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
-
Missing Google verification
I just went to check my client sites in Google search console and noticed a whole bunch of them no longer 'verified'. They were all previously verified. Why would they suddenly change status to 'not verified'? Does this affect anything (eg. search analytics data flowing through to GA)? Does this mean I have to verify all over again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
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 -
Apps content Google indexation ?
I read some months back that Google was indexing the apps content to display it into its SERP. Does anyone got any update on this recently ? I'll be very interesting to know more on it 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoomGeek0 -
Google is squashing my rankings, insight please?
Last year with penguin, our rankings took a hit. We have worked hard, tirelessly, to recover. Last june we had no social media. We had an old website. We completely updated our website to responsive design, over 500k pages. We post daily fresh content, we expanded into social media. We now have 100k followers on Facebook. We are seeing thousands of Google + in the last few months, and not by hiring a single SEO consultant, and we use no ad-words or any paid advertising (except for adsense, limited on our site). We got thousands of Google +1's simply by sharing content in different circles and they liked us the old fashioned way. And yet our rankings have actually decreased. Just Saturday night, suddenly rankings that were on page 2 of Google dropped to page 5. Rankings on page 5 dropped to page 13, over night. Mind you, last year (prior to the penguin update), those page 2 and page 5 rankings were in the top 3 spots on page one. So its been quite a fall. We are doing something wrong, and I don't know what it is. The overnight rankings drop did not correspond with anything we did whatsoever. They just literally dropped abruptly. here is our site: (redacted for privacy, thanks for answering my question!) here is a sample of a fallen ranking. Friday, for example, we ranked on page one of google in this search:(redacted)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marshill
and now we are on page 3. I am open to ideas, suggestions. I want to raise our D/A and have worked hard over the last year to do so, but it doesn't seem to be working too well. Do i have bad inbound links? Is our site not a quality enough user experience? Outside advice is well received. Thank you to anyone who can lend their insight. 🙂0 -
How to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues with Google?
We have 1000s of audio book titles at our Web store. Google's Panda de-valued our site some time ago because, I believe, of duplicate content. We get our descriptions from the publishers which means a good
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen
deal of our description pages are the same as the publishers = duplicate content according to Google. Although re-writing each description of the products we offer is a daunting, almost impossible task, I am thinking of re-writing publishers' descriptions using The Best Spinner software which allows me to replace some of the publishers' words with synonyms. I have re-written one audio book title's description resulting in 8% unique content from the original in 520 words. I did a CopyScape Check and it reported "65 duplicates." CopyScape appears to be reporting duplicates of words and phrases within sentences and paragraphs. I see very little duplicate content of full sentences
or paragraphs. Does anyone know whether Google's duplicate content algorithm is the same or similar to CopyScape's? How much of an audio book's description would I have to change to stay away from CopyScape's duplicate content algorithm? How much of an audio book's description would I have to change to stay away from Google's duplicate content algorithm?0 -
How to find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
I am trying to get the new Site map to be picked up by Google for the extended listing as its pulling from the old links and returning 404 errors. How can I get the site listing indexed quickly and have the extended listing get updated to point to the right places. This is the site - http://epaperflip.com/Default.aspx This is the search with the extended listing and some 404's - Broad Match search for "epaperflip"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
1 of the sites i work on keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page
1 of the sites i work on (www.eva-alexander.com) keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page I have no idea why and have never experienced this before
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GMD10