Comments on: Did google penalise me ?

By: John

John — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:41:59 +0000

Thank you very much for sharing this experience.
So basically,you admitted(on behalf of your client) that they gained backlinks unaturally and quickly?
I wonder why would google accept that even with a promise not to do it again. Also,it sounds a time-frame penalty was imposed with the links being devalued anyways.

By: Tad Crawford

Tad Crawford — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:00:53 +0000

Google has many penalties. Google considers about hundrerds of factors to ban a site. You should get more details by involving here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

By: Merry Christmas | Search Engine Optimisation BlackDog

Merry Christmas | Search Engine Optimisation BlackDog — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 09:21:06 +0000

[...] quick post to say thanks to my few clients who trusted me to get their website back in the index or to tweak their pages to get a few more visitors to their pages. Thanks to those who have [...]

By: An example of bad SEO | Search Engine Optimisation BlackDog

An example of bad SEO | Search Engine Optimisation BlackDog — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:34:22 +0000

[...] the weekend I came across some obviously bad SEO, which even has the potential to get the client a google penalty. This site clearly has had someone do some onpage SEO because nested in the footer, you can see the [...]

By: Google Re-Inclusion Experiences - Irish SEO, Marketing & Webmaster Discussion

Tue, 05 May 2009 18:07:35 +0000

[...] filled a few reinclusion requests. In fact I did a blog post 2 weeks ago about one An example of a Google Penalty | Search Engine Optimisation BlackDog __________________ my sites :irish poker / irish jobs / seo faq / advertise jobs free / green [...]

By: Paul Savage

Paul Savage — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:46:10 +0000

Hi Michael ,

I don’t think if there was a push by us or not would be a factor.

For the reinclusion, I outlined exactly what had happened and what might be the reason why we were no longer in the index.

Paul

Glad you like the theme, I wanted something a little bit wider, and easier to read.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:15:26 +0000

Did you push for the media attention?
What was your pitch to Google? (if you don’t mind me being nosy!)

BTW big improvement on the site. Nice clear layout.

Cheers,
Michael.

By: Paul Savage

Paul Savage — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:44:27 +0000

Hi Michael thanks for popping by.

It’s hard to gauge the exact number of new links, but it was close to 200 (domains) over 2 days. There were some good links, but there was at least one spam blog syndicating network, which copied the authoritative articles and had bad quality links, as far as I could see.

The clients site hadn’t been changed since it was launched, roughly a year. The site looked generally okay.

Paul

By: Michael Wall

Michael Wall — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:11:10 +0000

Hi Paul,

Interesting post.

When you say ‘I think it was the gaining of a significant number of links over a short period of time that triggered something’
What sort of numbers are you talking about and what timescale?
What type of sites and quality sites where the links on?
Was there anything on-site that could have triggered this?
This also raises a few issues, such as whether you could affect a competitor’s rankings if this was caused by offsite factors?

By: SEO-Monats-Schmankerl April | SEOwoman

SEO-Monats-Schmankerl April | SEOwoman — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:38:59 +0000

[...] “An Example of Google Penalty” von Blackdog. [...]

By: smemon

smemon — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:51:42 +0000

This is the frustrating thing about google and it’s a big concern – you can never get human to human contact. It’s extremely rare google will engage in discussion or disclose the reasons why they took the measures they took.

It’s like a one strike and you’re out policy – no warnings, no mentions of second chances… if a site is adding value to the internet (creating information), it surely deserves more respect from google and at least should get a warning or a second chance.

You’ve got it in this case (although they haven’t told you)… but imagine the number of people who are in a similar situation but don’t know what to do – google don’t exactly make it easy to contact them…

By: Paul Savage

Paul Savage — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:17:20 +0000

Yes Franz, there was a spike on the bounce rate also over the 3 days, more like 25% .

By: Franz Enzenhofer

Franz Enzenhofer — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:07:07 +0000

nice example, thx. looks like a straightforward example of a penalty. one question, what was the bounce rate on the spike day? significant different? (i.e.: + 20%)?

br
franzseo

By: Paul Savage

Paul Savage — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:58:01 +0000

Hi Paul, thanks for stopping by.

Domain is about 2 years old, but in the last year it has started to be pushed by the client. I don’t think the sector was the problem here, it wasn’t mortgage sales, credit card sales or medical related, for example. If it was in that market I would wonder about what you said alright.

I think it was the gaining of a significant number of links over a short period of time that triggered something. Plus I also don’t think it was that serious, because it was reversed so quickly. The site didn’t have paid links on it, or bought, but the number of links before the news coverage was minimal.

Paul

By: Paul Anthony

Paul Anthony — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:45:44 +0000

Hi Paul,

Nice post, would be interested to hear if this was on an old domain or a relatively new one. I’m pretty sure certain sites (within certain sectors) commonly receive influxes of incoming links when they launch a new bit of linkbait say – and / or that the site in question potentially was not that trusted by Google at time of the incoming links. Either that or this was not a common occurance within the sector that site operates.

If the link graph within the web for other similar sites differs vastly, could maybe have set a trigger?

Just like to know (if you can disclose)? the sector / age of domain?

Paul.