8 replies to this topic

[Hans G.]

Hi HR Team, haven't been here in a while but the new redesign looks great!

Question: I've noticed that all of my sites have lost a considerable amount of traffic over the past few months. I've noticed the loss in traffic from March to May of this year. When did Penguin officially conclude? The only thing I did during that time-frame was add an icon/ link at the bottom of all the Websites advertising that my company can help visitors get good rankings (like the site that they're on). Is there a new policy from Google stating that SEOs can't add advertising links touting their effectiveness in getting results at the bottom of pages they design?

H

[Jill]

You've likely been hit by Panda. It's got nothing to do with anything specific you did, but likely your site has been found to be low quality as compared to the others in your space.

[torka]

(And an aside: Penguin is going to be ongoing, like Panda, so there won't be an official "conclusion" for quite awhile, if ever.)

--Torka

[Hans G.]

Thanks but I'd be curious to know if anyone has heard of Google stating that SEOs can't add advertising links touting effectiveness in getting SEO results at the bottom of pages they design. Example:

------------------------
Get Top Rankings
Like This Website
Click here >>
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My rankings only started slipping in March of this year; across all Websites.

[Jill]

Of course not. How could Google tell people what to do that way?

March is when hundreds of thousands of sites slipped as well.

[Hans G.]

Yeah, I figured this would be too Big Brother-ish but figured it didn't hurt to ask. I do know that the sites that I create have a very extensive SEO focus built into them (title, meta, alt tags-laden with main keywords). The content, however, is always relevant to the site. I don't just create keyword-stuffed content.

H

[Hans G.]

Here's the response from Google, after I filed a Reconsideration Request on Google Webmaster:

Reconsideration request for http://www...............com/: No manual spam actions found
June 28, 2012


Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www...............com/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www...............com/for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.
If you're still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
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Despite what they say, I believe I was Panda or Penguin-smacked.

[Jill]

That's good! That means you can fix your site and it should automatically start doing better in Google after their next recalculation.

[Hans G.]

Thanks!