Blackhat Winners after Penguin 2.0
-
I know I'm not the only one that's seen this. After Penguin 2.0 some obvious blackhat SEOed sites flew up in the rankings. There's obviously a hole that hasn't been closed. I'm surprised it's been a month and that hole still hasn't been patched. I have no problem with other legit companies out ranking ours for various keywords. In that case I can feel alright knowing it's just something they were able to do that I wasn't but when I see complete blackhat sites ranking that's a whole different story.
Estimated traffic before and after Penguin 2.0: http://goo.gl/gurXt
What are they doing that's blackhat?
-
Hidden text - compare the cached version vs. the live http://goo.gl/YYGDK
-
301ing lots of domains, many irrelevant. http://goo.gl/RjOJu
-
Using a trade marked brand (steelers) - not SEO related but I'm sure the NFL wouldn't be happy.
-
Linking between other domains they own. Notice how spammy these sites are.
-
http://pittsburghwebdevelopment.org/2013/06/23/website-development-firm-website-design-pittsburgh/
-
http://seoinpgh.com/2013/06/23/website-designer-pittsburgh-affordable-web-design-in-pittsburgh-pa/
-
They were inflating their social presence. Wanted to show you but looks like twitter already took care of them https://twitter.com/seopittsburgh .
-
Also making client sites link to them .
I've talked to other people and they've seen similar things. Thoughts, opinions?
Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
-
-
I agree with y'all, this is definitely a short term win for your competitor. I've seen a lot of our competitors have short gains since penguin 2.0 with spammy tactics. It'll come back to bite them, we just don't know when.
EGOL, is right too, they are pretty dang good at blackhat. If there is a way to spam up the universe they've got it down to a science. I haven't looked at their backlink profiles, but I'd expect to see quite a few chinese domains in there.
-
Yes I have seen a lot of this too. I'm in competition with a bunch of companies using blackhat link building techniques and they are outranking me (sometimes) using these. Literally they are just doing article/link submission blasts with keyword targeted anchor text and it's working. Part of me thinks perhaps it's because EVERY site fighting for that phrase is using blackhat techniques and part of me thinks Penguin just isn't working well.
Either way I'm frustrated and each Monday I come in thinking.. "maybe today I'll start some blackhat link building."
The clock is ticking!
-
Yeah I agree it's only a matter of time before they're shut down. Just so frustrating to see and causes me to lose a little faith in how far along Google really is with this new playbook. I really like the direction they are going in. Just going to be a while before all the kinks are worked out.
-
Thoughts, opinions?
Looks like they have a site that is less than one-year old on a domain that might be infringing and are using a number of things that google is likely to penalize them for. They might be doing this same type of work for their clients. This sounds like a short-term problem for you.
One thing about Google is that relatively new sites doing shady stuff can persist for a while in the SERPs before Google finally slaps them down.
I think that you will eventually get their customers.
Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
Yes. They are pretty good at blackhat.... not the answer that you want... but I think its a good answer.
Was driving down West Liberty Ave one day and saw a new hair styling shop that opened. They had a sign out on the sidewalk... "Haircuts $5"..... about two blocks down the street a shop that has been in business for a long time put out their own sign.... "We fix bad haircuts $18".
You need to make a sign... "We fix bad SEO"
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
-
What would you say is hurting this site, Penguin or Panda?
Would you say this is both Penguin and Panda and no penalty has ever been lifted? What would be your general recommendations for this site? seWnoQm
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Recovering from Google Penguin/algorithm penalty?
Anyone think recovery is possible? My site has been in Google limbo for the past 8 months to around a year or so. Like a lot of sites we had seo work done a while sgo and had tons of links that Google now looks down on. I worked with an seo company for a few months now and they seem to agree Penguin is the likely culprit, we are on page 8-10 for keywords that we used to be on page 1 for. Our site is informative and has everything in tact. We deleted whatever links possible and some sites are even hard to find contact information for and some sites want money, I paid a few a couple bucks in hopes maybe it could help the process. Anyway we now have around 600 something domains on disavow file we out up in March-April, with around 100 or 200 added recently as well. If need be a new site could be an option as well but will wait and see if the site can improve on Google with a refresh. Anyone think recovery is possible in a situation like this? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xelaetaks0 -
Why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aronwp0 -
Penguin Hit, Looking for some advice from Takeshi Young
Hello, Takeshi had the good idea to compare google analytic traffic data to penguin updates. We may have got hit by Penguin 2.0 (#4) on May 22, 2013. There's nothing in GWT indicating it though. Most of our traffic is return customers, by the way. I've attached a Google Analytic Screenshot. It just happens to be the time when we removed a bunch of paid links. Will you look at this screenshot and make sure that it was Penguin, then give me some advice about 20 little blogs with keyword rich anchor text. 2 paid links that look editorial 1 sitewide paid link w/ keyword rich alt tag 1 more paid link that's an image near the footer on a single page, keyword rich anchor text. 1 paid link site with different types of links scattered across the site - 30 links total We have 70 links total - the above 25 are paid. penguin.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Site Search external hosted pages - Penguin
Hi All, On the site www.myworkwear.co.uk we have a an externally hosted site search that also creates separately hosted pages of popular searches which rank in Google and create traffic. An example of this is listed below: Google Search: blue work trousers (appears on front page of Google) Site Champion Page: http://workwear.myworkwear.co.uk/workwear/Navy%20Blue%20Work%20Trousers Nearest Category page: http://www.myworkwear.co.uk/category/Mens-Work-Trousers-936.htm Could this be a penalisation or duplication factor? Could these be interpreted as a dodgy link factor? Thanks in advance for your help. Kind Regards, Andy Southall
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Homepage bombed from rankings 2
I've had some varying advice on here regarding the best way to proceed with [i'll PM the URL] which was hit by Penguin 2.0. There were previous issues with the homepage and before the 22nd had started creating new decent links. Some have suggested to ditch the domain and start again. There are several reasons not to and branding is the deciding factor at this stage. I'm going down the route of initially trying to manually remove links and then follow on with disavow. I would really appreciate another pair of eyes taking a quick look to see if i'm missing anything other than a dodgy link profile.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
EMD with 3.3million broad match searches got hit hard by Panda/Penguin
k, so I run an ecommerce website with a kick ass domain name. 1 keyword (plural)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SwissNinja
3.3 million broad match searches (local monthly)
3.2 million phrase match
100k exact match beginning of march I got a warning in GWT about unnatural links. I feel pretty certain its a result of an ex-employee using an ALN listing service to drip spun article links on splogs. This was done also for another site of mine, which received the same warning, except bounced back much sooner (from #3 for EMD w/ 100k broad, 60k phrase and 12k exact, singular keyword phrase) I did file reinclusion on the 2nd (smaller) domain. Received unnatural warning on 4/13 and sent reconsideration on 5/1 (tune of letter is "I have no clue what is up, I paid someone $50 and now Im banned) As of this morning, I am not ranking for any of my terms (had boucned back on main keyword to spot #30 after being pushed down from #4) now back to the interesting site....
this other domain was bouncing between 8-12 for main keyword (EMD) before we used ALN.
Once we got warning, we did nothing. Once rankings started to fall,we filed reinclusion request...rankings fell more, and filed another more robustly written request (got denials within 1 week after each request)until about 20 days ago when we fell off of the face of the earth. 1- should I take this as some sort of sandbox? We are still indexed, and are #1 for a search on our domain name. Also still #1 in bing (big deal) 2- I've done a detailed analysis of every link they provide in GWT. reached out to whatever splog people I could get in touch with asking them to remove articles. I was going to file another request if I didn't reappear after 31 days after I fell off completely. Am I wasting my time? there is no doubt that sabatoge could be committed by competition by blasting them with spam links (previously I believed these would just be ignored by google to prevent sabatoge from becoming part of the job for most SEOs) Laugh at me, gasp in horror with me, or offer some advice... I'm open to chat and would love someone to tell me about a legit solution to this prob if they got one thanks!0 -
Link Farms and The Relationship between 2 domain with a 301 Redirect
I have an interesting scenario: Domain A was worked on by a disreputable SEO company off shore. The owner of Domain A came to me for my assistance and evaluation on how the off shore company was doing. I concluded that he should terminate the relationship immediately. One of the bad things they did was register Domain A with a LOT of link farms. I started working on a new site that eventually we decided to go with Domain B (a better, but totally related domain name to Domain A). I added a nice new site and had my client write clean, relevant information for it. We've done all legitimate, above ground by-google's-recommendation SEO for Domain B. I have a series of 301 redirects from Domain A to Domain B. Since April 24th, organic search results have plummeted. I see many incoming links via Webmaster Tools as the massive link farms, but those link farms have Domain A in their databases, not Domain B. My question: is Domain B inheriting the link juice from Domain A insofar as the incoming links are showing up in Webmaster Tools as directly related to Domain A? Should I sever the ties with Domain A altogether? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KateZDCA1