Penalized?

Pratik

Both niche sites hosted on same server (both who recently ranked in top 3) have gone to 5 and 6th page just couple of hours back and it came as surprise as to if both has gone down at same time, then is it a small-medium penalty? What steps should I be taking now if it is? I was recently since past 2 weeks posting on just greater than PR1 for tier 1, so I took it off now and also disabled blog comment and php exploit on T1A.

@ron it'd be extremely helpful to hear your opinion. I was earning quite good and now it is definitely a heart crushing experience. Guess it's not as easy as one would say "move on" as the sufferer only knows what it feels like lol.

gooner

First i suggest you wait 24 hours, it might be at number 1 or 2 by then... hoping for you

Pratik

@gooner You had a similar experience? Just asking as you're sort of confident and in not-a-worry mood.

Pratik

Also, should I slow down link building rate now or keep the same as it might have even more negative effect or what? Anyone?

gooner

Well maybe yes, for how long was your site ranked at 3?
Sometimes (a lot of times i find with SER) the rankings will jump around.
So, i'm just hoping for you that it comes back higher.

I don't want to give you false hope, but i am just saying don't panic yet and make a bad decision in haste, because whatever you were doing before was clearly working.

So maybe wait a day or two (continue link building) and then if no improvement then try to analyze the problem... and i'm sure people here will help you.

Pratik

@gooner Thanks a lot for the reply.

Well, for both niche sites (hosted on same server) were jumping around 3-5th position (first page) for some 10-15 days from now. So I'd consider it as a substantial time I guess.

It's also worth to note that I have piwik installed (tracking software like Google Analytics) and both niche sites have same tracking URL (tracking software is hosted on different common domain name), So could it be that Google found some correlation by analyzing that footprint?

Really bewildered with both sites going down at same time. If it was dance, wouldn't it be just single domain? Why both? Isn't it indicating of some penalty, or sort of mini penalty?

Not sure, doomed pretty much.

2Take2

Did you make any changes to the sites that you haven't already mentioned?

Pratik

@2Take2 Nope. All I did during around 5-6 days back was a Google translate tool, however I think that should not affect anything?

2Take2

Not sure if its the problem, but If it's a Google product then I personally wouldn't have it on, or connected with any site that I was spamming.

Either way, spooky that they both went down at the same time, but IMHO unlikely to have anything to do with the server, probably something far less sinister.

I take it that the 2 sites are not interlinked?

gooner

@pratik - No problem.

I have sites on page one longer than 15 days and they still rise and fall. It happens my friend, more since all the Google updates over the last year or so. Although generally they don't drop as much as yours have, but Google is a strange unpredictable beast nowadays.

Both sites together is a strange coincidence but not 100% proof it is connected.

I would suggest you wait 1 - 2 days and see what happens, if it is a dance it usually comes back soon.

If it is a definite drop then i would still continue building links, it depends what engines and type of links you are building of course. Hopefully contextual on tier 1?

You can check your link velocity, maybe a whole bunch of your links got deleted/de-indexed at once?

If not, check competitors backlinks and see what kind of totals and types of links they have compared to you. Unlikely to help solve the immediate problem but will give you ideas of what to do next.

If everything is ok there, then maybe also buy some quality high PR links and see if they help.

2Take2

Some good points raised above by @Gooner.

TBH it could be anything really - Definitely keep building links to the sites for a while, but perhaps lower the velocity a bit to simulate what would naturally happen if a site dropped a couple of pages in the SERPs.

Chris

Pratik  just curious - are you running SEO Indexer while doing your link building in GSA SER?

ron

@Pratik- The one thing you must not do when in this type of situation is to suddenly change your seo behavior. Keep building the links at exactly the same speed, etc.

Take a look at your seo behavior in ahrefs and/or majestic and take a look at your anchor text distribution. Just to make sure you haven't accidentally done something bad like overweighting a particular phrase.

Stuff like this happens. It is harder to deal with if there wasn't a large algo change where everybody is affected. Then you feel alone. So if you are alone on this, that means you did something wrong, and it usually means you can fix it. You just need to analyze to your best ability.

It would be helpful to know when you got the domains, when the site went up, how long did it take to get to page 1, and how long were you there? These pieces of info can help.

 

Pratik

@Chris No but I did manually took out all links from T1A and after that and sent to Indexer.

@ron I agree not to change the game plan in such situations so that is why I've hold. It's also worthy to note that unfortunately I did not used those word filters for sites on not to post to, meaning it might have posted to adult/pron sites as well. Could that be a problem?

I also checked ahrefs on your advice and I did saw that my main anchor text has 60% distribution. Is that a problem?

The domains were acquired exactly 2 months back, fresh registration, I pushed site up on the very second day and started building links the very same day. And some 10-15 days back, I was initially ranked #1, then I was floating between 3-5th position )however, the first niche site remained on 1st position most of the times) until the fall down to 6th and 7th pages yesterday. So yes I stood there for like 10 days easily.

donchino

The thing you are describing seems like anchor penalty in my experience.. too quickly too much links to the exact anchor... bumps up fast but holds there only for a week or so. I've tried to fix these situations, but unfortunately I have to say that so far it has been easier to start it again with fresh domain and site.

Pratik

@donchino Oh, so it could be that I think as I was speculating. Starting fresh is sort of PITA maybe. Do you think I should increase generic anchor text now in the current project and try to fix the situation perhaps? What did you do?

I'd be interested to hear from @ron regarding this too.

donchino

@Pratik I continued link building with diversifying the anchors and not using so much exact anchor. Also on some site used some reputable link building service, but so far didn't see any ranking on these anchors that got penalized, though they did start ranking with other keywords that hadn't been penalized.
If your domains are only 2 months old and you started ranking so fast, then maybe it's not so late to start again and better.. I know @ron writing previously how he recycles the failed projects by taking the whole content from old site and putting it onto a new domain (while deleting it from the old source ofc), so no need to create everything from zero.

Pratik

Interesting. I'll still wait to hear @ron 's input on my previous questions. Thereafter I'll decide if I should just scrape off those sites and start fresh again, but this time, more sensible and careful and build it slow.

2Take2

60% exact match anchor text ratio!? :-O

Still curious as to why both your sites went down at the same time though. - Are they linked together in any way shape or form; hyper linked, same WMT account, etc?

Pratik

@2Take2 Yeah, haha. I did foolish mistake of having it.

Yup, its very surprising, it might be a mini penalty? They're hosted on same server (IP) and have same design. As well as I mentioned earlier that I use Piwik (self hosted analytics on a different domain, instead of Google Analytics, yeah I am paranoid and stay safe and do not use G's tools as long as I can), so both sites had footprint of that tracking URL. Also note that its hosted on same server too, lol. Could that have lead to a solid conclusion to G to enforce penalty?

Other than that, no, they do not link to each other in any way or form. But the content is sort of similar on both sites and looks are similar too. Just main text is changed as per the niche requirement. Could it be that? Should I change it now? And no, as I said being superbly paranoid, I don't use WMT for any such niche sites. I didn't even add url to Google's ADDURL lol.

Thanks.

2Take2

@Pratik, I'm still doubtful that it was anything to do with servers or analytics, but I guess that it will remain a mystery. :-??

Tim89

@Pratik have you analysed your backlinks? maybe links died, maybe links became deindexed..

I love how people automatically think they've been penalised because they lose rankings all of a sudden.. it's quite funny.

- import your links into something like BLM then look at them.
- Index check them
- Look for anchor diversity, sometimes links can get indexed fine and you keep your anchors low, then all of a sudden you may have indexed 100's of exact match anchors and boom, your rankings drop. you aren't in control of your index rate, the search engines are.
- ranking drops could be any of these factors, anchor text diversity, link loss..

I bet you've probably lost a few strong links, hence why your rankings plummeted.

Pratik

@Tim89 I do reckon with your "link loss" assumption I believe. Here are stats;

1st niche site:

As per above screenshot, 24 and 20 links were lost on 11th and 12th September respectively, for first niche site.

2nd niche site:

15 links were lost at each day (i.e. 11th and 12th) on 2nd niche site.

So I guess this could somehow is showing some similarity. Perhaps you're correct about the losing strongest links.

Also I guess these numbers are quite big for link loss and could have strong impact on decrease of ranking?

Oh and btw I follow Ron's 6 tiers structure.

I'm not very experienced as some of you guys here who are certainly big players haha so yes I could not come to some conclusion and relatively take things mistaken for being penalized or something.

What are your views though on this report guys?

Thank you.

Tim89

I would go full throttle with link building, even if I hit rank 1, as long as you keep your anchor ratios.

I would never lower my links a day, ever. ranking is simply creating your own trend, you need to conquer someone elses trend then the sky is the limit, you then become the milestone for others, you set the limits. this is also referred to as.. competition.

Pratik

@Tim89 I did lowered my main anchor text (which was 60%), I hope that's right.

What do you have to say about the lost links? Did they were sufficient to create an impact?

Tim89

@Pratik

any links lost could effect a massive drop in rankings, it all depends on how strong the links you lost were, which unfortunately I can't comit to, this is why I personally think it's important to invest in a tool such as Backlink Monitor so once you hit the number one spots you simply analyse your links, index check them, look at anchor texts variants, then you have a clear picture, in what is making you rank.

Then if any ranks drop, you simply rerun those links within BLM and check what has happened, it gives you a clear picture, unfortunately staring at how many links you have created within GSA is kind of worthless, it does not give you a clear insight to how your backlink profile looks like.

If you ask me what makes me rank for a specific term I'm ranking for I can tell you in a couple of minutes, for example;

200 exact match phrases
800 variations of my phrase
1200 generic phrases
all indexed ofcourse.

If however tomorrow I lose 20 links from my exact match phrase pool and my rankings drop by 2 or 3 positions then I would need to top up my exact anchor links wouldn't I?

How would you be able to analyse that using your current methods? ahrefs and majestic seo is O.K for estimates but I wouldnt rely on them

davbel

@Pratik I don't know anything else other than what you've posted here, but looking at those ahref screenies, I'd guess you have "negative link velocity", which basically means you are not building enough links to make up for the links that you lose.

Taking that into consideration, it's very likely that what @tim89 says about losing a few strong links is probably right too.

You need to be building more or getting more of the ones you build indexed

Pratik

All, thank you very much.

However, @davbel @Tim89 losing rankings for both sites at EXACT SAME TIME is mind boggling mystery isn't it?

Also links are building fine, but they do take time to index so I still build at same pace but what if they're not indexed yet? Lot of things are possible here.

Tim89

@Pratik not if you've used the same global site list, maybe certain webmasters go through their sites at various dates fighting webspam and just maybe as you've included your global site lists into the mix when building your links, these links have all been moderated at once, resulting in many sites tanking.

maybe... just maybe...

dab

On the use of Piwik you can hide your Piwik server here's a link to the info:
http://piwik.org/faq/how-to/#faq_132

Pratik

@dab I guess but it has limitations, like it tracks your own visits (can't use cookies to exclude your visits, etc).

@Tim89 I see. But chance is less I guess.