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This is a tough post for me to write, but I’m going to write it because it should serve as an example. Let me first give you a little history. Picture it (kudos to anyone who got that intro)… I wasn’t always known as Sugarrae online… I switched to the nickname in March of 2005 and bought the domain.
I threw up a single page that was totally vanilla (meaning no design for you newbs) with a few links to my fave places and a few pics. If it even had ten links going to it, I’d have been shocked. I had a personal blog that I’d been blogging in for several years and had no interest to have a second one. When I became a moderator at webmasterworld (which I knew was happening a bit before it was officially announced) I was informed I’d have to list my site url in my profile.
At that point, I figured, why not launch a real site on the sugarrae.com domain (incidentally, a few months before, due to a shitty host, I lost my entire personal blog - shut up, I am now the *queen* of backups, lesson learned). So, in February of 06, the doorway came down and the new Sugarrae blog went up. Within two weeks, it was flooded with inbound links in part to friends linking to me from their own sites and in part from an interview I did with YPN. I had also redirected my then/now defunct personal blog to Sugarrae, along with a few vanity domain names (i.e. raehoffman.com).
When it launched, it was on Expression Engine, which I later found out was a complete nightmare in regards to SEO, so I then moved it to wordpress. I also put up a magazine style homepage and moved the blog to the root. This past summer, I decided to get rid of the magazine style homepage and move the blog back to the root with the main blog on the homepage again.
The point of giving you all that history was to partially let you in on how Sugarrae evolved. I posted some stats on the blog’s first birthday and rest assured that the numbers/increases are much higher now. The other part is to let you know that I changed url structures… a *lot* over the almost two years the blog has been open as well as had several *legitimate* redirects to the Sugarrae site.
It was a few months in that I noticed the blog didn’t “act” right in the Google serps. I wasn’t ranking for things I should have been ranking for (as in very peculiar queries that had exact matches on my blog - not mainstream terms). Something was wrong. So, way back when, I went, privately, to some of the biggest names in this industry because it was driving me nuts and I figured I was too “close” to see the problem.
The responses I got ranged from “you need more content”, to “you need more trust”, to “you need more time”, to “maybe the personal blog redirect is getting you caught in some filter” to “you’ve recently changed url structures, give Google time to sort it out”. Deep down, I knew none of these were the issue.
But, I now have more content, I (should) have trust, I’ve waited, all redirects, including the vanity ones, were removed a long while back (I didn’t want to leave anything untried) and Google has had more than enough time since my last url structure change in the summer to “figure things out”. And the site still doesn’t act right.
So now I am going to state the obvious - what I’ve known for a long time - and give you the evidence that supports this conclusion. Additionally, since it’s undeserved, I am going to officially put my face on the poster for the often referred to “collateral damage” (because I am going to assume that this is in no way a “personal thing” between me and Google and that it’s a result of getting caught in some filter).
The Sugarrae website is penalized, devalued - whatever the hell you want to call it. Google has given it the smackdown.
It’s photoshopped people
Before I present my exhibits of evidence, let me first explain that the Sugarrae website currently has over 20K backlinks. And if you look through them, you see that I certainly am not, on a sane planet, lacking authority or trust in regards to those backlinks.
I do not now, nor have I ever sold links (though it would be easy to confuse that and make the wrong decision) - and since my toolbar PR is fine and has not been destroyed as some other people’s have - I don’t think that is the culprit anyway. This penalty, devaluation, whatever, has been going on long before the idiocy of trying to identify unidentifiable paid links.
I certainly don’t buy links for this site, spam in any form for this site or anything else that would be considered shady. The redirects originally put towards this site were domains I owned that ranked for “rae” - it isn’t like I changed topics (and remember, those redirects have been removed for over six months anyway). The *only* questionable thing this site does is that it has text under the top navbar graphics and the logo that are word for word what is said on the image itself. Not a single alteration. Now, according to the former comments re: hidden text via css, supposedly, according to Matt:
I’m not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo-but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I said “imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone checking out a spam report. If you show your company’s name and it’s Expo Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you decide to show is ‘Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale …’ then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad.”
So, assuming Google isn’t instituting insane filters that are grabbing text underneath my images that contain no “keywords” and penalizing me for them with no discretion or intelligence (”me see hidden word, me penalize site”), then that shouldn’t be the problem either. And assuming Google knows its head from its ass in regards to redirects, the changes in url structure shouldn’t be an issue either. And I’d hope that Google can tell the asshole on the .net of my domain (get in line to yell at me for not registering it) is not the original.
So now you might be saying to yourself:
Ok, Rae, we get it. Your site is an authority in the niche, it has trust, it doesn’t do anything it’s not supposed to… what, you whining because you’re not ranking for “seo blog”?
No. when I say I don’t rank for things I should, I mean the hell out of it. Here we go:
— link experts sugarrae - all five sites ranking above me are linking to me… additionally, by default, having sugarrae - a made up word - in the query and not having my site return as the number one result is insane.
— monkey balls seo - now, even if you buy that themadhat (love you Aaron) should rank above me for that term in spite of being a younger, less linked to site (he did post it first after a twitter message about it), there are two scraper sites (who scraped *my* site, and not Aaron’s) ranking above me and two video game sites that don’t have the phrase appear as exact match on the page.
— google face of evil - I could buy the sites appearing above me, until you hit the scraper site (again, scraping *my* site) right before mine.
— shameless stuntie mybloglog - Note that stuntdubl’s site appears first with a scraper site underneath. Now repeat the search with omitted results included. Oh, there’s my site! Look, it is being considered a duplicate of stuntdubl’s page, even though the *less than one sentence* of duplication that appears on his page is a trackback from my site complete with a link back to me.
— “a note to my fellow women of seo” sugarrae - I don’t think I even need to explain why this serp result is beyond fucked up for this query. And before you ask, yes, it is indeed indexed.
As most of you know, I’ve been linking to the troublemaking whore with whore in the anchor text for almost a year now. I’m guessing that you finally understand why we’ve been doing it now. So get this…
— outing people for taking naps during the day whore - I don’t know how much more obscure you can get. Granted, this one is without quotes (be patient). Now, let’s ignore that fact that *I* am number 8 for this serp, even with exact query match. The whore himself doesn’t rank in the top 1000 for the query, even with an exact phrase match linking to him.
— “outing people for taking naps during the day whore” - Now I’ve done the search with quotes (hey, at least now I’m number one) but take notice of the fact that I am the *only* result for this query.
Now we’ll stop, because if you don’t already get the point of the above two slides, you might need a little bit of knowledge to do so. When you do a search for rae hoffman you’ll notice that MFE Interactive is at the top of the second page. If you look at the cache, you’ll notice that the following phrase appears: “These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: rae hoffman”.
You should get now why only my site appearing for the outing phrase in quotes is a bit troubling since the outing whore has a direct link to his page. For whatever reason, Google is not counting my link to his page. Whether or not that is true of *all* of my links I have no way of knowing.
Ladies and gentlemen of the blogsphere… after the evidence presented here, one is only left to conclude one of three things:
1. Google doesn’t know its head from its ass
2. Someone at Google dislikes me on a personal level (again, we’re not going there, as I don’t believe this to be the cause, even though it must be listed as an option)
3. I’m penalized or devalued - collateral damage from some filter or whatever you want to call their “spam detection efforts”
Either way, it’s annoying as hell. I run a good site, that follows “the rules” (gag me, but it does), I get a lot of links, a lot of traffic - and I’ve been slapped by Google for no reason. I’m pissed off - not only because I don’t deserve whatever the hell is going on - but also because I’m smart enough to understand what’s happening when a lot of other people (meaning non search marketers) aren’t.
I’m guessing it is number three with a dash (ok, maybe a spoonful) of number one thrown in. Either way, we always hear about “potential collateral damage” from Google’s (sometimes warranted, sometimes insanely overzealous) crusades, but rarely see the faces of those who become it. The problem I have now is how to fix a penalty I didn’t do anything to receive and therefore have nothing to “fix”.
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Thanks for sharing this. I am sure its a tough cookie to swallow when your as smart as you are, and have optimized the hell out of many a website.
With that said, I have resolved the issue:
http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/seomoz-werewolf-cards.jpg
As you are well aware Rand Fishkin outed you as a blackhat. Your site it appears is for ever doomed in googles algo.
This is clearly Rand’s fault.
Interesting. But I see that this post itself is now ranking for many of the keyword examples you provided. Perhaps it’s not your entire site that is “penalized”.
Don’t feel so bad. Google has done the same to many people and usually for no cause. I don’t know about the Black hat charge but no one should be ‘outing’ anyone in matters dealing with any search engine that can for no good reason at all just delete your sites from it’s index or kill your pagerank.
Haha, it’s pretty funny checking out your links to the Google searches now, since this post is ranking for them. With indexing that fast…maybe they don’t hate you all that much!
Well, that sure as heck sucks. We had an issue very similar to this earlier this year for about 6 months and I put it down to one of those very same three reasons. In the end it was a duplicate content filter kicking into place and tanking the entire site, even though the duplicate content was limited to one section of an otherwise purely unique content site. I imagine it was also a bit of 1 but that thought comes quickly at times like that :)
And yes, I’m sure that was the reason since a Googler ended up confirming it and with a few quick fixes most of the problem was resolved a week or two later…
You need Susan from the Google Groups!!
Also good to finally understand where the whole ‘whore’ thing was coming from :lol:
Damn…it sucks to be you.
Honestly, I would just buy a new domain and 301 this one to the new one. It’ll probably rank better than this one right off the bat.
When I do the searches, I only occassionally see the problem being referenced. In my SERPS:
google face of evil - number 1
monkey balls seo - number 1
In the others, I’m seeing as posted. And that looks like the blog is probably floating on the edge of something. and of course that’s #3 so I’m not saying anything new I guess.
Rae
You’re aware that the entire blog is duplicated (even this post) on sugarrae.net right?
Reuben
@wheel - My blog got tanked monday and I think she did those before it happened. Apparently this is a bad neighborhood to link to ;)
I must say, your honesty on this subject is literally inspiring. So many “professionals”, especially in search marketing, would never spill the beans like you have here. From reading your blog for awhile, honesty is what I would expect. However, many people would never let an issue like this get out.
Hopefully, this post will cause an action that can remedy the problem.
I’d bet this will be fixed soon, Rae. There’s no doubt that the right pair of eyes will see this over at Goofle! Still sucks that it had to come to this, though!
When these things get sorted out, it often comes down to reason #4: duplicate content/internal link flow.
Matt even looked into a situation on behalf of a webmaster where that was the problem, had some people at Google look at it, and even they didn’t realize the issue was PR from a dup/link flow situation. Not that they are SEOs :)
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/selling-links-that-pass-pagerank/#comment-117639
http://www.fabulousfifty.com/?p=252
I have had Google personally hand penalize my site before. I actually had an interview with somebody on Matts team. I mentioned a site that I had done and the next day it stopped ranking for the terms it was ranking for. Don’t ever think Google is beyond doing things by hand. They used to pr0 your site and take it out of the index. Now days they will put a weird penalty on your site where you stop ranking for stuff but are still in Google and will come up for stuff in quotes.
You mention a few google bombs you had set up. Matt and his team think of google as a religion. The guy told me that spam makes him actually sick. They have teams of people that dig through forums and blogs trying to find stuff. I know I applied for the job and went through 3 interviews.
@rueben and dave - if Google can’t tell that the .net - which was registered after mine and has no links isn’t the original, their problems would be WAY worse than anyone ever imagined.
@ogletree the whore stuff was always different (aka, I didn’t use the same phrase all the time) and I didn’t start doing that until way after this had become a problem - to prove the problem indeed existed.
Ouch. That really sucks. If your site has been google slapped, I can only imagine the fate of my own.
The sugarrae.net thing does make me think though, although it’s not indexed in google. If you own that domain(which I assume you did), I would try to do a perma-redirect over to this site, or kill the relative linking, so instead of it’s internal links going to sugarrae.net, they at least link to sugarrae.com.
Damn. I hope Matt or someone resolves this and you get to the bottom of the actual problem - and maybe shed some light on this for people in a similar situation.
Strange indeed.
To be clear surarrae.net isn’t rae it’s a scraper.
So thats what all that monkey balls stuff was about.
It’s strange how sites get singled out. Maybe Shari Thurow framed you!
Penalty or not, I’ll keep reading :)
I don’t think you have been penalized.
Your new post is ranking for a lot of those queries (as others have mentioned)… and it was indexed fast.
I think the pages you used as examples were in the google supplemental index. You don’t always rank for terms in “Quotes” when the pages get put in the supplemental index. (It looks like you have about 40 pages in the supp index.)
As far as the “whore” anchor text to graywolf… the text is not on his page… just because you linked to it does not mean the page will rank for that term… the Googlebomb fixes changed that.
There are some other ways I think you could optimize your internal linking to help with your rankings… but that’s another issue.
There is no penalty or hand edit on your site.
You might want to take the difference between an EXACT FIND mode query and a FIND ALL mode query into consideration.
I would also recommend reading some of the technical literature on relevance scoring algorithms.
Links really play very little part in this.
@Dave L - It’s not duplicate content or internal link flow.
1. Everything on this blog is set up correctly to avoid duplicate content and to properly flow the link juice
2. This blog has enough authority (deep inbounds, etc) to knock out any scrapers duplicating it.
3. If Google hasn’t figured out how wordpress works yet, I’m selling my stock and buying IAC.
Not to be a jerk but see the “top posts” list you have on the right hand site of this blog? Search Google for those titles and you will find that every single one ranks #1 for this site. Now refine the searches to more competitive terms, yep you also rank for some of them. Not the signs of a penalty, I suggest everyone who is beating the drum put it down because it is a primitive instrument. You are not doing webmasters any help by confusing them even more!
@Michael Lodispoto
That was sarcasm :-)
@SlightlyShadySeo graywolf is correct, I do not own sugarrae.net - get in line behind him to yell at me for the oversight ;-)
@dorian considering Google shows 128 of 128 pages indexed, I don’t see how I could have 40 in supplemental. And even if I did, there is no reason 40 of my pages WOULD be supplemental as I write on very unique content matter each time, often with long and well linked to posts.
>>>the text is not on his page… just because you linked to it does not mean the page will rank for that term… the Googlebomb fixes changed that
really, then how come mfeinteractive.com ranks for my name, even though it does not appear on the page (if you check the results, that happens for several results on my name). Again, I didn’t hit graywolf with one term - I hit him with 100 variations that INCLUDED the term - big difference.
>>>There is no penalty or hand edit on your site
Thanks, didn’t know you worked for Google. ;-)
>>>@Michael Martinez - EXACT FIND mode query and a FIND ALL mode query into consideration
I did, thus why I tried to show several different results - both for general (no quote queries) and quote (exact match) queries. The women of seo one - come on! LOL.
@TheMadHat hahahahahahahaha
@SEO Bozo Box >>>Not to be a jerk but see the “top posts” list you have on the right hand site of this blog? Search Google for those titles and you will find that every single one ranks #1 for this site.
>>>Now refine the searches to more competitive terms, yep you also rank for some of them.
Really, yet, the first example I gave: link experts sugarrae is in the sidebar for top posts and it doesn’t for the query I gave - and all those above me are referencing *my* post. Before you accuse me of beating a non existent drum, research your own soapbox. :)
Hey Rae, I checked into it a little bit. I didn’t see any recent issues with your domain, but I asked someone to see if they could uncover any older/legacy or algorithmic issues.
What, Matt, not even a comment on the pic? One of my guys took great pride in making it ;-)
And for the record - I wasn’t expecting “special help” - I am more concerned about this as an overall issue. But, if you have a reason why “exact quote of one of my posts” sugarrae with a decent number of links to it doesn’t rank having nothing to do with a penalty of devaluation, I’m all ears :)
@mattcutts or googlers following up how about some details on the older/legacy anomalies which might be affecting people.
Rae,
Now I know why people were coming to my site when they searched for “a note to my fellow women of seo sugarrae”
Fix this Matt :-)
Rae,
It’s probably cuz i voted you the funniest on the SEJ awards. Everything I touch …… :)
I vote for option 1.
Come on guys, let’s see some facts, I am tired of these baiting Matt Cutts posts that draw us in, then when Matt comments all he gets is goofy responses from those accusing Google of evil, boring!
Teach us something we do not know, prove to us that Google is penalizing this site. I do not know about the rest of you circus geeks but I feel baited, I DO NOT like being tricked.
Some of us still believe in credibility, credibility is gained but more easily lost.
Thanks
Very weird.
For a
“a note to my fellow women of seo” sugarrae
search, I see *this post* at #1 (and sugarrae.net, but not the correct post, at 5 & 6)
I am suspicious that the .net is causing you problems… but I think there is something more happening too. It has the feel of a filter, no?
You know what @SEO Bozo Box? Bite me. If there is one thing I’m not, it’s a liar. I say exactly what is on my mind 100% of the time.
1. I have proved that Google is not treating my site correctly. Feel free to explain:
“a note to my fellow women of seo” sugarrae not ranking. Go for it.
As an aside, it was YOU who decided to state that every post under my “top posts” was ranking - but I’ve now shown you an instance of you being *wrong*. Nice sidestepping of that issue.
>>>I am tired of these baiting Matt Cutts posts that draw us in, then when Matt comments all he gets is goofy responses from those accusing Google of evil, boring!
Let me repeat - bite me. I don’t “bait” Matt… in all honesty, I didn’t expect him to comment on my blog. In all the times I’ve ever lashed out at Google, Matt has never commented. The only comment he’s ever made on this blog was on something not related to Google and tongue in cheek. I don’t need to “bait” Matt - if I wanted his specific attention, I’d get it behind the scenes. I posted this because it IS NOT RIGHT and I have a loud enough voice to bring attention to it.
>>>I DO NOT like being tricked.
And you haven’t been, but if you think I’m “baiting” unsubscribe from my feed and fuck off. If you’ve read me for any length of time, I’m no bullshitter, no baiter and again, no liar.
>>>Some of us still believe in credibility, credibility is gained but more easily lost
I’ve been earning my crediblity long before most people in this industry even knew the industry existed. Say what you want about agreeing with or disagreeing with me, but again, you can fuck off when it comes to calling me a liar.
I’ve emailed numerous top brand name SEO’s about this issue over the last almost TWO YEARS. This is no bait and it’s bullshit that you’d even accuse me of it.
From the Google datacenter I search from “a note to my fellow women of seo” is #1 currently for this blog? Did you mean without the quotes? Give it a few days…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a+note+to+my+fellow+women+of+seo%22&btnG=Search
I also see the your? .net site ranking for the same “phrase”:
http:**//sugarrae.net/search-engine-flashback-1996/
On that page you find:
http:**//sugarrae.net/a-note-to-my-fellow-women-of-seo/
Duplicate content?
Am I missing something?
So emotional! ;)
I have a question - do some of you actually READ the post?
1. >>>“a note to my fellow women of seo” is #1 currently
No. THIS post is ranking #2 (on my DC) for it. And THIS isn’t the post that should be ranking for it. See the above (I provided screenshots and all).
2. >>>I also see the your? .net site ranking for the same “phrase”:
As stated in the original post and TWICE in the comments now, the .net is NOT owned by me.
3. >>>Duplicate content?
Again, I’ll state (yet again), I don’t own the site and since it was registered AFTER the .com and has NO links to it, Google should consider IT the duplicate.
4. >>>Am I missing something?
Almost everything.
And kudos for sidestepping being wrong about all the posts in my top posts sidebar ranking - yet again.
Ok sorry, I did check several of the “top posts” and each one ranked for it’s title and more competitive phrases which is a good sign there is no penalty.
I am also sorry for thinking that you are baiting, your friend graywolf often links to you when he is doing his thing, it makes it appear that you are also anti-google to an extreme.
But the following stands out because I have seen similar complaints in Google Webmaster Help.
If you once moved content (hopefully using 301 redirects) to somewhere then back again you got trouble. Not sure why Google hoses you but it seems to be more of a flaw in their old algorithms than a personal/penalty thing.
Matt mentioning “older/legacy or algorithmic issues” does kind of admit that there was issues back then, how do I know? I got a few sites hosed for similar things, sorry Matt!
Using the word “smackdown” also implies personal exclusion NOT just stupid search engines messing up trying to figure out human content while at the same time defend against spam.
“Collateral Damage” is a correct phrase…been there.
What a mess!
Sorry for the apparently redundant question about you owning sugarrae.net.
If they’re completely cloning you, why not get it shut down? Unless we’re chocking it up to a “good samaritan”, but that seems a little idealistic for my train of thought.
If you decide you want to, and you’re having trouble getting it shut down, send me an e-mail and I’ll help out. I’m pretty good at negotiating with hosts.
I’ve had a few sites that appeared first and still got hurt by the dupe-content rules, so it couldn’t hurt.
Aside from that, best of luck dealing with this, I’m honestly pretty dumbfounded. It appears that you have an absolutely ideal incoming link structure, great on page SEO(damn better than my own blog actually), and have no shady practices. It’s a true oddity.
SlightlyshadySEO - You know something, that sugarrae.net is also bothering me. If there is duplicate content and no link back to originator there seems to be an issue for some sites in Google. Not sure why it hurts some but not others? Combined with moving content around you might just have issues…
Let me give a small example, I migrated my content from a static site to a wordpress blog, changed page titles (then 301′d old to new) and even the permalink structure. Google is giving other sites that copied blocks of text to theirs (who sell similar products) credit for my content.
Interesting post, sorry for the outburst.
Rae, you probably thought of this, but I didn’t see it mentioned in your post. When I’ve had websites with problems like this, I believe the problem was linking out to websites that Google didn’t trust. Perhaps you should review your outgoing links. Just something to look at - I don’t know whether that’s the answer.
Thanks :-) Glad you see some possibility in there. As stated, if you want any help getting it down, feel free to contact me at any time (AIM:SlightlyShadySEO). And either way, I’d love to chat.
As for why some sites are hurt and not others, I’d honestly say it’s probably just a series of archaic rules. Any set of software that is constantly updated has odd sets of conditions that were not expected, and the code gets harder and harder to read. I’d say it’s just a weird combination of effects, to very uncertain workarounds. Especially since 301/302 redirects have required patches in Google before(due to site takeovers and such), they seem increasingly suspect to interact badly with dupe content filters.
That’s all just me guessing though. Once again, best of luck :-)
I agree - now the problem is well defined, have the .net copy taken down and see what effect that has on the problem.
It shouldn’t be having this big an effect, but lets see what its removal does :)
I have some problems with things like this sometimes, and often it eventually corrects itself.
One interesting phenomenon is when the wrong page ranks because on a more popular page there is a link through to a related post, or just a trackback from the weaker post appearing on the stronger one.
Sometimes pages will not rank for a long tail unquoted string, with all the social media profiles appearing, and will rank on the quoted version.
Google have problems with their link attribution - normally once a page starts to rank, it continues doing so, but occasionally a syndicated copy for some reason takes over - I have had that happen with Webpronews on my dofollow plugin list in the past, the original post has 1000+ links in Yahoo, but also suffers from a weakening in topical relevance due to tons of comments, trackbacks, a massive tag cloud etc.
The problem is less likely to happen with newer content, because internal linking from related posts and recent post links on a strong domain are likely to be a higher signal of origin than those on a syndicating site, but it takes Google a few days to assign that link attribution.
Solution?
Option A
Stick the blogroll just on your home page
Increase internal linking
Kill all external links on duplicate content pages (nofollow those dupes plugin + addlinkattribute plugin)
Option B
Don’t worry about it, Google will fix it eventually, though I once had an issue like this suddenly get fixed by reporting myself for paid links… long term it seems that might have had a bad effect on my toolbar.
I am not sure how anyone is referring to how many pages are in supplemental today, /* queries for the primary index are broken, as Michael used to have 90%+ in primary, and now just has 50%
Hi Rae, without sounding like a total idiot, but checking from my side, you are ranking No1, and sometimes No1 and 2 for the searches you highlighted in your post - oh well - maybe its been fixed then…
@RuZ they all are suddenly “fixed”… sigh.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m obviously glad to have it fixed (providing whatever the penalty/filter was is lifted and it wasn’t simply a change for these results). But I wish that a: we knew what the hell had happened and b: I really hope whatever it was is learned from over at G to help there be a bit less collateral damage in the future.
Rae, did you get my email?
Some of mine got “fixed” during the “sugarrae algo update” ;)
I’m back for [Monkey Balls SEO] where I should be and [themadhat], but an exact match on my blog title is still tanking me. Wish we had some clue as to the problem…
Rae,
Just as I used my secret lab to destroy madhat I will now use it to help suggarae
http://www.ericward.com/link-moses-secret-lab.html
You certainly don’t rank well for “sugar rae” that what I tried to find your blog after my first visit. I did have more success with some combination of “sugar rae seo” or so I seem to remember. But you’re right you probably got punished in some way. It’s hard to determine though which one of the three conclusions it is. Can’t really exclude these by trial and error.
Exactly the same thing happened me on my music blog, and like you, I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. No major changes to the site structure, blog design or anything like that. Why, Goog, why?
Although I’ve got my mojo back now, the one thing that stuck out in my mind was the amount of divergent opinions I heard from SEOs and other ‘experts’ I spoke to. It’s made me a hell of a lot more wary of SEO advice in the blogosphere, I can tell you.
Seems most people’s knowledge of SEO is fine for optimizations, etc, but doesn’t follow through to penalties and how to overcome them.
Another easy way to tell that this was a Google “false positive” penalty was the fact that you ranked #1 at Yahoo! and Live.com for all those queries. :)
BTW - Looks like some if not all the queries are now fixed. I suspect your blog is about to see a lot more search traffic. It’s just a shame that it took a blog post to get it fixed and Google couldn’t ID and control for the problem ahead of time.
I’m always reminded of the US principles surrounding criminal justice - “Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted.” I hope that’s how Google does things, too, but I suspect that’s not the case. I think it was a recent Yahoo! paper on spam detection that said a less than 2% false positives for spam was pretty good… Imagine 2 out of every 100 sites being flagged for spam and penalized or banned being completely innocent - that’s losing a lot of good sites (considering how much spam is out there).
Great post, BTW, Rae - your command of search really shines through.
Dear Rae,
How about you post once a week about some poor site in the same condition as yours was?
Maybe Matt Cutts can personally fix them all :-)
I have a site ranks #1 on Yahoo, Live, Ask but with Google it’s just lost.
signed,
stuck in Google hell
@SEO Bozo Box: You owe Rae an apology.
Matt comes in, saves the day, & vanishes back into the night without an explanation. Someone should get him a Spiderman suit - red OR black.
“@SEO Bozo Box: You owe Rae an apology.”
Did you read my previous posts? It is good to see others don’t read stuff also.
Observation: Notice how “rand” only appears in popular places? That is great marketing! Hi rand, love you! :)
Funny link by Eric, haven’t been following this soap opera, don’t really care why people do or do not like him, my hunch is jealousy… yes? He ranks for everything, that I did look at! ;)
Again sorry to Rae for not observing Google’s old broken algortihm thing, I was actually trying to help figure it out for you but got lost in the drama. ;-(
Let’s see if you can now rank “Link Development”.
Peace & Love
>>>red or black
LMAO.
Rae, I’ve no idea if you accidentally hit an algorithmic filtering process (ie, sandboxing) that the links from your post helped kick you out of.
However, I would advise of the notion of “linking to bad neighbourhoods”, because a look at the comments just on this post suggests you may be being targeted by a few comment spammers linking to low value sites.
2c.
Something similar happen to me… Was ranking for some pretty good terms and swoosh, on one monday they were gone… oddly enough, the next day I started ranking on Yahoo for those terms I before only ranked well on Google.
Boy, it’s a good thing you know Matt Cutts personally. Otherwise, you’d have to suffer artificially supressed search rankings for your unique content, without any opportunity to address it.
I can’t help but accept that 2-5% of all web pages indexed by Google suffer similarly, and that’s just a number grabbed out of thin air. It could be worse, if that was necessary to enable TheAlgorithm to perform at any given time. And it’s not just “false positives” to consider, but false negatives as well. How else could Google operate?
So maybe the key is knowing your site? And knowing Matt Cutts, for those times when it seems Google wants to collect its taxes? Old skool is new school.
It’s a strange but wonderful world. Sometimes we get answers, sometimes we get a right slap in the good old face - but the quicker we move on, the more cherry pie we get. In the end. Good luck..
..the ironic thing is that your site is pulling in serious interest in this, and as a result maybe you’ll be able to leave them in the dust. I hope the blogosphere continues to support, even if Google wont.
I only wish Google had been more responsive to what caused this after fixing it.
Google is very unpredictable, I have a lot of sites, and Google keeps sandboxing sites for some time, that’s what I have noticed, but it doen’t last long, The longest period I had my site sandboxed is I think 2 months.
Rae, that was a hell of a post. and above all (command of search, penalty troubleshooting, knowing/not knowing google), i think it just goes to show that *no one* really wants to be on your shit list. Even Google showed up to clear the air. Please…Please just give me a chance if i ever end up on this huber-gnarly shit list of yours. Glad you straightened it out.
Also, i hope at some point you’re able to do a follow-up post with some feedback from G. I also know of a few innocent (really, i promise) sites that have been in this jam for an extended period, and google groups haven’t really solved the issue. it would be nice to see what was up over there.
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