Penguin update synopsis

[JMOT]

its very hard to tell right now if it is "dirty links" or anchor text distribution.

I'm not convinced at the spun junk links being dead theory.

Still plenty of sites ranking on them right now. In fact a few sites who i've seen on some dirty dirty public networks are still sat there no1.

Methinks methunks this is an external links anchor distribution issue eg Over optimisation.

I'm going to blast a load of fresh links into a site and water the hell out of it and see what happens.

 

[dougs]

front thread updated again 1-5-2012

More news

Doug

 

[rob]

More news

Doug

Summary: dont do shit linkbuilding.

 

[dougs]

yes

Issue is Rob what is shit????? Pre April 24 those links were good.

Google are now playing with dirty link ratios and hence you can take a competitor out by just messing with their profile.....that is a serious issue. It changes the rules from no longer the best winning, to the best dirty person winning.....thats a serious ethics switch. One is building something, one is destroying something.

I am seeing lots and lots of sites and pages dead and when I look at the back links they look ok to me.

So many people have gotten a dodgy link here or there and almost every seo agency/company has at some point gotten dirty links.

It feels like the web has started again. I am seeing loads of terms where the place was jammed with big established brands and now they are all gone to be replaced with some crappy site.

The money to be made now is finding the places that the established players have been all killed and taking those spots

Doug

 

[dashu1]

Surely if you have a page that's been hit, the last thing you want to do is 301 it to another page.

If you do that then you'll just be sending the penalty to the next page, and if they are trying to tackle dodgy linking practices, like building loads of links to a page on site A, and then redirecting that page to a page on site B, then you might end up doing more damage rather than helping yourself.

It all depends on how they're defining bad links, and what exactly they're targeting.

I think the better solution would be to simply change the name of the page as you suggested, and leave it at that - then build a few links to that new page.

All the old links point to a non existant page - maybe 301 them instead to Matt Cutts website and see what hapens.

 

[retired_member36]

Ive made some changes to a site that jumped right down to page 28 and woke up this morning to find it sitting on page 12.

The changes i made:
1. Changed Page titles
2. Removed afiliate window ads (replaced with adsense)
3. added a little more content.

I am going to let it settle a little more before i make changes to the internal link structure.

Also going to have a look at alt tags, as ive noticed a fair few sites that are ranking well are not using their main keywords in any alt tags, where as i did. im wondering if this also applies to images names made up of keywords, just checked one good ranking site this morning and their logo is logo.jpg where as mine is keyword-logo.jpg

Just thought id share my experience so far, ill keep you posted on any gains or tanks as i go along.

 

[crazihos]

its a page penalty

I'm not even sure its a page penalty mate - I think its a possibly a keyword penalty based on anchor text.

One of the main sites im tracking has pages that still rank as before for long tail but the same page has died for the phrase which has been over targeted with anchors.

So the whole page hasnt died - just what I over targeted.

 

[dougs]

keyword penalty based on anchor text - yes

we are seeing similar....updated my original post again



Doug

 

[julian]

Looks like c-rentals/co.uk took a bit of a bashing Doug?

we are seeing similar....updated my original post again



Doug

 

[dougs]

hit us

Yes Julian did a bit..lots of things we had never seen ranking are now pulling traffic....strangely though our sales did not drop too hard. Looks like we built a brand

Good we diversified away from Google a long time ago Plus built more business's

Doug

 

[chippyb]

I cant see it being anchor text as a site i have been keeping an eye on for a 22k exact term was on page 2 before update now sitting 2 or 3 for keyword and all anchor text is the same words, and over a 1000 of the same, so they have had a massive jump, its not a big site only 7 or 8 pages as well, they are now beating all the brand names in this market

 

[crazihos]

I'm 99% sure the main problems are anchor related but google is broken too so lots of strange stuff happening.

Also - lots of links have been discounted so some sites have simply lost link equity and think they have a penalty when they probably dont.

Chippyb - Very hard to say without looking at the site but I'm seeing newish sites with silly amounts of anchors doing ok so maybe google hasnt clocked it? Or possibly what was above it before the update was even worse?

The other theory I have to explain stuff like that is that possibly its an old site and google has some filter where its only hitting bad links gained in the last 12 months (that would partially match some of the results i've seen).

 

[dougs]

fun fun

Confusion:

Loads of link networks hit so lots of sites lost juice...hence movements

But we agree more and more Crazihos that it is anchor text on links........

so can you mix in more quality and get rid of the penalty?
create a new page and clean link it
dirty link build your competitors.......every indian has now become a negaitve seo company

The internet has been reset...now the opportunites are massive

Doug

 

[chippyb]

Ok maybe I worded that a bit wrong, what I meant has happened really is that this site has leap frogged the others, they are still all there on the first page etc, but this site has just jumped ahead

 

[crazihos]

Chippyb - I had a look at it mate and you are 100% right, loads and loads of sitewides all with the same anchor.

Two initial things stand out that could be saving it.

1: it is an emd so that could be why - some emd's have sailed through and others havent been so lucky.

2: from the footer it is a site that hasnt been updated for a while (© Copyright 2008-2011) so possibly it hasnt been linkbuilding for a while.

Lots of old sites have come back so maybe google to an extent has ignored certain old links in this update (I cant back that up with anything though unfortunately).

Very similr to what seemly said - this site possibly stopped playing dirty a while ago where the sites above it possibly didnt.

 

[Stas]

Quote from their announcement:

"We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites."

Maybe a very diverse link profile with contextual links from related, quality sites is what Penguin wants to see. Everything else is unnatural.. And where it sees unnatural it devalues it very harshly without looking at positive signals.

Some of my findings:

Some guy has lost his rankings and Google replied to Re-inclusion request pointing to couple of footer links from very related sites as "unnatural"..

Local seo consultant was putting "uk seo", "town seo" links on his client's sites and was ranking well for years - Nowhere to be found now.

My 1-2 page sites with very diverse anchor text link profile are doing ok. Links are from all kinds of sites and various positions on pages.

My "good and useful" site that had a lot of natural links, and also paid links has lost all its main rankings. Still gets few random top 10 searches for some phrases to homepage and internal pages still rank as they were. Did have unnatural links massage few weeks ago, but dropped on 24th. Cleaning up on-page and will be improving link profile and hope for the best.. Not sure whether there's a need for re-inclusion request or not.

Another site I have was sitting at position 3 few weeks ago. Wasn't a money maker but thought I'd bump it up to no.1 and carelessly created 30+ exact match keyword links to it, went to no.1, dropped to nowhere on 24th..

Some sites that I have not build too many links for are pretty much unaffected.

Too big percentage of exact match links was a problem pre-penguin, possibly it's now amplified, ignores any positives site signals and penalises sites rather than not counting these links.
Maybe once they started their unnatural links findings and sending messages to webmasters, they realised that most of unnatural links are with exact match keywords, in the footer, in spun content blogs etc and changed their algorithm to spot such link sources. And although doesn't seem too logical or fair, penalising sites the links are pointing to. Forgetting that even top sites and top brands had to buy links to rank for competitive keywords, they created this links industry now they penalising for it..

 

[Sussexite]

I guess all this shows that it's a damn sight easier to avoid grey and black hat type techniques altogether in the expectation that one day they will be found out....somehow.

...than it is to try to be clever :sad: by gaming search and then have to back-pedal or trash and burn your tracks later.

But it does take a degree of faith that, in the long run, "virtue" is rewarded (which obviously isn't always the case).

On a bright note, if Penguin really is trashing link and keyword stuffing that isn't relevant to a page's URL and title, that's good news for exact match domain owners.

 

[vizzo]

On a bright note, if Penguin really is trashing link and keyword stuffing that isn't relevant to a page's URL and title, that's good news for exact match domain owners.

On some of the bigger forums a lot of people are saying that a lot of EMD's are taking a stuffing

 

[vizzo]

When we're looking for causes and solutions, (partly based on previous updates) i think there are some things to remember:

1. Some good sites seem to get hit with little or no apparent reason

2. some rubbish sites seem to come through unscathed

3. For every hypothesis, there will be exceptions that seem to disprove it

4. It's easy to make generalisations

5. Google think they're clever, but their algos seem to be a very blunt instrument

6. Google are becoming masters of spin

7. Don't be smug if you didn't get hit - it could be you next time!

 

[philiporchard]

On some of the bigger forums a lot of people are saying that a lot of EMD's are taking a stuffing

What are EMDs?