35 replies to this topic

[Shane]

Yeah, it worked great for awhile, but both Yahoo and Google started imposing their own "corrections" about the same time. (Sometime this summer, if I remember correctly.)

[JakeG]

Well I never quite believed in this -30 thing... but I think I may be seeing it.

I recently had a site that was ranking well for a particular keyword - I changed the copy a bit to include the term a couple more times and I bought a deep link to the page with the term in the anchor text. This link was from the site ranking number one for the term so I figured it would help.

I saw a bunch of traffic in my analytics for this term suggesting it was ranking high - never checked the ranking at the time though.

Now it is sat at position 31 in Google? Coincidence?

[JakeG]

we have recently submitted a re-inclusion request to Google, hoping it might help.

How exactly do you do this? I can't find the form anywhere.

[madams]

Try this

http://www.google.co.../bin/request.py]Google reinclusion[/URL]

[JakeG]

I see nothing about reinclusion there - which option do i choose?

[torka]

That is the right form to use. Here's a how-to post from Matt Cutts' blog that explains what options to choose and what to do/say to maximize the chances of success.

HTH!

--Torka

[nahanni]

http://www.google.co...on&topic=&type=

[webvivre]

We have been suffering the same penalty since early August on Google.

We have tried a reinclusion request with no luck.

We have tried a re-design of the web site with no effect.

No Coop or Link-Vault links on the web site.

We are not a thin affiliate - we have 6000 French Property on the web site so there is plenty of content.

Even added a request for information on Matt Cutts blog and it was removed so Google do not want to discuss!!

[JakeG]

I think I'm going to point some more links at that page and see what happens.. will let everyone know.

[mal4mac]

There is little doubt that that the -30 Google penalty filter exists. But how is it applied? Does one of Google's student drones decide they don't like it and apply the penalty, or one of their serious search engineers? I suspect the former, and I also suspect the drones are in the reinclusion request service. Or am I being paranoid? I've never heard of MSN and Yahoo employing student drone's. Ergo, MSN and Yahoo have something over Google in at least one respect! Hypothesis - technology is better than student drones. Discuss.

[Scottie]

Even added a request for information on Matt Cutts blog and it was removed so Google do not want to discuss!!

Spamming Matt's blog with a reinclusion request was probably not the best move...

[webvivre]

We did not post an entry in Matt' blog about re-inclusion; we asked about the nature of + 30 penalty.

[healthSEO]

After reading over the last few days, I've determined that we're going through a minus-30 penalty as of last Friday. I'm convinced it's real. If you're below 30 when searching for your own domain name, that seems like the tell-tale sign.

Incidentally, I did read in a post from a Google staff person that the re-inclusion request (found in Google Sitemaps account under Tools) is an OK way to submit requests even if you weren't dropped from the index entirely. However, I didn't use that form because you have to verify that you agree you have violated something and that made me nervous because I don't think we did. Instead I used the basic feedback form Google offers to its users, the same one linked to from Matt Cutt's post about reinclusion requests, mentioned in this thread. However, the option for "reinclusion request" is no longer in that feedback form (Matt's post was from 2005 so maybe it was at the time).

Thanks for linking to the WMW thread about this penalty. Over the last few days, I've been thoroughly reviewing our site and what we're doing with links and such. Also, from what I've read at WMW, I think that working on adding some high quality inbound links may gradually help us out of the gutter, or at least it couldn't hurt as long as I don't buy links or add a bunch at the same time with the same anchor text, which by the way, we've never done. The biggest mystery or perhaps the scariest part is that we have more than one site that is set up the same way, so is it just a matter of time before they all suffer this? Or why is only one suffering from it now? I'm wracking my brain for any differences. Please keep posting as you find new ideas. I will post again when I solve it on our end.

Thanks nahanni for reporting on your situation and the multiple inbound link issue that you suspect caused it. Congratulations for being back in.

Thanks everyone.

[Jill]

The biggest mystery or perhaps the scariest part is that we have more than one site that is set up the same way,

Maybe that is actually the problem?

[healthSEO]

Jill,
You suggested that having multiple sites with the same structure could be part of the problem. I don't understand. They are not clones of each other. They are part of a network of related sites about different health issues. I spoke to Matt Cutts about our structure and he seemed to think it was completely fine.
Why would the Google system penalize only one site unless there is a human involved hand-picking one site to teach us a lesson? That seems unlikely, right?
Incidentally I found one minor thing that is different about this site and undid it today to see what will happen. I fear that I won't know for months but I'm crossing my fingers and continuing to try other things.
Thanks,
Val