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4 of 6 sites penalized today

It appears that 4 of my 6 sites got penalized today by big G. Most of these sites were all ranking #1 for their keyword phrases for the past 3 to 7 months. I generally check on rankings everyday and today I noticed 4 of my 6 websites have dropped anywhere from page 4 to nowhere to be found. All but one site are nowhere to be found (I stopped looking after page 15 of Google). These sites were fresh domains that I built links to slowy using 2 tiers (Tier 1 contextual only, Tier 2 kitchen sink). These sites were ranking for low to moderate competition local keywords. Most of the sites took about 1 to 2 months before they started ranking on first page. It appears that they all lost their rankings at the same time. I've checked my anchor text and links using Majesticseo and my anchor % for targeted keyword phrases are anywhere from 15 to 18%. No big loss of links either. Has anyone else lost rankings recently? Any suggestions on what to next with these sites?
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Comments

  • Are they penalized or deindexed? If deindexed, move on. If they are still ranking in other SEs leave them for that. If they are getting no traffic from anywhere, you can delete them and recycle the content for a similar site.

    15-18% anchor seems high to me for a long term site. Was the % based on total links or refering domains?
  • % was based on total links
  • edited October 2013
    3 of the 4 sites I cannot even find the homepage in Google search results. I am finding inner pages like the contact page, services, etc in the Google search results but my homepages are nowhere to be found. If I type the exact domain name in Google than my site shows up but not when I search the targeted keyword phrases that I was ranking #1 for. If my sites were deindexed wouldnt they not show at all even when searching their exact domain?
  • Pengiun 2.1 check twitter (mattcuts)...
  • It appears I may have been hit by Penguin 2.1.  Heres the link to the blog about 2.1 if anyones wants to read about it: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

    I've been using Kontent Machine 2 for my Tier 1 articles and building Tier 2 off those. Should I stop this method with my sites that havnt been hit and stick with original content on web 2's for Tier 1?
  • edited October 2013
    @sr1racer. My most important site which has been ranking on page one for a year on about ten high competition keywords is nowhere to be found today. I've used SER the entire time under strict recommended tier methods, to get it on page one and keep it there. I checked and its not de indexed but i cant find it in any results now. This is going to kill me because its my main business site offering professional service. Have to go back to PPC or else I'm doomed. Have you recently started using one of the indexing services that are being offered on this forum? That is the only thing I have done different over the last few weeks. Really hoping this is just a fluke and it comes back tomorrow...
  • edited October 2013
    Mike,

    Sounds like we have the same problem. I also used the strict link building methods recommended on this site. Looks like we be victims of Googles new update. I use lindexed & SEO indexer for my indexing. Might have to scrap those sites and start over.
  • @Mike, Don't panic my friend. All you have to do is buy a new domain post the same site. With the old one block robots!... and Don't think about doing any redirects. Wait until the new site index. Start Fresh! that's all
  • edited October 2013
    @Raumaitre - I kept telling myself to get started on a backup site in case this ever happens but I guess I learned my lesson the hard way. It took at least six months to get it where it was. A lot of work. It was a five year old site when I started with SER so its on a lot of cards, letterhead, and local community. Sorry, sounds like I'm giving a eulogy at a funeral. Time to get started all over again I guess, unless it comes back. I will report in a few days.
  • It won't come back that's for sure. I don't want to be pessimist but man this is the 4th time the same sh*t happens to me so I'm used to it. You can check your top 10 competitors you might get a surprise that now the competition is easier than it was before.
  • Tim89Tim89 www.expressindexer.solutions
    edited October 2013
    image

    nothing but ups for me.



  • @Tim89 amazing man. I wonder what is your strategy in regards of link velocity?
  • Tim89Tim89 www.expressindexer.solutions
    second site i have just finished checking;

    image
  • @tim89 - show me some stats for
    A 6 year old establiished site that has been on page one for the last year with careful link building - and now today it's gone from search results completely.
    I don't think an indexing service is going to help me here now but I will say that the only thing I did different was start using an index service a few weeks ago. Maybe it had nothing to do with it - maybe I didn't drip feed the links slowly enough to the service- maybe my site will reappear tomorrow - live and learn
  • Tim89Tim89 www.expressindexer.solutions
    @Mike you're looking at them.

    ofcourse an indexing service will help you, it will help you index your new links you're going to need to build to get yourself out of that mess.


    ;):)>-
  • Guys, don't panic. Im optimistic you can reverse this. Start adding more contextual links to your Tier 1s and 2s and stay away from anything that screams spam such as forum links wit no content, guestbooks, etc.

    I did alot of testing this summer and found that adding contentless T2 links negatively impacted the authority of my Tier 1s. However, I was able to counteract it by adding more contextual links. You just need to shift the balance.

    If you been building crappy links directly to your MS than Im not really sure what to do. Contextual link tiering should work.


  • edited October 2013
    Over a year i have about 20k links still verified. Lately I've been building/indexing only high quality context links to the site slowly - about 30 to 50 a day - no junk or 2nd tier for about the last four months - I was maintaining my rank so I thought that would keep it stable forever. Two weeks ago I did submit about 2000 older contextual article unindexed links to a index service, about 200 per day. Maybe that was too fast or too many a day and g didn't like?
  • Another thing u can do is unlink your T1s to your MS that have suffered rank drops for your target KWs. Try building fresh T1s with higher quality T2s.
  • Sounds like Google Hummingbird as I mentioned in my another thread today (the "Penalized?" one).

    It is notable that I was penalized on around 11 September at VERY SAME time on 2 sites, exactly the same time like you had your 4 sites penalized at once. Google announced about their Hummingbird rollout on 26th September and that it was running since a month, so that explains that my site might be a victim of that hummingbird thing.
  • I've been on some SEO forums and it looks like alot of people took big hits today. Google says Penguin 2.1 is supposed to effect 1% of search results, more like 1% didnt get effected.
  • Well Hummingbird is supposed to make more than 90% of search results affect, not sure if its true but that's what I heard. Sounds more like Hummingbird effect rather than Penguin.
  • Whichever one it is it hit me pretty hard. All the sites I was using SER along with Kontent Machine 2 to build contextual tier 1 links to my MS got hit. The sites I manually built Tier 1's to havnt been hit yet. We'll see what happens today.
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    @tim89 - I don't think now is the time to be promoting your index service and the premise that it's somehow penguin proof or will help you recover from penguin. That is a bit silly :D lol

    @sweeppicker - My sites that were hit were old sites that had been hit by penguin before and i had managed to recover, using the methods you mentioned and by diluting anchor text. It seems to me that once a site is hit by penguin, G has it on it's radar for the next update too.

    Maybe better to switch domains from now on, what do you think?
  • I got hit as well, but only on specific pages of the web sites. The thing that I've noticed is that those pages that were hit had much more links than the first 100 results in the SERPs. I mean, the top 9 pages had like 20-50 links and mine had around 6000.

    It doesn't have to do with anchor text I believe, or any other type of a link to your money site. Only velocity which is not proportional to the competition on the first 10 pages in the SERPs.

    For me it probably means that I'm going to use GSA SER as a T2-T3 contextual linking tool only, since it is clear that I've been clearly going over the top :D

    I mean, if you check out some competition analysis tool (like Market Samurai), it is very fishy to see a page at the #1 spot with 1000x more number of links :D. Well, that's my take on it anyways. Maybe we should all start adapting at the particular SERPs more.
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    @jurky3fo - It could be that too, my hit sites also have more links than competitors (not as much as 1000x though - Less than 100x for sure).

    But, that is the case for nearly all my sites. The only ones that were hit were those with heavy anchor text % - So maybe a combination of both is the true cause.
  • Personally, I don't think its the number of links matter so much as the type of links. Google always says they want useful content and contextual links still push rank from what Im seeing. Its all the junky stuff like guestbooks, signature links, etc that can hurt your rank when used as a Tier 1 or Tier 2. 

    I tried several different ways to build tiered links this summer and the greater the number of articles, blog posts I had indexed at the T2 level the higher my rank and they are still holding up.

     I don't build alot of T1s (mostly T2s), so its a matter of analayzing where your drops occurred and removing those T1s and building up better ones with contextual tiers. With clouds indexing service you can power those up in a matter of hours. The benefit of the tiered approach is you can remove the links touching your site that are "toxic" or downgraded and start over.

    Don't give up folks. 
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    @sweeppicker - I have only contextual links on tier 1, so that can't be the only factor.
    I do have junk on tier 2 - But again that applies to all sites, not only the ones that were hit.

    You are 100% right that they can be recovered, but don't be surprised if they are hit again in future updates. That's exactly what's happened to me.
  • Tim89Tim89 www.expressindexer.solutions
    edited October 2013
    I think @jurky3fo has the right idea, I too dismissed the idea of this update being an anchor text diversity issue.

    My two sites that I showed SERP positions for both had around 50% exact match anchors pointing towards them.

    @gooner my service can get you back at a faster rate than what any other indexing service can do in regards to indexing ratios as high as 70% in 10 days, the only way to get those rankings back is to build more links, that's fact, then index those links, these are both facts.

    Disregard my service for a moment, just build links and get them indexed to counteract these drops in rankings.
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    edited October 2013
    @tim89 - You're right, that's exactly how i recovered my sites in the past.

    I wasn't trying to doubt your service btw, i haven't tried it yet but by all accounts it's very good in terms of indexing rates and price.

    Now i'm promoting it for you too! haha
  • @Gooner. The other factor I was talking about is junk links to power up your T1s. If you reach a certain threshold your rankings drops.  They negatively impact the power of your T1. That's something I experienced this summer.

    Two solutions that worked for me. Increase the ratio of contextual T2 links to those T1s ... Or delete the effected T1 and start over ( in more extreme case if your out of top 100) and build only contextual tier T2s.
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