Website "penalized" 3 times by Google
-
I have a website that I'm working with that has had the misfortune of gaining rankings/traffic on Google, then having the rankings/traffic removed...3 times! (Very little was changed on the site to gain or lose "favor" with Google, either.)
Notes:
- Site is a mixture of high quality original content and duplicate content (vacation rental listings)
- When traffic crashes, we lose nearly all rankings and traffic (90+%)
- When traffic crashes, we lose all rankings sitewide, including those gained by our high quality, unique pages
- None of the "crash" dates appear to coincide with any Panda update dates
- We are working on adding unique content to our pages with duplicate content, but it's a long process and so far doesn't seem to have made any difference
- I'm confounded why Google keeps "changing its mind" about our site
- We have an XML sitemap, and Google keeps our site indexed pretty well, even when we lose our rankings
- Due to the drastic and sitewide loss of rankings, I'm assuming we are dealing with some sort of algorithmic penalty
Timeline:
- Traffic steadily grows starting in Jan 2011
- Traffic crashes on Feb 19, 2011. We assumed it was due to a pre-panda anti-scraper update, but don't know.
- Google sends traffic to our site on March 1, then none the next day
- On June 16th, I block part of the site using robots.txt (most of the section wasn't indexed anyway)
- On June 17th, Google starts ranking our site again. I thought it might be due to the robots.txt change, but I had just made the change a few hours ago, and Google wasn't even indexing the part of the site I blocked
- Traffic/rankings crash again on July 6th. No theory why.
Site URL: http://www.floridaisbest.com
Traffic Stats: Attached
I know that we need more backlinks and less duplicate content, but I can't explain why our Google rankings are "on again, off again". I have never seen a site gain and lose all of its rankings/traffic so drastically multiple times, for no apparent reason.
Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome. Thanks!
-
Good to hear. Hope your site doesn't bounce back out of the index again.
-
Well, good news. I implemented a strategy based on the assumption that our site was just outside Google's duplicate content or quality guidelines. Our traffic rebounded yesterday!
-
I got a PM from another user who has a site with known duplicate content that was also penalized on July 6th. To my mind, that is further evidence that our site is suffering from algorithmic penalties due to duplicate content.
-
My apologies. I included a space.
site: http://www.floridaisbest.com (a space after the colon) shows this article as the first result, and the site not indexed
site:http://www.floridaisbest.com shows the site correctly indexed.
-
Site appears to be well indexed to me. You get no results for a site: search?
-
Hi Adam.
I looked at your home page and robots.txt file. All seemed ok. I confirmed the site is not indexed with Google. My next thought went to external links.
On the home page there is a "Travel Search" block. Those links don't work and cause my browser to hang. I tried a couple times and from different pc's using different browsers. I would suggest investigating the issue as it could be related.
-
-
Traffic from Yahoo/Bing is nearly non-existent.
-
Yes, nothing abnormal there.
-
No bought links.
-
No downtime that I know of.
-
-
No answers for you at the moment, but a couple of more questions.
-
Is there anything at all similar happening in Yahoo/Bing, or has their traffic been normal this whole time?
-
Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for any notices from Google about possible penalties or hacking of your site?
-
Anyone in the company tried to "help" by buying links?
-
Any downtime with servers?
-
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
-
Does cached duplicate content hurts seo by Google
If we have duplicate content or pages cached in Google which has been indexed months back, still it hurts the original pages? Old URLs with cache can be seen now in Google when we search for the same URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Open Graph
Hi I wanted to find out what makes Google select a site to show the answer to a question you type in search? For example, typing What is COSHH, brings up this site http://rospaworkplacesafety.com/2013/01/08/what-is-coshh-about-coshh/ and this answer top of Google SERPs. COSHH stands for 'Control of Substances Hazardous to Health' and under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, employers need to either prevent or reduce their workers' exposure to substances that are hazardous to their health.8 Jan 2013 Is it their open graph mark up only? Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Website Rankings Dropped April 12
A client website dropped drastically on April 12. Outside of some branded keywords, search results dropped off of the first page and are buried on page 3+ at best. Nothing has changed on the site, and there were no problems with the link profile. GWT has no manual actions. Kind of at a loss. Does anyone know if there was an algorithm update or anything external that may be causing some problems here? Site is www.averybiomedical.com if you want to take a look, but I'm just curious if there was anything I should be aware of. Thanks for the help!
Algorithm Updates | | AdamWormann0 -
Could Retail Price Be A Google Ranking Factor???
I have not done any detailed studies on this but it seems that Google might be using low retail prices for specific items as a ranking factor in their organic SERPs. Does anyone else suspect this? Just askin' to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL0 -
"We've processed your reconsideration request for www...." - Could this be good news?
Hey, We recently had a Google Penguin related links warning and I've been going through Google WMT and removing the most offensive links. We have requested resubmission a couple of times and have had the standard response of: "
Algorithm Updates | | ChrisHolgate
Site violates Google's quality guidelines We received a request from a site owner to reconsider your site for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. 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. If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
" On the 5th September after spending another couple more days removing the most prolific offenders we resubmitted the site again and again got the automated response saying they had received our request. A week later on the 13th September we got a slightly different response of : "
We've processed your reconsideration request We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index your site. We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take. " I left it another couple of weeks to see if we'd get a slightly more in depth response however so far there has been nothing. I'll be honest in not being entirely sure what this means. The e-mails says simultaneously 'We've now reviewed your site' (as in past tense) but then continues with "If we don't find any problems" which suggests a future tense. I’m unsure from reading the e-mail whether they have indeed reviewed it (and just not told us the outcome) or whether it’s just a delayed e-mail saying that they have received the reconsideration request. Of course, if I received this e-mail off anyone other than Google I would have thought I was still in the dog house but the fact that it differs from the standard ‘Site violates Google’s quality guidelines’ message leads me to believe that something has changed and they may be happy with the site or at least happier than they were previously. Has anybody else received the latter message and has anybody managed to determine exactly what it means? Cheers guys!0 -
Penalization.... please help me...
First of all, sorry for my english but i'm an Italian girl seo. Before Panda update seo was clear and easy: good quality, good natural backlink and so on... Now there is an update fast every week and it's a mess! I work as seo for a big italian e-commerce and (more or less) one month's ago in google webmaster tool I tried a message frome Google who told me the site: www.giordanoshop.com is penalty for innatural backlink. But I ve do noting against Google politicy: no pay backlink, no fam and so on.. There are some streing link but I can't delete it because I don't do it. I ask the riconsideretion of website but google still tell me it faund innatural link. What shoud I do? The pr of the site is the same but all keyword has lose ranking: from 1 page to 3 and from 1 to 6 page... What can I do? I risk to lose my work sob.
Algorithm Updates | | giordanoshop0 -
3 weeks after PR8 is Implemented
I recently Received a PR-8 Backlink from a very authorative site. Its been 3 weeks now and it seems ALL my rankings are actually down .As i continue to check my rankings for the top 10 keys every day,I see the ranks jumping from 09 down to 42 and back up to 09,This is every day it seems the last week ...It just seems that in 3 weeks the bouncing would stop by now. The keyword i am speaking of actually gets about 250,000 searches a month. Prior to the pr 8 link i was solid at #11 Google. BUT now im at #12 - #13..Does anyone think that maybe something else is going on here??
Algorithm Updates | | consumers0 -
Domain Authority and Google keywords
Hi there, We have a domain authority of 33, one of our competitors has an authority of 10, yet they appear to list higher on many keyword searches in google. Is there a reason for this? Our site is 5 months old, and their site is over 3 yrs old. Thanks for your feedback 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | PHDAustralia680