Penguin recovery - Any suggestions?
-
Hey Guys.
To be honest i havent heard about any case of penguin recovery yet except from the famous WMPU revocery (if u ask me it dosent count really)
Any way I own a few sites.. that got hit by Penguin. I did remove 90% of the "suspected as bad links" and apply to google reconsideration. in return i got an answer after a few days from google saying :"We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.... and so on"
So what they saying is that the engine still think that your links are spammy..
what should i do?? i truy removed most of the links but homepage isnt really showing any progress.. he is just no where..
Idaes? Case Studies?
-
I had a site hit by penguin and since recovered it. Once the links that were causing the problem were removed it took about a week to come back. I will have to look at the dates... I think my site was fine on the 1st up date then got hit on the refresh. Not sure why it came back without another refresh.... Maybe that is not how it works. I will see if I still have the data in GA. I have since sold the site.
**I found the GA. An image is attached. I did not receive any type of message in webmaster tools.
-
Let's wait then.
Thanks All!
-
So far there has only been one refresh of Penguin and that was on May 25, just one month after the initial Penguin rollout. At that point most people had no clue what Penguin was about. Since then, from looking at sites that have been hit we can now see that backlink anchor text abuse is a huge factor. But, we haven't seen any case studies because there has not been another refresh yet.
-
PArticularly if its the homepage, you really need to check the backlinks and the anchor thresholds. Although there may be no case studies, we have successfully recovered from both Penguin related drops and unnatural link penalties. The homepage is usually the target because the home page usually has the most (spammy) links.
-
Hey And thanks for the quick replays..
well Im sure its a penguin hit since the date of the drop, and to be honest i deserve it
Well i will wait patiently to the 1.2 update.. i hope thats the case.
Dont you think its weird that there are no case studies ?
-
Marie is exactly correct - the unnatural links penalty and Penguin are two separate entities.
The best way to combat a penguin related traffic drop is to use your SEOMoz tools to mine your backlinks and then sort by anchor. Traditionally link builders would buy a majority of their links with the same anchor text (or close variations). Website that have a majority of their links as an anchor can get hit by Penguin (there are some instances where this isnt the case when brand and exact anchor domains are concerned, but generally this is the case).
If your links were natural, Google would see links of all types in your profile including "click here" and "www.url.com" etc. You should try and decrease your keyword link anchor threshold to below 30% by either getting rid of spammy keyword anchor links, or building more generic anchor ones.
-
The problem here is that you are confusing Penguin and Unnatural Links Warnings. The Unnatural Links warnings are manual. (Many believe that they originate from someone filing a spam report on your site.) When you have a manual warning you can clean things up and then file a reconsideration request.
However, Penguin is algorithmic, not manual, so a reconsideration request will not help at all. The general belief is that once we get another Penguin refresh, if you have cleaned up your site enough then you can recover.
One problem, however, is that in removing 90% of a site's links, you could also be removing a lot of link equity. So, you may not end up ranking well even after a refresh. Of course, if you have good, natural links on top of the poor ones then you should be able to recover.
Hopefully a refresh will happen soon...we've been waiting long enough!
-
When you say you got hit would you mind confirming if you received an actual error message in your Google Webmaster Tools account informing you that they had detected unnatural links and you had to request a reconsideration?
The only reason I ask is I was just wondering if it's possible that Google aren't penalising you in the strictest sense of the word but rather have just devalued a number of links pointing to you. This isn’t a penalty as such but could result in a drop in your rankings due to Google no longer paying attention to the trashy links that it used to like. In this situation requesting a reconsideration wouldn't achieve anything.
I’m only an ‘aspirant’ so take anything I say with a pinch of salt – This is just my two cents.
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
-
Penguin 2.0 Recovery - Penguin Update Rerun yet or not
I have been hit by the penguin 2.0 update some five months back. I believe that I have an algorythmic penalty applied to my sites. While the work to cleanup etc has been done, there is certainly no recovery. I also notice a lack of recovery stories. In fact I think anyone affected cannot recover because a recalculation has not happened? Does anyone think that a recalculation of the penguin 2.0 penalties has happened? If so why do they think that.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jurnii0 -
Is my domain scorched earth from Penguin?
http://pisoftware.com was never a huge leader of traffic, but it ranked top 5 for my money keyphrases, and was bringing consistent quality visitors. As traction went up, that traffic just became more valuable. I was happy. Then Penguin came along, and made me sad. 60% loss in traffic, I stayed calm. I disavowed. I sent emails asking for links to come down. I atoned for my sins (of the distant, distant past - I know better now) - and waited. Never a hard penalty, never an email from Google - just rankings that got hammered. From #3 for my best keyphrase for #25 today. I write content, and I try and write it better all the time. I try to make it valuable. I leverage social media to the extent that I can. I do outreach. I'm trying to be patient, but it's hard when the software is awesome, and so few people see it. I'm considering starting over - or maybe even just creating another domain to use if this one never comes back. I wonder on the thoughts of experts. At MozCon I talked to a lot of people in the same boat, and it seems we are all taking similar steps. So the questions: 1. Should I start over? Or stay the course? 2. What has worked for others - what seems to have been the most valuable in getting back on the rise? 3. Thoughts on the site as it is now? I've worked lately on speed, mobile rendering, etc - and it seems responsive and solid to me. Thanks in advance, you crazy bunch of Mozzers you. Kelly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kellster0 -
Was anyone hit by BOTH the 'Phantom' update as well as Penguin 2.0?
I'm interested to know if Phantom was just a "pre-Penguin" 2.0 or if it was a completely different update. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
301 redirections done too late - What do you suggest?
Hi, When pushing our new site live, most of the 301 redirections got done too late for several reasons. Understandably, our site rankings in google have taken a hit now. So far we have just tried to perfectly optimize the pages that used to rank well (They weren't even optimized before and were still ranking) , to get our positions back. But does anyone have an idea about what else we could do? Is there a recommended "action plan" when someone is late with their 301 redirections?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Ecombuffet.com are offering a Rescue Review focused on Panda - Penguin and identifying issues. Has anyone used this service or aware of the organisation in general?
http://www.ecombuffet.com/rescue-review.htm . I have 2 sites that have definitely been hit by penguin and getting worse so am thinking of paying for this service as nothing I do seems to stop the slide (more like a plummet). Any comments welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shaann1 -
Panda Recovery - What is the best way to shrink your index and make Google aware?
We have been hit significantly with Panda and assume that our large index with some pages holding thin/duplicate content being the reason. We have reduced our index size by 95% and have done significant content development on the remaining 5% pages. For the old, removed pages, we have installed 410 responses (Page does not exist any longer) and made sure that they are removed from the sitempa submitted to Google; however after over a month we still see Google spider returning to the same pages and the webmaster tools shows no indicator that Google is shrinking our index size. Are there more effective and automated ways to make Google aware of a smaller index size in hope of Panda recovery? Potentially using the robots.txt file, GWT URL removal tool etc? Thanks /sp80
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sp800 -
Reading suggestions for a local french small biz website?
Greetings Mozians! I'm working on this small biz french website in north east canada. It's very small and the domain is new, we have no backlinks, so it's hard to rank for keywords. We do have a specific target with few expressions in mind. It's not really competitive but we don't rank really well. Do you have any articles or document that you would suggest me reading? Thanks a lot everyone. Here's the site : http://www.copiescourrierplanslg.com/accueil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Akeif0 -
Panda/Penguin & Ecommerce Sites in similar niches
Hello, We have a few online stores that are in similar niches. How do we make sure that we don't get penalized for this (Panda/Penguin) We have the sites interlinked, but our newest one is not going to be linked to the others. Also, will rewriting descriptions help if the product is on more than one site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0