53 replies to this topic

[Marchy]

I got a penalty last April from Google where my site was pretty much Number 1 on all the major keywords in my field and it end up between page 4-6.

Since I have done everything that I could think of to get that penalty removed.

- Rewrite the full content. It is all unique no duplicate from any pages
- When it happen I sent an email to every person I exchanged links to and got them to removed them. I did the same on my part.
- I redesigned my whole site
-Changed server
I removed a whole section of my site that the content was not really good. PHP database that had duplicate content.
-I removed any outbound links from the site.
and more.......


Mainly I gathered information from the main SEO forums on the web. Trying to solved problems which other people got that penalty removed.

I was thinking of a possiblity and I was wondering if any of you have ever heard of this.

Is it possible, because it is my second penalty that Google would give me a "time penalty" means that they would say "we will penalize him for a years" or something like this.

My site is white as snow. I follow every single guideline. I have 4 reconsideration for reinclusion. After evry major changes, I was sending a reconsideration.

Anyone has a suggestion?

[Scottie]

You seem pretty sure that you have a specific penalty... what was it for?

[Marchy]

You seem pretty sure that you have a specific penalty... what was it for?

I am not even sure. When It happen, I pretty much tried to correct all outpoints that were on my site. This is the toughest point is that they do not tell you why you get a penalty. I have done everything that I could see that woulf have been wrong. Even some small things that have probably no influence.

I really don't know what else to do!

This is why I was wondering about the time penalty!

[Jill]

If you didn't do anything specifically deceptive to the search engines, then it's doubtful you actually have a penalty.

Now that you've had all the links removed to your site (which seems like a strange thing to do), it's going to be difficult to have rankings show up since you need links.

[chrishirst]

I got a penalty last April from Google where my site was pretty much Number 1 on all the major keywords in my field and it end up between page 4-6.
....

I was thinking of a possiblity and I was wondering if any of you have ever heard of this.

Is it possible, because it is my second penalty that Google would give me a "time penalty" means that they would say "we will penalize him for a years" or something like this.
...

Well, it's imaginative if nothing else! A "time penalty"

Is that a bit like "10 minutes in the Sin Bin" because called the referee's parentage into question?

Or +5seconds for straying out of lane?

or maybe a Formula One style "Pit lane stop and go" for holding up the cars behind when "blue flagged"?

[Marchy]

If you didn't do anything specifically deceptive to the search engines, then it's doubtful you actually have a penalty.

Now that you've had all the links removed to your site (which seems like a strange thing to do), it's going to be difficult to have rankings show up since you need links.

Jill, I don't think that the removal of the links of the last 6 months would back me to page 5. That website was number one for the last 3 years before the penalty. It has solid links before the penalty and it still have them. I just don't know what to do anymore. Also what is hard is that Google does not tell you anything regarding why it is still penalized. When you send the reconsideration for reinclusion. You do not have a response back.

[Scottie]

So, they've definitely told you that it is penalized, but not why?

[Marchy]

So, they've definitely told you that it is penalized, but not why?

Exactly, I never had an answer from any of the reconsideration I have made. They never said it was penalized but it does not makes sense to end up on page 4-6 and it never moved from there for almost there no matter all the changes I have made.

[Marchy]

HI Guys, yesterday my penalized sites went back to his normal ranking (#1) where it was before it got penalized. It lasted a few hours and then went back to where it was on page 5 of Google. I was wondering ifany of you have ever ezperience this.

[Jill]

Yes, all the time. It's due to algorithm changes and there being a variety of databases that one can search.

[Michael Martinez]

-I removed any outbound links from the site.
and more.......

Unless you were linking to suspicious sites, that's more likely going to hurt than help since Google has been actively telling people that linking out helps.

What I haven't seen you mention (and perhaps I missed it if you did) is what you were doing for inbound links. Maybe your links aren't helping as much as you believe they should be.

[qwerty]

Based on your first post, I thought that you had gotten rid of all of your backlinks, but it looks like you've clarified that to indicate that you've dropped all of your reciprocal links. I don't know what that leaves you with -- hopefully some solid, authoritative links, but if you've got the time, I'd recommending taking a close look at the sites you'd previously traded links with. Some of those links might have been helping you, and it could be worthwhile to put the links back up after you've made sure the sites in question aren't doing anything dodgy.

Reciprocal linking isn't bad in and of itself. If Harvard links to MIT, the search engines aren't going to automatically take that to mean that both universities are participating in a link scheme designed to bamboozle the engines. And even if you had been linking to some bad sites, I really doubt that would have gotten you penalized. It's more likely that Google simply would have refused to give you any benefit from those particular links.

And linking out to other sites (if they're good ones) has always been a good idea, going way back to the old bowtie theory. It demonstrates that you know your subject, and it's good for users.

[Marchy]

This site has always been a mystery. The links to my site that I asked to remove were the links I did 6 months prior to the penalty. That site was # 1 on pretty all of our major keywords in Canada for the last 3 years before the penalty. I went in to a crazy link campaign ( I know it was stupid) doing 3 way link exchange ( I had a lot of site). When the penalty occurred. I emailed back everyone that I linked with in the last 6 months. This website still have really good solid backlinks from authority sites. I still can see them in my Google webmaster tools.

I was just wondering if this "back to the 1st place" was a sigh of hope for me! LOL

[Michael Martinez]

I'm still confused about what links have been removed. Which of the below actions are you describing?

1. You removed every link from your site that points to someone else's site
2. You removed every link from your site that points to someone else site that links to you (Reciprocal Links Only)
3. You deleted every link you placed on other sites pointing to your site
4. You deleted every link you placed on other sites through a reciprocal link exchange

If your content is not hiding anything or doing anything suspicious, then it seems likely there are three probable causes for your search ranking woes:

1. You have some technical issue that is causing problems for the search engine
2. You have thin content that the search engine just doesn't want to rank
3. You have suspicious links pointing to your site that make it look like you're trying to game the search engine

What does Google Webmaster Tools tell you about crawling, site performance, errors, bad URLs, etc.?

[Marchy]

I'm still confused about what links have been removed. Which of the below actions are you describing?

1. You removed every link from your site that points to someone else's site
2. You removed every link from your site that points to someone else site that links to you (Reciprocal Links Only)
3. You deleted every link you placed on other sites pointing to your site
4. You deleted every link you placed on other sites through a reciprocal link exchange

If your content is not hiding anything or doing anything suspicious, then it seems likely there are three probable causes for your search ranking woes:

1. You have some technical issue that is causing problems for the search engine
2. You have thin content that the search engine just doesn't want to rank
3. You have suspicious links pointing to your site that make it look like you're trying to game the search engine

What does Google Webmaster Tools tell you about crawling, site performance, errors, bad URLs, etc.?

Hi Michael, The last 6 months prior to the penalties. removed all the links part of my aggressive link campaign. So I removed all links from these 6 months campaign pointing to my site and the one that I gave to these website from other sites that I had.

So every links that were part of this campaign in any directions were removed from both parties.

Now all the content on the site was redone proper English, not duplicate from one page to another etc.

There was a database that was removed from the site. It was useless and not really good content.

The content is not hiding anything. It is clean.

At each move or fixing. I was asking for reconsideration.

Now before the penalty. This site was number one in my field for all major keywords and most minor ones with over 20,000 unique visitors which is a lot in my field in Canada only. So it was not just a website that popped first for 3 days and went down. So it was definitely a penalty.

Probably it was your last statement " You have suspicious links pointing to your site that make it look like you're trying to game the search engine". With that aggressive campaign I did.

As far as webmaster tool

298 links pointing to my site
There are 46 pages not found, They were old pages that I removed
No duplicate title or description

That's about it