Been caught stealing
I’ve been quoting an excellent post by First thing I’d like to highlight is that when you’ve been caught spamming they probably take a deeper look at the site, how it ranks, and particularly how it got there.
But we must also take into account that besides the shady SEO techniques used on a particular site (for instance hidden text, redirecting doorway pages, etc) there are often off-site SEO techniques used such as creating artificial link popularity in order to gain a high position in Google’s SERPs
Secondly, after the spammy on-the-page factors are removed and the link profile is updated they then re-rank the site once it re-included.
…once those manipulations to make a site rank unnaturally high are removed, the site gains the position it merits based on its content and its natural link popularity…
The reason I want to highlight this is that it’s a subject I see a lot from webmasters. They’ve been caught spamming, clean up the site, and then can’t seem to figure out why they don’t rank where they used to anymore. Susan, in a rare glimpse at Google being quite open, lays the groundwork for understanding this. As she explains, the reason some sites are penalized for spamming, is because spamming works. By removing sites Google has really always admitted this simple fact, but at least now it’s in writing.
Site removal is also basically an admission that detection is not nearly as automatic as we’d like to believe. If the algorithm could easily detect spamming techniques the logical conclusion would be they’d just ignore them, and let the site rank where it would without the technique. The same way they treat the keyword meta tag, an abused system of assigning sites keywords used in the early 1930s, ignored by any real search engine today, but religiously used by the flat-earth-society of webmasters. I’d imagine there are too many instances of collateral damage for many types of automatic detection, for example CSS driven menu systems that hide some text.
Spamming a search engine takes some sort of sophistication that your average joe-six-pack mom-n-pop shop doesn’t normally exhibit, which is why I am glad to see Susan mention that they look deeper into how the site has been acting off the page as well. The logic is that if you’ve been sly enough to hide some text, cloak, or any other various egregious violations maybe your links should be looked at. The first and easiest place for the company that has built an empire on data mining is to look at your links. They’ve got cache data from your site going back to Jamestown in the 17th century, and data on the rest of the web. Looking for exchanged links is nothing for a bit of data mining to find, going 3 or 4 levels deep for linking rings is probably just as easy. Now they simply make a note of all those links to your site not counting.
I think this is also a good indication of the manual nature of penalization as I think we are talking about link exchanges, or attempts to manipulate search engine rankings artificially. It’s not the same as reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is a natural phenomena of the web, birds of a feather tend to flock together as they say. For example I’ve linked to search giants like Sebastian and Matt Cutts multiple times, and both have linked to me. That was not an arranged for any ranking purposes, but rather as a consequence of the subjects covered, thus a reciprocal link in that case is a good thing. Those links back and forth probably do count for something. Only a manual review and detect the difference.
So what’s all this mean? If you’ve been caught spamming, expect Google to put on the rubber gloves and give your site a real good look-see. Also expect that even though you have removed your spamming ways your ranking will probably be effected because 1) the original spam worked and doesn’t now, and 2) other factors, even off site ones, will also be re-evaluated.
I think where this really impacts people is the ones that get busted for unnatural linking procedures. If you’re running a site in a specific niche that has garnered most of it’s authority from unnatural linking between sites through exchanges and Google busts up that linking ring, some people are not going to be happy. If your site’s links were comprised of mainly industry wide exchanges expect a big drop, on the other hand if your competition had a good amount of real links, expect them to weather the storm better than you. No amount of reconsideration requests is going to get your site back to where it was and there is nothing any Googler can do to help as the old links that helped are now gone.
The answer, as always with Google, is to obey the rules and get more links. Real ones.
Sponsor: Today’s post was brought to you by Jane’s Addiction, circa 1990, back in my college days.
If you liked this post please buy me a beer. Thanks.I’ve been caught stealing
Once when I was 5
I enjoy stealing
It’s just as simple as that
Well, it’s just a simple fact
When I want something, I don’t want to pay for it
I walk right through the door
Walk right through the door
Hey all right!
If I get by, it’s mine
Mine all mine!
My girl, she’s one too
She’ll go and get her a shirt
Stick it under her skirt
She grabbed a razor for me
And she did it just like that
When she wants something, she don’t want to pay for it
She walk right through the door
Walk right through the door
Hey all right!
If I get by, it’s mine
Mine all mine!
We sat around the pile
We sat and laughed
We sat and laughed and waved it into the air!
And we did it just like that
When we want something, we don’t want to pay for it
We walk right through the door
Walk right through the door
Hey, all right!
If I get by, it’s mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. . .
posted in Google, Music, SEO | 5 Comments
