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I know I was penalized because search console recorded an overnight drop in impressions/clicks of 75%. Never was a problem before. I didn't need to run Screaming Frog or anything to find links that explain the problem. I just browsed some of the user generated content and then once I realized that Google was crawling javascript generated links it all made sense.

Some of the sites people were liking to included: CheaterLand.com, PredatorsWatch.com, DirtyHomeWreckers.com, EscortBabylon.net, SugarDaddyforMe.com, GFEMonkey.com, EscortBabylon.com, CityXGuide.com, and AdultLook.com.

I think as long as Google respects the robots.txt directives I should be just fine. The redirect page itself is blocked by robots.txt so even if Google finds one of those URLs (ex: https://cyberbullyingreport.com/redirect/?url=https://moz.com/community/q/changing-links-to-spans-with-robots-txt-blocked-redirects-using-linkify-jquery) it shouldn't even follow the 302 since the robots.txt file (https://cyberbullyingreport.com/robots.txt) disallows that directory.

Hi,

I was recently penalized most likely because Google started following javascript links to bad neighborhoods that were not no-followed. The first thing I did was remove the Linkify plugin from my site so that all those links would disappear, but now I think I have a solution that works with Linkify without creating crawlable links. I did the following:

1. I blocked access to the Linkify scripts using robots.txt so that Google won't execute the scripts that create the links. This has worked for me in the past with banner ads linking to other sites of mine. At least it appears to work because those sites did not get links from pages running those banners in search console.

2. I created a /redirect/ directory that redirects all offsite URLs. I put a robots.txt block on this directory.

3. I configured the Linkify plugin to parse URLs into span elements instead of a elements and add no follow attributes. They still have an href attribute, but the URLs in the href now point to the redirect directory and the span onclick event redirects the user.

I have implemented this solution on another site of mine and I am hoping this will make it impossible for Google to categorize my pages as liking to any neighborhoods good or bad. Most of the content is UGC, so this should discourage link spam while giving users clickable URLs and still letting people post complaints about people that have profiles on adult websites. Here is a page where the solution has been implemented https://cyberbullyingreport.com/bully/predators-watch-owner-scott-breitenstein-of-dayton-ohio-5463.aspx, the Linkify plugin can be found at https://soapbox.github.io/linkifyjs/, and the custom  jQuery is as follows:

jQuery(document).ready(function ($) {
    2
    $('p').linkify({
        tagName: 'span',
        attributes: {
            rel: 'nofollow'
        },
        formatHref: function (href) {
            href = 'https://cyberbullyingreport.com/redirect/?url=' + href;
            return href;
        },
        events:{
            click: function (e) {
                var href = $(this).attr('href');
                window.location.href = href;
            }
        }
    });
    3
});

This is a sample of how the ad code is rendered by the javascript from the ad network. My concern is that Google might consider these do follow links.

New Comfy Mattresses Might Shock You - Find Offers Online www.optiads.org

Warning Signs Of Scalp Psoriasis You Might Not Have Known About www.optiads.org

The Game That Will Keep You Up All Night! www.optiads.org

New Comfy Mattresses Might Shock You - Find Offers Online www.optiads.org

While trying to diagnose a recent Google penalty I found out that links were being parsed by Google even though they were made using jQuery. I had the linkify plugin on my site and configured it to convert URLs to links on all of my pages. Today I found links to other sites of mine from sites that should not have been linking to them and found that the links came from pages whose links were generated via jQuery.

This makes me wonder, how do I know if Google is counting javascript generated links? Is it possible that my native ad widgets are creating links that Google might count?

Since I don't own any of the sites that advertise via the widgets I don't know how to tell if they are getting link juice or not. It used to be that Google didn't parse javascript, so you could add as many links to your site via javascript as you wanted without being seen by Google as linking to those sites.

Does anyone know of a jQuery plugin that does turn URLs into clickable links that Google won't parse as real links?

I think I found the problem. Google was parsing javascript generated links as actual links even though they were not supposed to be added to the page until after the DOM loaded. As a result all user generated URLs to other sites became links. I have since removed the linkify plugin form the site and am hoping that will fix it.

I opened a thread on the Google forum but only got one response and it seemed to miss the mark.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/40089994

Silly for sure. To think that Google would demote a brand that has been around for over a decade like that.

I recently solved a problem where about 85 URLs were falsely flagged as Soft 404s. The solution can be found here https://moz.com/community/q/false-soft-404s-shadow-bans-and-old-user-generated-content.

In my case I just had to change the URLs of the pages. If you try to get Google to validate a fix and your URL still shows up as a soft 404, you might want to just change the URL, submit a sitemap with the new URL in it, and 301 the old one.

I solved most of the Soft 404s. I just had to change the URLs, submit a sitemap with the new URLs, and redirect the old URLs to the new ones. This impacted 85 URLs and as of now 60 are back in Google while the others are listed as discovered, but currently not indexed.

I also added this HTML sitemap just for those URLs so that they are not orphaned.

I am still puzzled by the initial Soft 404 status' however. The new URLs differ only in URL and everything else is the same.

Wow, what great advice. I checked your list of known Google Updates and found nothing since January. So far everything I have looked at online don't mention any significant updates from April 9-10 of this year. Still scratching my head here.

On April 10th my organic search clicks dropped 75% overnight. I have never seen anything like it. What Google algorithm change could have caused this?

I have no manual actions and my indexed page count is about the same. I have noticed that several queries that I was number one for including my brand have dropped by anywhere from two to ten spots. The brand dropping out of the first spot is what really gets me. There is nothing similar to it at all. My speed score is moderate, so I don't think that is it. My site was down most of the day on the 9th or 10th, but that has never caused a drop in search clicks and the next day they were about the same.

I noticed that the CDC now occupies the number one spot for my brand. Even though the exact brand name is nowhere in the text of the CDC page. I think this might be due to Google trying to help official health organizations do better due to COVID19, but the queries I have dropped on have nothing to do with Coronavirus.

Also, none of my other sites have seen this type of problem. Only the health site seems affected. I recently did a press release campaign and my link counts are up, so I don't that is it either.

The brand page is https://stdcarriers.com and an example of an effected query is Celebrities with STDs.

What are the best ways to keep old user generated content (UGC) pages from being falsely flagged by Google as soft 404s? I have tried HTML site maps to make sure no page is an orphaned but that has not solved the problem.

Could crawled currently not indexed by explained by a shadow ban from Google? I have had problems with Google removing pages from SERPs without telling me about it.

It looks like a lot of content is not ranking due to its age. How can one go about refreshing UGC without changing the work of the user?