Have we suffered a Google penalty?
-
Hello,
In January, we started a new blog to supplement our core ecommerce website. The URL of the website is www.footballshirtblog.co.uk and the idea behind it was that we would write articles related to our industry to build a community which would ultimately boost our sales.
We would add several posts per day, a mix between shorter news stories of around 150 words and more detailed content pages of around 500 words.
Everything was going well, we were making slow but sure progress on the main generic keywords but were receiving several thousand visitors a day, mostly finding the posts themselves on Google.
The surge on traffic meant we needed to move server, which we did around 6 weeks ago. When we did this, we had a few teething problems with file permissions, etc, which meant we were tempoarily able to add new posts. As our developers were tied up with other issues, this continued for a 7-10 day period, with no new content being added.
In this period, the site completely dropped from Google, losing all it's rankings and traffic, to the extent it now doesn't even rank for it's own name. This is very frustrating as we have put a huge amount of work and content into developing this site.
We have added a few posts since, but not a huge amount as it is frustrating to do it with no return and the concern that the site has been banned forever. I cannot think of any logical reason why this penalty has occured as we haven't been link spamming, etc.
Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions as to how we can get back on track?
Regards,
David -
Does anyone have any further feedback on this? We are at a complete lost as to why the penalty may have occured.
-
Thanks for your feedback. I have checked these issues and it doesn't seem to solve the issue.
We moved the site to www.eapps.com server, but I can't find anything on there which would suggest why Google might have penalised the site.
I have also checked the opendns and as far as I can see there seems to be no issue there.
Does anyone have any further suggestions on how to tackle this issue?
Regards,
Simon
-
Make sure all your DNS is pointed correctly. If you have a lame nameserver somewhere that could cause you problems. Use this tool to make sure your site is resolving properly
Did you move and then just hard shut-off the old site? If so, you might have created an issue where bots would still resolve the old site from cache and thought your site was down.
Have you checked the Google webmaster tools to see if Google has reported any problems?
-
Is it a shared server you moved to? You could be sharing with a dodgy site that's got a blacklisted IP.
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
-
Title page google serp
Why does Google change the titles automatically? I have <title>Canyoning Açores - São Jorge | Discover Experience Açores</title> but google show Discover Experience Açores: Canyoning Açores - São Jorge
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tiagoarruda0 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Why are some pages indexed but not cached by Google?
The question is simple but I don't understand the answer. I found a webpage that was linking to my personal site. The page was indexed in Google. However, there was no cache option and I received a 404 from Google when I tried using cache:www.thewebpage.com/link/. What exactly does this mean? Also, does it have any negative implication on the SEO value of the link that points to my personal website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mRELEVANCE0 -
Could this work for Google Reconsideration Request?
One of my websites has received the following message: We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. I have used LinkResearchTools DTOX to locate unnatural links and remove them. So far I've been able to remove or nofollow 50/350 and that's as far as I can ever go. The rest of the websites either don't respond or don't have any contact information. I added another 300 suspicious websites to my list and I'll try to get the links manually removed. Hopefully I can get 100/650 websites (and a bit more links) removed in total - at most. That is my estimate. I've been thinking to use Google Disavow Tool for the rest and make sure to submit a nicely written report with spreadsheets to Google - when I get to the reconsideration point. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zorsto0 -
How do you find synonyms for a word in Google?
Hi, How would you go about finding a connection between words in the eyes of Google? So for example if I enter ~shoes -shoes I get a few things turn up in bold. Boots is one which makes sense and I would assume Google makes a connection between the words so using both in content would help semantically. BUT the other word it bolds is Store - this is where I get lost why would it make this connection unless Google is taking actual query data from users and making a different type of connection between words. How do you find a solid connection between words?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
Getting Google Authorship to Work
Hi I set up authorship about 10 days ago at the suggestion of this great forum but haven't seen anything happen yet. Could someone take a quick look and check I've done it right? You can see a typical post here: http://www.touristisrael.com/neve-tzedek-tel-aviv/354/ Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben10000 -
Adding Millions of Products to Google
What is the best way to submit all of your product pages, millions, to Google for serps? XML, RSS, Google Product Search, etc. These are products that are updated on a daily basis, and change often.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Copstead0 -
Fixing Google Places once Banned
I have a lot of clients who have somehow botched up their Google Places listing, and now are not showing up in local search results. In one particular case, they were using 2 different Gmail accounts and submitted their listing twice by accident. It appears Google has banned them from local search results. How does one undo steps like this and start fresh? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocsearch0