Has anyone seen a spammy competitors website hit by the Google changes?
-
I wonder, after all the talk of Penguins and Pandas if anyone has seen evidence of a competitor who you know has 1000's of spammy links removed from their page one position in Google.
I have a trade competitor who appeared from nowhere about 12 months ago with 11,000+ back-links most of which were totally unrelated to our trade and appear to be link-farm links for the most part.
After reading about Google's changes I thought the site might be hit but it remains up there in the first 2 or 3 results on page one.
I wonder if anyone has seen similar sites penalised?
Colin
-
I hear ya, Colin. Drives me nuts every time I see spammers up there.
-
Good luck - you can close a ticket by clicking on Good Answer
-
Thanks Ian, Irving and Ian,
I take your point about controlling what I can control and your right.
Just frustrating to watch after following Googles recommendations. But, as you say, there might be other factors.
Thanks guys.
Off now to kick the cat!
(Just joking).
Colin
-
We've seen a competitor that has used spammy practices for years that no matter what continues to sit at the top of the rankings.
As Ian said, it's maddening as can be but you can't fix Google so you just have to work on improving your own site. (Still working on taking this advice)
-
We have seen several competitors get trashed in the rankings. Spammy links does not guarantee that a site will be penalized. They may enough good quality links to counteract their spam links and there are probably several other factors taken into consideration in the Google spam penalty algorithm.
-
I've seen plenty, but I only remember the ones that keep their rankings
In all seriousness: I know it's hard, but you have to ignore competitors as far as spammy practices go. Google's far from perfect in detecting spam, even now, and their ability to rank may come from other factors. Even if it doesn't, you don't control that. It's frustrating as hell - believe me, I get it. But focus on what you do control: Your site.
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 indexed "Lorem Ipsum" content on an unfinished website
Hi guys. So I recently created a new WordPress site and started developing the homepage. I completely forgot to disallow robots to prevent Google from indexing it and the homepage of my site got quickly indexed with all the Lorem ipsum and some plagiarized content from sites of my competitors. What do I do now? I’m afraid that this might spoil my SEO strategy and devalue my site in the eyes of Google from the very beginning. Should I ask Google to remove the homepage using the removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools and ask it to recrawl the page after adding the unique content? Thank you so much for your replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ibis150 -
Website cache has removed
Hi Team, I am facing an issue with cache of the website, despite various r&d I couldn't able to find the solution as code seems to be ok to me. Can any one of you check and let me know why home page and some of the product pages removed from the caching. See here: https://bit.ly/2Kna3PD Appreciate a quick response! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Devtechexpert0 -
Mobile First Timeline - When Will Google Move The Remainder of Websites?
A common question from anxious webmasters who have separate/smaller mobile websites is: _"Will Google move my site over to mobile-first, even though I'm not "ready" yet?" _It's not an easy question to answer. Here's what we know so far: Google is currently already migrating websites over that have a strong correlation between mobile and desktop content Google is taking the migration process very slowly, and for now, is not migrating sites over that are not "ready". Google has not announced any firm timeline for when they plan to migrate the remainder of all websites. In answering this question, I typically mention all of the above to help allay any fears. I then state that it could maybe be anywhere from one year to several years before the process is over - but with a huge disclaimer that this is pure speculation, and that only Google knows for sure. Lastly, I reiterate that Google in the meantime is strongly encouraging webmasters w mobile sites to ensure that they match the desktop version (URLs, schema, video, metadata, etc). So the choice is to either to upgrade to responsive/adaptive, or upgrade the mobile site. This is where the future is going. STILL - any additional feedback / thoughts / ideas / tips on this are welcome, because I continue to struggle with answering this question for clients. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile1 -
Blacklisted website no longer blacklisted, but will not appear on Google's search engine.
We have a client who before us, had a website that was blacklisted by Google. After we created their new website, we submitted an appeal through Google's Webmaster Tools, and it was approved. One year later, they are still unable to rank for anything on Google. The keyword we are attempting to rank for on their home page is "Day in the Life Legal Videos" which shouldn't be too difficult to rank for after a year. But their website cannot be found. What else can we do to repair this previously blacklisted website after we're already been approved by Google? After doing a link audit, we found only one link with a spam score of 7, but I highly doubt that is what is causing this website to no longer appear on Google. Here is the website in question: https://www.verdictvideos.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rodneywarner0 -
Why Did My Google Crawls Hit A Wall?
Hello, One my the sites I work with, http://www.oransi.com, has seen a significant decrease in crawl Googlebot activity in the last 90 days. See screenshot. This decrease in crawl stats runs in conjunction with less Kb downloaded per day & an increase in how much time it took Google to download a page. The client did just go through a redesign, however that happened on 4/16/15, which was after the decrease in Googlebot activity, so that should not be the issue. Same could be said for the mobilegeddan algorithm change. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 5u1lM6B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Is it worth changing themes to be Responsive, and risk a SERP change?
I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85. The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank. The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again. There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more. So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Google Trends - API? Anyone Using This Data?
I'm looking for a way to track change in search volume for dozens or hundreds of keywords but Google Trends doesn't have an API as far as I can tell. Does anyone know of a good tool or method of extracting large amounts of data from Google Trends?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wattssw1