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If you're traffic started dropping last October, its most likely that you have a Penguin issue. After looking at some of your links, this is most likely the case. A quick look at your link profile shows that your top anchor text is "vuly trampolines australia", which doesn't seem like a natural way that people would link to you, especially when links show up on pages like this: http://www.linksjuice.com/7/Sports

I would recommend that you compile a list of your inbound links, and work to identify and manually remove any links which you paid to have placed or were part of an exchange. Document what you are doing and then upload a disavow file in webmaster tools and make a reconsideration request. Then focus on building some great content and EARNING real links.

From what I've read, it will take some time for the site to recover, but this is the correct way to address the problem. Good luck.

Thanks Carson. I would tend to agree were it not for the fact that Tripadvisor is so adept at SEO. Not sure how to rationalize this behavior alongside their reputation. Assumed that I was missing something...

Thanks Oleg! I too don't see it as a bad thing, but all that really matters of course is how G sees it.

Do you know of any other examples in which badges are used in this manner?

Thanks Irving! Are you implying that a small number of badges (ie. <10) with the same anchor text won't hurt them? In almost all cases, the anchor text will be long tail and not be overdone.

I took a look at Vitals and how you generate badges using the doctors name as anchor text. This is also very long tail. Do you see this as analogous to how Flipkey is using badges?

I have been looking at a strategy used by a division of Tripadvisor called Flipkey. They specialize in vacation home rentals and have been zooming up in the rankings over the past few months. One of the main off-page tactics that they have been using is providing a badge to property managers to display on their site which links back.

The issue I have is that it seem to me that they are hiding a link which has keyword specific anchor text by using javascript. The site I'm looking at offers vacation rentals in Tamarindo (Costa Rica). http://www.mariasabatorentals.com/

Scroll down and you'll see a Reviews badge which shows reviews and a link back to the managers profile on Flipkey.

**However, **when you look at the source code for the badge, this is what I see:

Find Tamarindo Vacation Rentals on FlipKey

Notice that there is a link for "tamarindo vacation rentals" in the code which only appears when JS is turned off in the browser.

I am relatively new to SEO so to me this looks like a black hat tactic. But because this is Tripadvisor, I have to think that that I am wrong. Is this tactic allowed by Google since the anchor text is highly relevant to the content? And can they justify this on the basis that they are servicing users with JS turned off?

I would love to hear from folks in the Moz community on this. Certainly I don't want to implement a similar strategy only to find out later that Google will view it as cloaking. Sure seems to be driving results for Flipkey!

Thanks all. For the record, the Moz community is awesome. (Can't wait to start contributing once I actually know what I'm doing!)

Hi Ressler - Thanks for the great anwer here. I see that you are in the auto industry and have a question for you. I'm new at SEO and have been analyzing some sites in the travel space.  In doing so, I came across an auto site recently founded by some ex-Tripadvisor guys which is called carguru.com, which is getting ranked for lots of terms. Any clue has to how they've done this in such a competitive space like auto?? I wanted to understand their tactics and see if they could be applied to the travel space.

Thanks for your time. The Moz community is awesome.

Just wondering how you are making out with this. I checked Google US and didn't see you rank in the top 50. Curious to hear an update. Hope its going well.