Google contradictory communications about manual action being applied
-
Hello,
we received a manual action (partial match) for pure spam for a site of ours. The date is not sure, because we didn't receive any notification in mail or inside Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, so all we can say for sure is that we noticed that the manual action page wasn't empty anymore in 10/03/2013.Some context: our Google traffic got a big hit on 07/20/2013, losing around 60% out of 250k visits per day. At first we thought it was an algorithmic penalisation related to Panda update. It already happened a few times in the past: losing part of Google traffic and having it back usually a couple of months after, often even better than before.
We were really surprised at first to be deemed as pure spam given that the domain is ours since it was created 7 years ago, that we have never employed black hat techniques and that our efforts were always put into building valuable pages for users instead of using spam techniques to deceive them. But after noticing the manual action, we obviously thought that this was the actual reason for our traffic sudden drop.
So we tried to figure out from the 4 URLs that Google reported as examples of the pure spam affected pages, what issues on our site could have been misinterpreted for pure spam. We also checked all the webmaster guidelines and fixed the issues we thought we could not be fully compliant with. All this process lasted for 3 months, after which we submitted our reconsideration request on 12/16/2013.
On 01/07/2013 we got the following answer:We've reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that would directly affect your site's ranking in Google's search results. You can use the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools to view actions currently applied to your site.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking. Google determines the order of search results using a series of computer programs 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 will happen from time to time as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or if it's performing more poorly than it once did, check out our Help Center to identify and fix potential causes of the problem.Now we are really puzzled because Google is saying 2 opposite things: We still have a pure spam manual action, and we don't have a manual action (as per their newest response to our reconsideration request).
We could find online a few cases somehow similar to our own, with Google apparently giving contradictory communications about manual actions, but none of them helped to build a clear explanation.I don't want to enter into the merits of the reasons of the penalisation or whether it was or wasn't deserved, but rather knowing if anyone had the same experience or has any guess on what happened.
What we could think of is some bug or problem related to synching between different pieces of Google but still, after some days, the manual action notice is always there on Google Webmaster Tools and nothing changed in our traffic.We are now thinking about sending a second reconsideration request asking to update our Google Webmaster Tools manual actions page accordingly to our current actual status.
What do you think?thank you very much
-
Sorry, I'm completely confused - you said that there's no notice of a manual action in Google Webmaster Tools, but the manual action page isn't empty and Google is giving you examples of URLs? If the page isn't empty, then you have a notice of manual action. I think I'm missing something. Did the message come and go in GWT?
-
Sounds like it is a bug/mistake on their part. I agree with sending a second RR and mentioning the discrepancy between your GWT message and previous RR response. If they send back the same thing (no penalty yet GWT still shows the penalty), I would post to the Google Webmaster Forums with screenshots and hope a Google rep responds.
However, there is probably something going on with your site if traffic dropped so precipitously and you received a message in GWT. I would review the links in the GWT report as well as OSE and look for any possible issues.
-
That story sounds a lot like an algorithmic penalty and not a manual one. I've heard of people receiving manual action messages as a mistake or with a similar story to yours, maybe a Google slip-up?
I'd take a good, hard look at your website from a neutral perspective. Take your bias out of it, regardless if you think you're a company that's only ever done white-hat SEO techniques. Are pages "really" meant for users? Is there information you could probably remove that's "unnecessary" or "duplicate"?
If you have to, hire someone to do this in a consultant role. It'd probably pay off in the long run. Good luck!
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
-
Google Update
My rank has dropped quite a lot this past week and I can see from the Moz tools that there is an unconfirmed Google update responsible. Is there any information from Moz on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
No images in Google index
No images are indexed on this site (client of ours): http://www.rubbermagazijn.nl/. We've tried everything (descriptive alt texts, image sitemaps, fetch&render, check robots) but a site:www.rubbermagazijn.nl shows 0 image results and the sitemap report in Search Console shows 0 images indexed. We're not sure how to proceed from here. Is there anyone with an idea what the problem could be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adriaan.Multiply0 -
Can Google penalize your site without sending you a Manual Spam Action?
I had a massive drop in traffic in Mid 2013, and a slow reduction since then. It has sort of leveled off now, but it's not exactly climbing I've never received a manual spam action. The answer to my question seems pretty obvious, now that I write it out... but have you heard of anyone getting penalized, without specifically receiving a warning? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
Google search results
I have been doing some searches on google to see where my new site shows up, I started using the search words "graphic design firm st. louis" as a gauge, because my title is St. Louis Missouri Graphic Design Firm. I showed up on about page 5 to start , if I include the word "firm" and a few pages further back if I just search "graphic design st. louis", without the word firm. It seemed i was slowly moving up pages with both searches and then a few days ago I jumped to page 1 for search "graphic design firm st. louis" the thing is it doesnt show up at all now if i search "graphic design st. louis" without the word firm. what would cause the one search to jump so high while the other one dissapeared completely?? and what can i do? my keyword density is same for both , any ideas.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eric69660 -
Website not coming up properly on Google
Hello, our website (http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php) is not coming up properly on Google search (for example, when you search for Rogue Valley Microdevices on Google). We believe that there is something wrong with the website source code, and Google cannot index it properly. However, your Crawl Test results did not indicate any such problems. Can someone help us with some advice please?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | medved441 -
Since when did Google get case sensitive?
We are currently ranked #2 locally (NJ) for "IT support", and #27 for "it support". This is a fairly recent development - like today. I know "it" is a stop word, but I have never seen this before. The funny thing is that this is the only "IT" search where this happens. Most of my keywords contain "IT". What's up with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Hit hard on Google last October.
Hi all, I'm just wondering if anyone is able to help me with why my website lost practically all its ranking last October (2012). My website is here: http://bit.ly/nAOfNj Since early 2010, we have been ranking in the top 3 for our keyword when searched all around the country. Between end September, and end October 2012, we started dropping (from 2nd to 8th, then in December, 13th, January, 18th place... and then March back up to 13th, now ~10th). The main problem seems to be that Google has changed how websites rank for our keyword (trampoline). In Brisbane, Australia (where we are based), we only rank in the local organic searches. We don't have a separate listing there anymore (with the meta description), even though we had a normal organic listing (and local listing) for the last 2 years! When searching from other states/suburbs further away, we dropped way off the first page. Our product is sold by resellers in 400 stores around Australia, so its not like we're just in Brisbane. Has anyone experienced Google changing how they return results for a specific keyword like this? Did they do it a lot towards the end of last year? We have a place page for Brisbane, but for some reason I have little to no control over it (Places/Local+ stuff up means I can't manage the page on Local+, can't add pictures/videos etc). My boss suggested we even try deleting the maps page or our local+ page to get out of there. We don't get anywhere near as much traffic through the local listing than a normal listing... I'm not sure if that's best though? From what I can tell, the only Google algorithm updates that may have affected us at the time (October 9th) were the page layout updates that penalised(?) sites that have a lot of "ads" above the fold. Our website is designed to have splash banners on the top of every page to either promote our own product, competitions or the athletes we sponsor. Up until last week, the banners were always 500px high on larger screen desktops and 300px high on smaller desktops, laptops, ipad etc. I have recently changed them to all be 300px high to test, but I imagine i'll have to wait a while? Is this the kind of content that Google means by "ads above the fold"? I've spent the last 4 weeks working on our SEO, from HTML validation, to rich snippets, content optimisation, a lot more internal linking, setting up some location-based content, doing a lot of keyword research, and now starting to work on cleaning up our Blog and creating some real sharable content that we'll share on our Facebook. I really just wish I knew where the problem was so I could tackle that 😞 Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vuly0 -
Is google rolling out a huge update this week?
I am seeing some huge shifts in SERPS at the moment, for some keywords such as web design. Nearly every single result on the homepage is a different company than 2 weeks ago. We are seeing some clients have huge jumps in ranks but also some are dropping. Seems like we could have a big Panda/Penguin like update rolling out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tempowebdesign1