Penguin has started!!

[FWSJay]

Im still surprised that people are shocked by this from G....

4 or 5 in this thread have said 'Spammy sites are still top of the serps' this has always been the case. G go through and jumble the order of spam on page one, and all the legit site owners (who, funnily enough, are scared of G) go and buy adwords. Not the case for all niches of course, but I'd say the vast majority.

Personally anything I have in G I have twice - once as a proper site, pretty much whitehat and then a few versions of it not so great (these are the ones that rank) then drive the traffic from the crap to the money site....

Jay

 

[murph]

Personally anything I have in G I have twice - once as a proper site, pretty much whitehat and then a few versions of it not so great (these are the ones that rank) then drive the traffic from the crap to the money site....

Jay

+1 Never have all your eggs in one basket. It is really is Russian roulette with these updates... unless you have got past that illusive filter threshold for your niche (authority checkbox ticked in the big G Db?!)

 

[scooter]

Penguin spam reporter
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rhRenrd16MDSgAOwnMVx9KQbp--0JoY9vKiJdIcMe44/viewform?pli=1





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[cc976a]

No change in any of my sites YET

EDIT: I thought google wanted to combat showing loads of results from one url in the search results. Ive just searched "things to do with the kids" as the school holidays are approaching and the first page has 7 yes SEVEN results from the same site. WTF

I think the site you're talking about is the website name / brand (and quite authoritive in the niche, I should know I competed against them once upon a time!)

Maybe why looks so unnatural

 

[retired_member32]

I don't think it matters what anyone does, my own belief formed over the last few updates is that Google are moving slowly and surely to a paid-only model, where if you don't pay you don't get any traffic.

I think all of these steps are to force people to pay, since it seems to be the legitimate sites that get hit the worst (i.e those conducting commerce), to get them used to it, and that over time page 1 will have no natural results, just Googles own comparators and shopping channels, ads, Youtube, Images, and maybe be places for local searches.

It's simple - if you want to be online and earning you have to give Google a cut of your earnings, problem is they're so fecking greedy they want the lions share after you've done all of the work, put in all of the effort, and are taking all of the risks.

it's corporatism at it's worst.

you are learning quick my nobel colleague....spammy sites are the future, do you think spammy sites would use PPC....no they prefer the companies with vast advertising budgets...so obvious really

 

[Murray]

I may eat my words, hopefully something will change but..

My advice to anyone who has been hit hard by penguin, as long as you're sure it was penguin, give up on trying to regain google rankings your time would be better spent on ranking a new site.

Leave the hit site up of course If it's still making you money from bing or other areas, maybe still getting a trickling of google traffic.

The SEO forum I regularly visit had a lot of "experts" speculating on what would/wouldn't help with penguin recovery when it was originally released and they are still speculating now a year+ on and I still don't see many people claiming "recovery".

 

[dashu1]

my best performing site in terms of earnings - from 370 visitors per day normally to 30 today.

Where's the nearest bridge?

 

[julian]

the trouble is what people think is a 'good' site with 'good content' and links etc, in most cases is total shite...

in this game, mostly, we're all just publishing fodder..

Myself included, I doubt there's anyone on this forum, that has one long term, decent, true content site.. (acorndomains excluded ) what does that say?

Someone publish a link in this thread and prove me wrong...

I don't think G is that bad - I find play by the rules your generally ok?

 

[GreyWing]

my best performing site in terms of earnings - from 370 visitors per day normally to 30 today.

Where's the nearest bridge?

Do what I do and remove your sites from Google, may cost a couple of quid but you'll live 10 years longer and at the very least you can plan your life without worrying about the virtual Ronnie and Reggie demanding protection money in forcing you to buy adwords etc

 

[Murray]

Myself included, I doubt there's anyone on this forum, that has one long term, decent, true content site.. (acorndomains excluded ) what does that say?

Penguin is to do with links, panda is content.

Links = rankings.

If you just have great content and no real links you wont rank for anything that is even mildly competitive.

But to get the the right kind of links you need the right content/marketing to attract them..

I guess It's a bit chicken and egg.

 

[retired_member36]

Someone publish a link in this thread and prove me wrong...

babynames dot co dot uk
SEObook dot com

 

[julian]

babynames - a pile of names in a database, pretty static, working off an emd.

seobook - stitching up plebs for $300 pm dreaming of conquering google - where do I join

Don't get me wrong their ok, but hardly what I mean.

babynames dot co dot uk
SEObook dot com

 

[ScottJ]

I doubt there's anyone on this forum, that has one long term, decent, true content site.. Someone publish a link in this thread and prove me wrong...

I have ExtremeScience. com / PhysicalGeography .Net / NinePlanets .org and more, I'd class them as long term, good content sites with good links.

 

[cc976a]

the trouble is what people think is a 'good' site with 'good content' and links etc, in most cases is total shite...

in this game, mostly, we're all just publishing fodder..

Myself included, I doubt there's anyone on this forum, that has one long term, decent, true content site.. (acorndomains excluded ) what does that say?

Someone publish a link in this thread and prove me wrong...

I don't think G is that bad - I find play by the rules your generally ok?

Think it's more the frustration of seeing sites brazenly flaunting the rules set out by Google and update after update remain untouched.

We may not have the most amazing sites, but when you have two sites - one being as organic as possible being hit because of lack of 'quality' backlinks and the other using all the black hat tricks G is meant to penalize for up on top spot month after month - no wonder people start contemplating moving over to the dark side!

Guess people are complaining more about being hit whilst keeping clean, whereas other sites of equal or less quality riding high by using bad tactics. If people saw it was the best sites in niches at top, don't think there would be so many complaints.

If I built a site, say, bestbikes.co.uk, and couldn't get top spot because Evans Cycles was there then fine.

But if no big boys in the niche you're targeting, but 1 page no user value best-bikes-4-uk.me.uk has taken top spot for a year because they've bought tons of poor quality links, bought old unrelated sites with PR and dropped anchor text keywords in - and using every blackhat trick in the book, and a year later (update, after update) are still there........you're gonna get p*ssed off

Guess this is the frustration we're all experiencing and complaining about. Hit me for a poor site or because I've broken the rules, but don't because my backlinks are not equalling a blackhat, or someone's attacked my site with negative SEO.

Playing devils advocate we're so used to G providing us free traffic for so long, we expect - or demand it. I'd say Graeme has the right idea, eliminate G and stop worrying.

Don't think I'm there yet - but can see the appeal

 

[Murray]

For anyone really unhappy with a spam site that is still ranking after penguin 2.0

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rhRenrd16MDSgAOwnMVx9KQbp--0JoY9vKiJdIcMe44/viewform

You can file a spam report. Don't hold your breath they will look at it anytime soon though.

 

[FWSJay]

Why is it assumed that G or other site owners should be 'fair'?

Remember who sets the rules here, its a company. And the job of the guys running the company is to strive for max profits for the shareholders. This may mean they have to put out a fake set of rules to encourage PPC sales - companies have done worse things have they not?
The rules are obviously not accurate in terms of what you need to do to rank, quite clear from all your examples. So what are the rules for, if not for profit.

If you see black hat sites ranking in a niche, that niche requires you to learn the correct tactics. Same with white and gray. IMO you need to have skills in each area to be consistently successful, drop the 'rule following' and 'spam reporting' and learn whats needed for your niche(s).

The guys at the top are not there because they are following this rule trick, they are there because they deployed the tactics needed for that niche.

Its like moaning about a football team winning a match because they played better football!



Jay

 

[retired_member34]

I have ExtremeScience. com / PhysicalGeography .Net / NinePlanets .org and more, I'd class them as long term, good content sites with good links.

Scott, have any of these been affected in any way by Penguin/Panda or anything else? I sincerely hope not, but also I suspect not.

 

[max99x]

Why is it assumed that G or other site owners should be 'fair'?

Remember who sets the rules here, its a company. And the job of the guys running the company is to strive for max profits for the shareholders.

the issue is that it's basically a monopoly, so it should be reasonably fair or if not governments should step in... like they are slowly doing in some countries.

 

[ScottJ]

Scott, have any of these been affected in any way by Penguin/Panda or anything else? I sincerely hope not, but also I suspect not.

No they are fine, only thing I have been affected by in the last few years has been small sites on EMD's, the large edu sites carry on as is.

 

[GreyWing]

For anyone really unhappy with a spam site that is still ranking after penguin 2.0

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rhRenrd16MDSgAOwnMVx9KQbp--0JoY9vKiJdIcMe44/viewform

You can file a spam report. Don't hold your breath they will look at it anytime soon though.

Be quicker to file a report about a legitimate site appearing