Penalty recovery gone
-
Back in August we got a manual penalty lifted by Google for spammy links that we never created. This had been affecting us for almost a year. For about six weeks our traffic bounced back up to pre-penalty levels - between 60 and 120% greater a day from Google search traffic.
Since then, our Google organic traffic has decayed to the point where yesterday we were back below our penalty level and we don't have a new penalty.
Can anyone give me some advice about what may have caused this? Link to our site.
-
Thank you for the suggestions. It looks like we may have taken a hit from Panda 21 at the beginning of November but we were moving the site to a new server so the days right before the update don't have any analytics data.
The last couple of days saw a spike last year because Advent started this weekend instead of next weekend this year so that's why some of the numbers for this weekend look off.
Overall though, it looks like we hit a peak for most keywords in January and then saw a major decline in February when we received our manual penalty and even though the penalty has been officially revoked, we've never recovered fully.
Thanks for the panguin suggestion. We use chartelligence which actually overlays within GA on any chart which is very nice.
I guess I'll go back and manually disavow those bad links even though I've already submitted them and see what happens.
-
It is strange that a page has bad links if not done SEO, I think you may be being affected by Negative Seo
-
A great tool for checking your traffic against google updates is panguin tool - it's a great resource for seeing your google traffic and any drops you may have had and how they're related to panda, penguin, and other algo updates.
Also, check in webmaster tools your latest links - see if more spammy links are coming in recently and if this correlates in any way with your drop - if so, disavow these links and do another reconsideration request.
Do you know if it was specific keywords that were bringing a lot of traffic that you've dropped for or it's more across the board? That will help in figuring out the problem.
Mark
-
You can disavow links in GWT.
-
Hi Ian,
You might still be having bad links associated with your site, that's why you've gone down in traffic again. Check to see if the drop in traffic was associated with any of Google's updates here . Check your competitors and the keywords that they are outranking you for. Are they better optimized for those keywords?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When serving a 410 for page gone, should I serve an error page?
I'm removing a bunch of old & rubbish pages and was going to serve 410 to tell google they're gone (my understanding is it'll get them out of the index a bit quicker than a 404). I should still serve an error page though, right? Similar to a 404. That doesn't muddy the "gone" message that I'm giving Google? There's no need to 410 and die?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSDOnline0 -
Mobile Site Panda 4.2 Penalty
We are an ecommerce company, and we outsource our mobile site to a service, and our mobile site is m.ourdomain.com. We pass the Google mobile ready test. Our product page content on the mobile site is woefully thin (typically less than 100 words), and it appears that we got hit with Panda 4.2 on the mobile site. Starting at the end of July, our mobile rankings have dropped, and our mobile traffic is now about half of what it was in July. We are working to correct the content issue but it obviously takes time. So here's my question - if our mobile site got hit with Panda 4.2, could that have a negative effect on our desktop site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Help with 50 Plus Penalty, No Manual Action Reported
We have a client who had been ranking in Google’s top ten organic results for 2 of his major keywords last year. Currently Bing and Yahoo ranks his site #1 for both of these terms; the ranking pages that are appearing were specifically targeted with these words. As of now, the client appears to have a 50 plus penalty for these two keywords. Appearing #76 for one term and # 60 for the other. We were thinking of submitting a reconsideration request through Google Webmaster tools, but discovered that you aren’t allowed to do that unless a Manual Action has appeared, which in this case has not. The only problem we’ve had with the site from an SEO standpoint is that we recently discovered a website that had copied some of the product descriptions verbatim. The client contacted the site owner who took it down immediately (about a month ago), but we still have not seen any improvement in rankings for these keywords. Does anyone have any ideas on how to communicate this Google and get the suspected penalty lifted if a reconsideration request is apparently not available?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundabout0 -
Google Penguin 2.1 Penalty - Recoverable?
Hello, I have a client that was hit very bad by the Google Penguin 2.1 update. He mentioned he did an intensive link analysis and removed all the bad links; however there were a lot of them (around 6000). His domain has a decent sized domain authority of 30/100. I'm wondering if it's worth it to try and save his domain, or start fresh from a new one. Due to the high number of links I'm not 100% confident that all the bad links were taken care of, and I've heard that even if you remove the links Google won't lift the penalties. What would you do...get a new domain, or risk the next couple months trying to save the existing one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven751 -
Any SEO Penalties from Removing RSS Feed?
Hi, I have a site that has a Feedburner feed that has been in place for 5+ years. I am considering getting rid of the feed or starting a new one to combat content scraping. Google continues to rank thieves' sites ahead of mine. Google and Bing have no issue and always get it right. I use Wordpress and have the plugin PubSubHubb, but that is no guarantee. Nonetheless, there is no monetary value of my subscribers whereas the content not being accredited to me takes money out of my pocket as my model is advertising. Is there any SEO issue if I do any of the following: Delete the feed and not have one? Change the feed address and drop all subscribers? Attachments: DMCA Dashboard; example of being outranked by scrapers. My site: www.furniturefashion.com Thanks for your time and hopefully I did not vent too much. OWmou6k f6W3xkq.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | will21121 -
Panda recovery. Is it possible ?
Dear all, To begin, english is not my native language, so I'm very sorry if I make some mistake. On the 23th march 2012, Panda penalized my website (a coupon website) Avec-Reduction (dot com for the url). At this date, I have lost more than 70% of my traffic. The structure of the website was like an e-commerce website. Categories -> merchant page -> coupon page. The content was to thin for Google, I'm agree wit that. So, in may, I have made a new version. Here you can see the most important modifications : A smallest header (-100px height). 2 columns website (the oldest website had 3 columns) I have deleted the category menu with the list of all categories and the alphabetical menu. less ads on the website (since few days I have also deleted the 2 adense blocks) The coupons was promoted with the thumbs of the merchant on the home listing. Now I have few top lists in text only. I have deleted all the categories pages (one page by category of merchant, with the listing of all the merchants of the category). Now I have only one page for this. Same thing with the alphabetical pages. All these deleted pages have a 301 redirect. The 2 new pages (categorie page and alphabetical page) are on noindex. I have deleted all the promo codes pages, all the coupons are now on the merchant page (301 redirect used). I have create an anti-spam system for the review codes (I have a lot of spam on these forms, even if I cleaned every day/2days). Now, I have no spam. Visitors have now the possibility to put a note and a review for each merchant. This fonctionality is new, so not a lot of reviews for the moment. All the merchants pages without promo codes have a noindex on the robot tag. Since july, I have the possibility to use the "title" of each promo code. I can personnalised the promo code. On the same time, to have more content, I have the possibility to add sales or great promos for each merchants, not only promo codes. Affiliate links are created on JS which open a new window (a redirect page with noindex). That's the end of the most important changes on my website. I have a better speed page (/2 since july) because I have optimized my images, CSS, JS... At the end of july, I had health problem and the website has no update until the first days of october. Now, the website is updated every day, but between july and october I have no panda recovery. I have no duplicate content, I try to add the most content I can. So I don't understand why Google Panda penalized me again and again. Some of my competitors have a lot of keyword stuffing (4, 5, 6, ... 10 lines of KS on each merchant pages). Some of them have only affiliate merchants, automatic script to put coupons on websites), few "same" websites... I have less than 30% of affiliated merchant, I validate all the coupons or promo manually, I personalized all my coupons... So I don't understand what to do. I will appreciate all help. If you see problems on my wesite or if you know tips to have a panda recovery, I will be very happy to have informations. Many thanks for all. Sincerely, Florent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Floroger0 -
How do i know if my domain has given penalty by Google and why?
I have problems with my website to google search results. Some of the important keywords frequently and sharply rankings vary a lot lately. For example; 07-14-2012 Term1 Position #12 07-20-2012 Term1 Position #38 07-24-2012 Term1 Position #10 07-26-2012 Term1 Position #40 I wonder what is the cause of this incident? Is there any Penalties? If there is then how do i know this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ersaky0 -
How to move domain content w Penguin Penalty?
Hey guys, I've come to the conclusion the sheer amount of crap links a site of ours has is un repairable. We own a .net version with the same brand name so I'm planning to move our ecommerce store over with all its content. I can move the site in one swoop but I believe Google will see it as duplicate content if we don't allow the old site to de index first. I would simply take it down for a month but we still get some orders now and then. Anyone have any ideas? I was thinking of leaving an image up on each page that is no index no follow linked to the new site that explains the site is being moved, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com1