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Rushmark

Sarah, I hope you're going to take credit for spotting this first

it's official ...

https://moz.com/blog/four-ads-on-top-the-wait-is-over

Rushmark

Don't you just love Google! I've just been messing about with it and you're right.

Same search term logged into one account and no sidebar, logout and it's back. Then sign back in with a different G account and it's still there.

Then do the same routine using a VPN from a different location and the sidebar is consistently there.

Glad it's not my job to make sense of all this

Rushmark

Worth pointing out that if you log out of G then the sidebar reappears.

Rushmark

I've seen this a few times, but mostly when I've been doing multiple quick searches around the same or similar keyword combinations (i.e. working on a client's campaign). I'd put it down to either testing or Adwords restricting the display where it looks like it's not a "genuine" search pattern.

Does not look like it's widespread or permanent. But who knows!

Rushmark

There have been two videos by Matt Cutts about this sort of thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z13-yP3Zhns

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtbNpeYP_OM

whilst they don't describe the exact scenario that you're talking about, they probably answer the generic question about how Search Engines are likely to view news feeds.

Rushmark

Doesn't really help but have seen the same thing, with the same notice but no way of knowing when the penalty was applied.

Other than drops in traffic, it seems there is no way to know whether the site is only affected by the manual penalty, or by both manual and algorithmic. (at least the manual action opens the door to a reconsideration request and therefore some feedback)

Rushmark

Hi,

Sorry if you've already checked, but there is some really clear guidance on Webmaster Tools Help here

Only reason I mention it as dealt with similar question about six months ago, and it answered all my questions.

Rushmark

Are you sure that it's a duplicate content issue? There's some useful insight here:

http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-you-unless-it-is-spammy-167459

If you've been "link building" are you sure that it isn't a Penguin issue.

Alternatively, if the content is duplicate is may not be a penalty as such, might just be the case that Google is not indexing/returning the pages as it does not see any value to them?

Seen plenty of websites hit by Penguin (algorithm) with no warning or notice in WMT (manual ?).

Would agree with Michael that a 301 will almost certainly carry forward any penalty/bad reputation issues.

Chris.

Rushmark

Hi,

The two most popular cacheing plugins for WordPress are probably:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/

and the w3total cache one you mention.

Although they both have the same aim, the way they go about it is quite different. Depending on your technical knowledge you may find Super Cache easier to set up and manage than w3total.

For what it's worth I doubt you'll find a plugin that is better than these two, but you may benefit from experimenting with both to see which suits your host better.

I'd suggest that if either plugin working on a standalone basis is not making a difference, then you may have issues with your host that need addressing.

Rushmark

Hi,

As everyone above has said it's almost certain that you've been hit by Penguin 2.1

Without wishing to repeat the advice above, this post has just about everything you need to know about what has happened and what to do next.

Good Luck.

http://moz.com/ugc/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal

Chris

Rushmark