Algorithmic penalty perhaps but what is it?
-
I've discovered that when google crawled my home page my ranking for all keywords dropped. I've submitted a reconsideration request as I was sure I wasn't breaking the rules. The response was that no manual penalty had been applied to my site. Therefore it must be an on site algorithim penalty?
I thought it could be duplicate content as I have many posts that are in multiple categories so maybe that was it. Since then I've made efforts to ensure the posts in the categories are varied. I also thought it might be too many on page links so I removed categories that weren't needed as I have categories in my navigation and sidebar.
So far though no improvement. I wonder if anyone here can take a look at the site and offer any suggestions as to what might be causing this algorithmic penalty?
The site is http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com (some adult content!)
I'm really struggling to figure this out so any help much appreciated!
-
Will do. many thanks for your help. Hope that's the problem!
-
remove it temporarily and see if it fixes the issue? many an affiliate site have been caught loading malware on to devices by this kind of means - be careful
if you find the problem goes away great, contact the affiliate partner and ask them what is going on and to fix the problem - you won't be the only one in this boat i'm sure
-
The code it's suggesting is malware is code I put on the site myself. As an affiliate it generates a pop up box for people to click and go to the external site. I want to keep it if possible so I'm not sure in fact that it is malware. How's best to proceed? Like I say there's nothing showing up in webmaster tools as malware.
-
you don't want GWT to show it
you want to catch it first
find the offending code and delete it, its from an advert or affiliate site of some kind - could be a plugin sneaking it in - it's happened to me before on WP sites a plugin updates and brings bad code with it.
-
Thanks for that. There's nothing showing in webmaster tools with regards to malware but if that's the case I'd better get to fixing it. How do I go about it though?
-
found the problem I think.
Malware found ona few pages on your site
http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.top-10-dating-reviews.com/
-
I don't think it's related to adult safe search as still doesn't show when I change the filter. struggling with this one!
-
If your page is adult in nature then it's possible that Google has taken it out of the "Safe Search" index. I believe the filter is set to moderate tolerance for most people. It's possible that the latest crawl saw enough adult content to put it in the "non safe" area. Try changing your safe search settings to show everything and then see if you are ranking.
There could be other issues but without having a good look at the site (which I really don't have a desire to do) no one will be able to say for sure.
-
gosh i don't know what to tell you honestly. i can't really continue exploring your site for fear someone will walk into my office and wonder what the heck i'm up to...
but let us know if you ever figure it out i'm curious and good luck.
-
The keywords aren't particularly difficult to rank for and are in the 30 - 50 % keyword difficulty using the SEO moz keyword difficulty tool. I have ranked these same keywords for other sites I operate without too much of a problem. That's why I'm so confused as to what's happened here. I'm sure its something on site.
-
It happened on 9th March at 8.37 am. It seems that google crawled my home page at the time and the traffic just dissapeared. I can't post keywords as they're adult in nature. Effectively I'm targeting the page titles of the category pages on my site.
-
Without going through your site (for obvious reasons) I can tell you that there shouldn't be any Penguin-imposed penalties present. Unless your site was tagged for phishing or some other un-trustworthy violation I can't think of what would cause this other than you are just after some very competitive keywords.
Judging from the site's content I would guess the latter to be the case.
Looking at your backlink profile quickly it's obvious that this site was recently created. A lot of times Google rankings for a new site will start high and drop quickly. I suggest hitting the SEO trail hard to regain your rankings.If Google hasn't manually imposed penalties, that's a green light. Get to SEO'ing the crap outta that thing my friend.
-
Hi Sam,
When did this happen? (as precise as you can be)
Also can you tell us a list of a few words that were hit.
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
-
Site deindexed after HTTPS migration + possible penalty due to spammy links
Hi all, we've recently migrated a site from http to https and saw the majority of pages drop out of the index. https://www.relate.org.uk/ One of the most extreme deindexation problems I've ever seen, but there doesn't appear to be anything obvious on-page which is causing the issue. (Unless I've missed something - please tell me if I have!) I had initially discounted any off-page issues due to the lack of a manual action in SC, however after looking into their link profile I spotted 100 spammy porn .xyz sites all linking (see example image). Didn't appear to be any historic disavow files uploaded in the non https SC accounts. Any on-page suggestions, or just play the waiting game with the new disavow file? Hku8I
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTI_Digital0 -
Showing on page 25 for url keyword/ brand, is it a penalty?
Hi I have a site which shows on page 25 in G serps for the main brand keyword which is also the url its a .com and as far as I can see has no penalties and has unique content. The keyword itself has no competition and the site should be no1 in G for it. Our site domain is 11 years old.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MoneySite0 -
How to handle a pure spam penalty (from GWT) as a blogging platform
Hello, I have a blogging platform which spammers unfortunately used a few years ago to create spam blogs. Since them, we've added spam filters and even if I can't not assume there isn't any spam blog left, I can say that most of the blogs are clean. The problem is, in Google Webmasters Tools, we have a Pure spam message in the Manual actions page. (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604777?hl=en), with a list of 1000 blog links. All these blogs have been marked as spam in our system for at least 1 year, technically it means they return a 410 header and display something like "this blog doesn't meet our quality requirements". When I've first seen the manual action message in GWT, I have asked for reconsideration request. Google answered within a week saying that they had checked again our website, but when I go went to the manual actions page, there was still a "pure spam" message, with a different list of blogs, which have already been marked as spam for a year at least. What should I do ? Ask for reconsideration requests as long as Google answers ? Thank you in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KingLouis0 -
Algorithm Penalty?
I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. The URL in question is: http://goo.gl/9lGqxDSince this website was relaunched around the same time as the Panda algorithm update, it's dropped from the 1st page of results down to page 6 or lower. Essentially, this website no longer ranks well in the Google UK for relevant keywords to the business when combined with the place names in it's geographical operation areas.It's worth noting that the website ranks very well in other search search engines such as Bing! The website had a lot of spammy links which we've requested to be removed from the respective site owners. Most of which are either non-responsive or want extortionate amounts of money to remove the links so we have used Google disavow links tool. We suspect the site is being penalised as a result of the spammy inbound links something which is supported by the fact that only the new pages or pages with fresh content are ranking (http://goo.gl/D1NpxH). However, Google Webmaster tools reports no messages or critical issues.On the whole the website is updated occasionally. The writing is very easy to understand, it's quick to load, URLs are clear and the titles and descriptions are partly optimised.We're believe that our only option is to abandon the current domain and completely rewrite the content for a new domain. Does anyone else have any ideas how we can fix this before we go ahead?Many thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chichesterdesign0 -
Moving Part of a Website to a Subdomain to Remove Panda Penalty?
I have lots of news on my website and unlike other types of content, news posts quickly become obsolete and get a high bounce rate. I have reasons to think that the news on my website might be partly responsible for a Panda penalty so I'm not sure. There are over 400 news posts on the blog from the last 4 years so that's still a lot of content. I was thinking of isolating the news articles on a subdomain (news.mywebsite.com) If the news play a part in the Panda penalty, would that remove it from the main domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Company name causing Google penalty?
Hi all, Once of my clients has a keyword as part of their company name, and it seems like the website is being given a penalty in the keyword SERP because of the amount of websites linking back using the company name? Is there anything i can do to prevent/balance this out? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyHall0 -
Google Penalty, Which one is hitting me?
Hello there SEOMOZ'ers, Just signed up for a Pro Account. Impressed with the trial. Just wondering is there any way to find out if you have fallen foul of a Google update, is there any way to know which you have fallen foul of or is the date it happens the only guide or pointer to what might have happened? My site was getting a reasonable amount of traffic for the last few years and was ranking well for my main search terms up till Feburary the 4th when the traffic fell by almost 50% ... and it has never really recovered. I thought it might be the Above the Fold Advertising penalty (or whatever it is called) because I had a lot of images linking elsewhere on my site, above the fold on my homepage, but I removed them about 4 weeks ago and the traffic still hasnt recovered. I've been using SEOMOZ to detect duplicate content and various other problems with my site since and fixing a good few of them each week. I have the main issues down from about 300 to about 20 which i think i have just fixed. I have also used Copyscape and found that some other websites had stolen some of my content, which i have since rewritten. I was ranking number 2 or 3 for my main keyword but dropped out of the top 100 in February, which is pretty frustrating at this stage. I don;t know if I have accidentally gone too far over optimising my site or what has happened. If anyone can give me some pointers I'd really appreciate it, if anyone can help me fix it I'll buy them a beer next time you are in Ireland! 🙂 Thanks, Shane
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shaneod0