Is hotvsnot penalized?
-
Been doing some searches for this directory, we have used them for quite a few links and now it seems as though they do not show up in serps for branded terms and the actual "www.hotvsnot.com" search phrase. Scary! Have a look let me know if you are having the same issue ladies and gents.
-
Yup i just checked again and its definitely been hit. I also have some clients who are ranking very well and they are on this directory, however we are not seeing a negative effect.
-
Nothing wrong with a directory link which is human edited. However we only choose a handful like business.com, best of the web and etc.. we definitely do not spam.
-
Not really an answer to the question but I just googled "hot vs not" in incognito and this page is the second to last result on the first page, which is mildly interesting.
-
We have also used them before, and to date have not seen a negative effect on any site that has links from them. BUT, since Google has been cracking down on paid link sites, we have decided not to add any new site links there. If you have links coming from hotvsnot, I would assume you also have links from other paid directories? Use the MOZ backlink tool to see what all you have floating around out there, as you may need to put a few disavows in place.
-
Its still indexed on a "site:" search so it hasnt been de-indexed and it still has its PageRank so probably not a manual penalty, if it is suffering one. Google really doesn't like these kind of directories though so I'd stay away in the future - just incase.
-
I just typed cache:www.hotvsnot.com and got a blank screen. When I looked at the code, I got information about www.hotvsnot.us and a small amount of content about adult themes. Definitely something fishy going on there.
-
I always thought it was over priced for what you got
-
without a doubt its either been hit or has changed something drastically.
From the image below - its search visibility dropped to basically zero on 16/5 last year so either has been hit (which it looks like), or changed something drastically.
http://imgur.com/QwcJC9v (UK visibility)
http://imgur.com/GGeWvGj (US Visibility)
While the visibility isn't a great factor on its own, when there has been a huge drop like that I suspect its been penalised.
From looking at the list of updates I would say it possibly got hit by Penguin 2.0 http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change or could have been a manual penalty.
But I would stay clear of the website and not pay to put anymore links on their website.
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
-
Does google will see this has a 301 permanent redirect and will penalized my website?
Hi, I got a website that have a lot of information on job posting. The domain name will be new but i just want to redirect all of the old single job pages (around 300 pages). To the new domain pages but keep the old domain because it's already been indexed by google. The design will change but the content will kinda be the same. Is this a good approach? Does google will see this has a 301 permanent redirect and will penalized my website? Thanks alot
Link Building | | bigrat950 -
Can internal links cause Google to penalize me for key terms/phrases?
For example, having a link on many pages (so dozens of links in total) using a product name, all pointing to that product page. Could Google see that as "spammy" and penalize that product page in the SERP's? Note: My product page has been penalized for the search term "Product Name" and there are no external links pointing that page using the product name as a term. This is new with the latest Panda Updates.
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
What tools/techniques you use to check if a domain has been penalized?
If we think to buy expired or otherwise dropped domains, what tools or techniques you would recommend to check if there has bad SEO history? We could of course, check with Google itself if the site is indexed and ranks, but I am asking if there is a particular tool out there that would provide more information if a website had been shady. Thanks so much, guys! Lily
Link Building | | wspwsp0 -
Can a sitewide backlink with exact anchor text penalize my website?
A few years ago, I exchanged a link with another website. In the meantime, this other website grew quite fast and now they just added a forum. The backlink from their website is sitewide and is using the anchor text "best web hosting". According to Google, this backlink now appears on 117,000 pages of the same domain. Yesterday, I just got a warning from Google: "We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines..." Could that sitewide link be one of the causes? Of course I know there are tons of bad links to my site but I'm wondering if I should get this one removed. Thank you for your help and sorry for my english. Stephane
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
JoeAnt, HotVsNot - Post Penguin?
Just curious as to the Mozzers views on directories such as HotVsNot, JoeAnt post Googles Penguin update. It seems to me that these kind of directories are exactly the kind of sites that Penguin is targeting? Yet, i can't find any evidence that links from these sites have been negatively effected. Would appreciate your views on whether these are "safe" directories, just a matter of time before Google hits them, or that Google has already hit them Justin
Link Building | | JustinTaylor880 -
We were penalized for a specific key phrase due to incoming links. How long to come back?
We were penalized for a specific key phrase, I had included a link using that phrase to the targeted page in a header on another site. This resulted in hundreds of identical lincoming links using that key phrase to the page, so I'm guessing that's what did it. I've since rectified the problem but about how long do you think it will take for the penalty to be dropped? We were knocked down about 10 places.
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
So i have the pleasure of being hit by a big G penalization
I noticed a pretty drastic drop in rankings 2 weeks ago after shelling out £7500 to a UK seo company for 5 months work. I went with this company because they had showed very good results with the number one position company in an equally tough niche. So my rankings across the board dropped, i think 12 out of my 16 tracked keywords had dropped 10+ places or more. I immediately questioned what the hell they had been doing and was told that they were writing blog posts (which i knew about) to rank for category specific pages, but the linking method was using snippets of those blog posts to get links (which i did not know about) I was always told at the beginning that they have never given link reports and never will. Had i of known the links that were being built and they literally were the only type of link i would never have gone with them. Since then i have taken on an established member from the SEOmoz community and we have actioned a plan to go through all links and request removal from all bad sites. (in webmaster tools i have this message)
Link Building | | imrubbish
"Dear site owner or webmaster of imrubbish.co.uk, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.Sincerely,Google Search Quality Team" superb news! 😞 my new SEO guy is dealing with the bad links, but i do think i have content issues, my real question is how do i weed out the bad content and should i just delete them? leave them as they are and create new better posts? make them better? I must have nearly 100 blog posts and a lot of the early ones were wrote by someone whose English is definitely a second language. Would appreciate all your thoughts. Thanks guys0 -
Penalized?
In late November, our site experienced a dramatic loss in serps across several pages. Since this time, we have been trying all sorts of recommendations that included adding the +1 button, adding Facebook like button, differentiation link types and so on. At the time that all of this happened we also noticed a few problems in GWT concerning inaccessible pages, pages not found and other problems. We have come really close to fixing all of the technical problems, our pages load quickly and have even added the +1 buttons. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any improvement. Now people are saying that when our site was built, about 5-years ago, the url's had keywords stuffed into them. Admittedly, they are long but from what I have read making a series of redirects may not be an optimal solution and will take a long time to see any potential benefits. All of the listed url's in the image below have been on the first page in google for the listed search phrase. While they are still indexed, they are very difficult to find. I would like to solicit the help from people with real world experience in diagnosing a problem like this one? Is this an offsite problem, onsite problem, hosting issue or something else? Thank you Untitled-1_1329083648.gif pages_1329084893.gif
Link Building | | jenadams0