something to remove any of those links or cut those links out by 404-ing the target page (if home page was not the target).
Again, your issue is not Penguin related but the bellow resource might also help:
http://www.webpronews.com/google-penguin-update-reconsideration-request-tips-from-google-2012-04
-
-
I think if you look hard enough you will find bad links to every site, as you never got an original message i would assume its an algorithmic penalty.
And yes by changing page content and varying your anchor text on new links can make a big difference, Google are clever in a way they word their messages and you will never know if its manual action taken unless they specifically say so.
-
Hi Eyepaq,
Thanks for the reply.
By "knocked back" - I mean we have submitted a reconsideration request and they have said we still have unnatural links...
1 thing I remember is that we never received a message with WMT we actually filed for a reconsideration request and then recieved a message back saying we had bad links, could this be slightly different?
Thanks,
Scott
-
Hi,
If you are 100% sure it's Penguin related then the reconsideration request won't help as Penguin is not a manual action.
There is a form online that you can use posted by Matt Cutts - did you mean that as "sending a reconsideration request".
if not, the answer was you are still violating the rules or that you don't have any manual action against your site ?
What do you mean by "knocked back" ?
Have Google ever removed a penalty without telling you?
** Yes - all the time. Algorithmic penalties are applied and lifted with no message sent.
Lately manual actions (penalties) are noted in your WMT account but even those (manual actions) expire after a time - if you didn't fix it those will be reapplied but the lift off won't be sent as a notice.
Should we ask for another reconsideration request?
** Don't play with those. It matters what kind of response you've received after the first 3.
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
-
Is my content being fully read by Google?
Hi mozzers, I wanted to ask you a quick question regarding Google's crawlability of webpages. We just launched a series of content pieces but I believe there's an issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Based on what I am seeing when I inspect the URL it looks like Google is only able to see a few titles and internal links. For instance, when I inspect one of the URLs on GSC this is the screenshot I am seeing: image.pngWhen I perform the "cache:" I barely see any content**:** image.pngVS one of our blog post image.png Would you agree with me there's a problem here? Is this related to the heavy use of JS? If so somehow I wasn't able to detect this on any of the crawling tools? Thanks!0 -
How does Google handle fractions in titles?
Which is better practice, using 1/2" or ½"? The keyword research suggests people search for "1 2" with the space being the "/". How does Google handle fractions? Would ½ be the same as 1/2?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice2 -
WhoIs penalty
Does anyone know if it's possible to get a penalty on WHOIS data and a shared IP address? We had some bad SEO done (And at ranking demolished) on one of our company websites which has the same WHOIS data and is on the same IP address as another side which is just seems to have taken a knock. Is it possible Google could have associated both and penalised accordingly?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Delete page and tell it to Google
Hello everybody, i have a problem with some pages of my website. I have had to removed 5-10 pages because these pages linked to 404 pages and i removed it. Need i to tell to Google or Only removed? Thanks so much
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pompero990 -
Why has my site dropped off the face of Google???
Hi All, My site was ranking well for a long time and suddenly can't be seen at all any more. I have been trying to figure this out for some time and can't get to the bottom of it. Funny thing is also even when searching for my site with a keyword "snowboard gulmarg" my URL www.klinehinmalaya.com does not appear and somewhere way back in the listing my another page www.klinehimalaya.com/packages.php comes up. Any help would be good right now. Thanks in advance, Catherine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | caherinechan0 -
Why would one of our section pages NOT be indexed by Google?
One of our higher traffic section pages is not being indexed by Google. The products that reside on this section page ARE indexed by Google and are on page 1. So why wouldn't the section page be even listed and indexed? The meta title is accurate, meta description is good. I haven't received any notices in Webmaster Tools. Is there a way to check to see if OTHER pages might also not be indexed? What should a small ecom site do to see about getting it listed? SOS in Modesto. Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
DMCA Complaint to Google - HELP
I have several sites copying my content, which I found out via Copyscape.com. Unfortunately, this is giving me duplicate content. I filed a DMCA complaint through Google and the infringing pages were approved but the pages still remain. Can someone please help me understand this better? I thought Google was supposed to remove these pages? Am I supposed to content the site owner to get the content removed or are their pages simply de-indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tutugirl0 -
Google Previews highlighting Promotions?
I came across this today when doing a Google search - a site that has a small promo code listed on their page shows a preview with that promo highlighted...I dug around their code a little bit, but couldn't find if it was something they were doing to manipulate their preview in the search results. Is Google automatically highlighting promotions in previews, or did getmarried.com/magazine/ somehow manipulate the page to make their promo highlighted? And if so, how? You can see the site at http://www.getmarried.com/magazine/ and you can see the preview with the promo highlighted attached. ZDY52.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | klars5240