How long does a Google penalty last if you have fixed the problem??
-
Hi
I stupidly thought that it would be a good idea to set up a reciprocal links page on my website named 'links'. I did this because my competitors were linking to these pages so I though it would be a good idea and I genuinely didn't know that you could be punished for this. Within about 3 weeks my rank dropped about 3 pages.
I have since removed the links and the page was cached last Friday but the site still appears to have a penalty. I assumed when Google cached the page and saw the links were not there anymore that the penalty would be lifted.
Anyone got any ideas?
ps. The competitor websites had broken their links pages into various categories relating to the website i.e. related directories etc. so this might be why they weren't penalized.
-
So do you say if I got penalty by Google then they must mail me about why I got penalty. If none mail comes then it's not a penalty.
-
If it is an algorithmic penalty, it will just bounce back, but it can't hurt to file the reconsideration request in the meanwhile. This can take a bit of time though as mentioned above.
We had a weird one recently where the site was seemingly filtered down to like the 6th page of results for queries it was first and second for. We found lots of other sites had stolen content from the site. We rewrote the pages in question on our site as it was easier than dealing with the content thieves, put a recon in and before we knew it, we back, stronger than ever before.
I have seen a bunch of weird variations, filters and penalties so without a link it's tough to comment further but my email is on my profile if it helps. Can never learn enough about google penalties and the like so happy to take a look my friend.
Cheers
Marcus -
The website has thousands of quality links and these are added on a weekly basis as it is in a very competitive category....Even more so in the last month since this happened.
Let's hope that it bounces back but in my opinion this feels like a penalty.
-
I doubt very much that it's an actual penalty. You may find that it bounces back up if you build a couple of good links
-
Hi Shelly
Yes I'm definitely thinking about sending a re-consideration request. I guess my main issue is why the hell don't Google tell you if you've done something wrong!
To answer you questions the site is still on Google just dropped considerably. It has a healthy page rank of 52.
-
You can fairly easily check what sort of penalty has been applied by checking the below;
-
Does your site appear on google's first page for your domain name? If no then you may have had a penalty
-
Does your site appear if you search for an exact phrase of about 5-6 words? If no then you probably have some sites linking in which have been devalued
You say that you've added a page of links; if these are spammy links then this could have a negative effect on your rankings. If google sees that you are in effect 'voting' for spammy sites it may devalue your sites status in itself (especially if your link profile isn't top notch).
I would work on creating some more, high quality links into your site and you should see the rankings restore to normal.
Google sometimes takes a few weeks to put your site back to where it belongs after something like this happens, and so you may need to wait a bit longer for it to bounce back.
If not you can always send a re-consideration request, even if your site isn't penalised; explain you made a mistake with the low quality links and you've now removed them. and they may restore value to your site
-
-
Cheers for that. I can't post the link as don't want to give out my clients details. However if you give me your email I can send it to you.
Thanks
-
If you have seen a sudden and stark drop in traffic, like a cliff in your analytics, then it is more likely to be penalty of sorts. Though, prior experience has taught me, these are not always for what you think they are for.
If you want to post a link I will try to give you a 10 minute review and see if we can spot anything else that may be causing problems.
Marcus
-
Hi thanks for replying.
Yes the website has very strong content and the backlink profile is very good. The site was ranking well for about 6 months in roughly the same position so this has came out of the blue on the only thing I've done differently was set up the links page.
It has also came to my attention that the sites I was linking to may be bad neighbourhoods.
On your point about devaluation - yes the site has 2 or 3 sites linking with sponsored links. They provide a large number of links.
-
Google doesn't directly penalize you for bad links. Even JC Penney, who was caught in a massive link buying scheme, didn't get a direct penalty. They experienced what it sounds like you're experiencing: link devaluation. Keep in mind, however, that reciprocal links aren't worth a lot to begin with so I'm hesitant to pin all your drop on that.
Have you looked at your Linkscape profile for your site or looked at Open Site Explorer to see how your backlink profile looks?
Does your site have strong content?
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
-
Different snippet in Google for same page
Hello, I have a question regarding the snippet of a specific case: When i search the homepage by searching the business name, i find the correct snippet of the homepage (with the meta description that was entered). If i search it via site:www. it still show the default meta description. Has anybody had experience with this? Is there a way to change the snippet of site:www.? Does it influence SEO? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Google + and Schema
I've noticed with a few of the restaurant clients I work with that Schema isn't contributing at all to their SERP -- their Google + page is. Is there any way to have more control over what Google is pulling to help make UX better? I.e. showing photos of the restaurant without a logo, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anti-Alex0 -
Apps content Google indexation ?
I read some months back that Google was indexing the apps content to display it into its SERP. Does anyone got any update on this recently ? I'll be very interesting to know more on it 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoomGeek0 -
Google Penalty or Not?
One of my sites I work with got this message: http://www.mysite: Unnatural inbound linksJune 27, 2013 Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to mysite.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site. But, when I got to manual actions it says: Manual Actions No manual webspam actions found. -- So which is it??? I have been doing link removal, but now I am confused if I need to do a reconsideration request or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Long tail rankings
Hi everybody. We've been working with http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/ for some time now. Rankings for broad terms such as 'lawn mowers' and 'lawnmowers' are superb, and we're pretty happy. Bizarrely though, rankings for products are very poor. For example this page - http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/product/honda-hrg465sd - is currently 17th for 'Honda HRG465SD IZY'. We've done lots of work onsite, clearing up duplicate content, improving copy and tidying up URLs. However, none of this seems to have had a major impact on the product pages. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Dropped Out of Google and Bing
I am helping with a site that at one time I had on page 1 for Google/Bing. Site started to slip in rankings, then someone else did a makeover of the store and botched things by renaming pages, having errors in pages (multiple head/body), mismatch page names from sitemap, etc. Site slipped to page 4/5. I righted things, fixed duplication using canonicalization, made some other changes. Now site is gone completely from Google/Bing for desired keyword. No penalties. Site still shows if do search on domain name. Site is www.plussizeplum.com (plus size lingerie, sorry), keyword target is plus size lingerie. Anyone have any clues, tips, etc on why we fell off the face of the earth? Page Authority/Domain Authority are both comparable to most of the page 1/2 sites for same thing. Thanks for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dlcohen0 -
Google Experiment
Hi there, are there any implications for organic seo for implementing google experiment. Where you send users to a new page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Pagination for Ecommerce Site - How do I fix this?
Hi Everyone... I'm having issues on how I should fix the pagination on my ecommerce site http://www.moondoggieinc.com Right now I have rel="canonical" putting them all back to the main page like on: http://www.moondoggieinc.com/dog-harness.php but there are also some shop all categories like: http://www.moondoggieinc.com/products.php?cat=all+dog+harnesses But I wish I could get it so that the content only showed on the first page of them all and then just the products showed in the pagination after that. I have no clue how to make this happen successfully. I know this is a big problem with the structure to the site, creating some duplicate content and such, and I was wondering how I can even begin to go ahead and start tackling this. My background is as a designer so I'm just learning both seo, and anyhting past html / css, so I could really use any help you guys can offer. THANK YOU! KristyO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO0