Why does my site get sandboxed but this one doesn't?
-
I'm currently working on an entire website redesign and restructuring. My current website is extremely spammy. I really worked on it before I knew much about SEO. Now that I have a better foundation I have been remaking my site to get rid of duplicate content and to have a much better UX. With this said, I still depend on the current site to bring in my income while I'm working on getting my new site up.
Google seems to constantly kick me out for about a month at a time and then let me back in. The few other times I thought it was because the new site I have been working on is on a different domain and was exactly the same for a while (I don't want google to find this new domain it's just for testing purposes). So I removed the new domain from google and in a couple weeks my main site was back in. Problem is yesterday google hit me again. I'm out of google for all my search terms. Before I was ranking on the first page for just about every "keyword + city" phrase I was trying to rank for.
I can find plenty of reasons why google would give me problems with my current site. For example I have TONS of duplicate pages with just the keyword/city changed. Pretty spammy. I did buy about 5 links a year ago or so but they are pretty nothing sites.
My question is if google's going to ban me why don't they just do it? They keep taking me out and putting me back in. No messages in webmaster tools. My domain is below:
Also when I just started out I got the idea of "keyword + city" from a competitor that ranks for EVERYTHING which is also found below:
All of the links I bought were the same links the above site bought. I tried buying a link from classical.net which has a high page rank and links to musikalessons.com on each page of their site. As soon as google found the links, I was kicked out. I had them remove it. My question is musika has basically the same "spammyness" as me just on a much larger scale and yet they never seem to be kicked out of google and still rank high.
I've thought about reporting musika, but I'm afraid Google will ban me as well because my site is just as bad. Again I'm working all day on fixing my site and doing a 180, it's just taking a long time and I can't launch quite yet. I live off the income from my current site though, so it's very disheartening when this happens.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
-
Hi Brian,
As you stated, your site has numerous issues so it is expected that Google is not ranking your site well. There are various factors which can affect the bounce in SERPs you described. Your site can be incurring a manual penalty which causes your site to lose it's rankings. Later, the manual penalty expires causing the site rankings to return, and then the manual penalty is re-applied causing you to lose rankings again. That is one possibility.
Another possibility relates to your site's indexing. If Google finds a duplicate site as you described, they may rank the other site instead of your site. As Google indexes your site over a crawl cycle (roughly 30 days) they could locate issues which affect your rankings. Without a detailed review of your WMT and Analytics data, it is impossible to really nail down the exact cause. You know there are numerous issues with the site and you have correctly identified the need to fix these issues.
Some penalties such as Panda are applied only on specific intervals which may add to what appears to be random changes.
Regarding your competitor's site, there are numerous possibilities there as well. Your competitor's site is more credible. For example, they have a A+ rating from the BBB. This factor along with others may lend credibility to that site evading the issue impacting your website. There are just too many possibilities to offer a definitive answer and we are left to guess.
I hope this information is helpful.
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
-
Which is the best tool to check number of css, js, images and it's size?
Hello Team, Can you please suggest which is the best tool to check number of css, js, images and it's size of my competitors? Also what if they are using CDN network and bundling? Will that tool consider that also? Thanks! Wrights
Competitive Research | | wright3350 -
Confused about sites ranking when compared to each other
I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1. When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2. What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page? Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
Why my site is not crawled by open site explorer?
Hello friends, Im new here... I just create a campaign for my site www.electrosecurity.com.ec , but when I try to use open site explorer to see anything there... I receive a message saying that my site is not crawled... What can I do? I have a few links coming to my site.. but these links does not appears on my campaigns details.. for these links my site is PR3, but i can not see any of this links on the general view of my campaign. Sorry for my english....
Competitive Research | | lans27870 -
Local Real Estate Site vs Larger National Sites
Hello all, I am a local realtor that created my website with an idx feed. I am on page one but at the bottom. Question is how can a local real estate website rank better in the SERPS than the larger national brands? Any tips out there from those who have worked with real estate websites and seo? I'm trying to out rank the larger sites for my main keywords. Thanks all.
Competitive Research | | bronxpad0 -
Tools to search google for sites?
Hi, I am sure I read it on here. But is there a link to a resource whereby I can search Google for sites that accept things like guest bloggers, offer do follow links, do not no follow comments etc... It used things like "search term" blogs, eg "guest bloggers" websute Anyone help me out? Cheers Will
Competitive Research | | YNWA0 -
Wondering why my site ranks well for one page and not another.
Customers mainly find our site from searching very specific part numbers on google. My site is launch3telecom.com. Take for example these two parts:
Competitive Research | | launch3
MT500A-81015 MR050-81045 Search only those parts in google - we rank 3rd for one of them and don't rank at all for another. Is there any way to check backlinks pointing to those pages? We even show up before big sites like ebay and such on one of them. Can anyone help me understand this?0 -
Keyword based link problem on site
So I think I might have identified an issue with a site that I'm trying to get ranked for a specific keyword but, wanted to get some opinions before I started making some big changes on the site. On my homepage I have the keyword that I would like to be ranked for in the title lets say "Blue Widgets - Company Name', also on the home page I have some descriptions of our services including the keywords. I also have a couple of the keyword based links within in the content, navigation and footer. But these keyword based links all point to another page on the site: blue-widgets.htm. If I really want my home page to rank for the keyword "Blue Widgets' should all of these links point to the home page instead of the sub page? I know there are a great number of other factors that contribute to rankings but looking at my competition, this is something that they seem to be doing. The keyword based links within the content, navigation or footer all point to the homepage. I also have a higher Domain Authority than some of the sites that rank higher than me so I'm not sure if building more links is the answer. Of course I always want to build natural links but these sites don't seem to be doing that either. Any comments, suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
Can anyone suggest how they're #1
Hi, I'm really struggling to see how these guys are number one on google (from the UK) when searching for "picture framers york" Their SEOMOZ on page grading for the term is an F, so on site SEO is minimal if any. Their backlinks are almost nonexistant, take a look at the competition report (attached) through market samurai. Everything I thought I understand about SEO is currently being turned on its head because with the information available, they shouldn't be there. I thought maybe its the proximity to 'York' center, but they aren't that close to be honest. So any advice greatly appreciated as to why they are #1 so I know what it is I can do as an SEO. Thanks, Dave samurai.png
Competitive Research | | davebrown19750