Last week, I interviewed the head of Google's spam team, Matt Cutts, about a lot of different issues. One of the most intriguing to webmasters appears to have been the discussion in the 2nd video (around 6:00) where we go into a chat about the real estate industry online, where thousands of websites have recently lost rankings due to participation in egregious manipulation through reciprocal link campaigns.
During the chat, I referred to this thread at RealEstateWebmasters (14 pages and 132 replies) discussing the "shot across the bow" that Matt's team fired in mid-May. Obviously, that site has long recommended link exchanges as a way to get ranks, and honestly, it's hard to find fault with their advice since until just recently, the tactics were very effective. Here's how it usually works in the real estate website world:
- A new realtor launches her site and finds that Google traffic is the best thing since sliced bread
- Naturally, wanting more, she starts reading online about how to get Google rankings to real estate websites
- Many of the popular forums & guides suggest forming relationships with other site owners in the real estate world and trading links
- Our realtor takes the hint - she works in Bend, Oregon, so she contacts site owners from Poughkeepsie to Puyallup seeking link exchanges
- Each site places a link to the other on a "links" page (a good example would be this one from a Missouri real estate agent)
- Our realtor gets a bit in rankings from the link love and she's thrilled
- Matt comes in and ruins her day :)
Seriously, though, what's taking place is clearly in violation of Google's guidelines (the old ones and the new ones). Google has no interest in ranking a site higher because they've traded links with realtors around the country anonymously and primarily for the purpose of rankings. Now, granted, there is a tough line to draw here because there may, in fact, be realtors who do have some relationships in other cities or states and genuinely want to endorse one another's services. In the SEO world, this happens naturally all the time - I might meet an SEO from Delaware and link to them because of their great services and they, in kind, might link to SEOmoz, recommending our work in Seattle. That's pretty kosher, and Matt & Co. probably do want to respect those links.
The problem is - how do they tell the two apart?
One method might be sheer volume. It's not a huge deal to link to 5, 10 or maybe even 20 of your friends from the industry. But, push that to 50, 100 or more and things start looking pretty suspicious. If you're linking out to 10 dozen sites and they all link back to you and all of these outbound links appear on one page (particularly when that pages is named links.html - 38,000 results or links.htm - 26,000 results), Matt's spam busters are going to get mighty suspicious.
Here's the reason I feel empathy for these webmasters - many of them are just small business owners who want to get some leads on the Internet. They've probably never read Google's guidelines or even thought about the "algorithm" or a "spam team." By and large, they know about selling houses in good neighborhoods and covering up the flaws in a fixer-upper. They went online, got themselves a website, stumbled across the first way to market it they found and listened to the general consensus of advice. It's tough to blame them the same way you might blame a site that's trying to rank for "buy viagra" use link injections and cloaking.
So, on to the meat of the post... What should these thousands of real estate webmasters do? And, what should you do if you find yourself similarly penalized. Well, luckily I've made one of my patented, late-night flowcharts:
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This flowchart isn't going to solve all your problems, but it's definitely a good starting point. And perhaps, if Matt swings by (or the next time I interview him), we can chat a bit more about whether this system fits with what he'd recommend.
Just to help out, I'm going to walk through a quick example from someone in the RealEstateWebmasters.com forum's thread:
- We'll start with Hgrealtor's site - www.oaklandhomespecialist.com
- The site's still indexed - it has 94 pages in Google
- It ranks #1 on a search for the brand name - oaklandhomespecialist - that tells me we're not dealing with a "sandbox"-like effect
- It's ranking #67 on a search of the home page's full title tag - Oakland Real Estate | Oakland California Homes for Sale | Realtor - that's definitely a bad sign
- On the plus side, they rank #7 for - crocker highlands homes - so they're not as badly buried as others I've seen
- And, they're #3 for temescal homes
- This leads me to believe that while they might have had some of their links de-valued, the site isn't in grave danger, or even necessarily in need of a re-inclusion request
OK, while I'd love to dive into even more detail, it's 2:10am and I need to be up at 5:45am to catch a plane to Toronto for SES. I really need a better schedule...
UPDATE: A gentleman from Cedar City Real Estate noted, wisely, that my analysis of OaklandHomesSpecialist.com may not be entirely correct - many times a site can be penalized or sandboxed and still rank for very particular branded terms (like the domain name itself). My apologies on the goof!
I have a fun and coincidentally relevant case study to add to the discussion.
Something Awful is a satirical institution of the Internet (alongside FARK, Boing Boing etc). With one of the largest active communities online (100,000 paid members, +3000 online at any time), SA are known for popularizing many of our favorite internet fads and breaking weird and wonderful internet-related news:
Unfortunately, despite this link-rich environment, SA seems to have found themselves in the Google crapper.
An article by (SA founder) Richard Kyanka, called Google Hates Something Awful, exposes the site's Google issues - for almost all of SA's subchannels, when you perform a unique title tag query, they are not found in the top 10-20.
Kyanka: (After) 'Searching for "Second Life Safari"
Microsoft Live results: Something Awful is the #1 result.
Yahoo results: Something Awful is the #1 result.
Google results: No top results for Something Awful.'
As a longtime SA reader looking to help out, I decided to investigate. My first step was to run through something very similar to Rand's flowchart.
1. Competitors Gone Up? Are you kidding. They have no competitors... who else would name their content "Second Life Safari" or "Photoshop Phriday"?
2. Site still indexed? Yep. 85,000 results.
3. Site still ranks for domain? Yep.
4. Are Unique Title Tag terms ranking? Nope!
This is where i deviated slightly from Rand's flowchart by digging a little deeper.
Supplemental Ratio
I checked the number of indexed results vs. their supplemental results and compared it to their industry brethren.
Main index=85,000
Supplemental index=68,000
Supplemental Ratio = 68,000/85,000 = 80%
By comparison, Fark = 42%, Boing Boing = 10%
(read more about the supplemental ratio here)
Google parameter: Filter=0
Even more intriguing, when I added the parameter filter=0 to the end of our google queries, almost ALL the SA webpages ranked #1!
Google Enterprise's explanation of the parameter
My Google moonspeak translation; 'Using the filter=0 parameter we can find results that Google may consider as duplicate content'.So to sum up SA's symptons:
My short but sweet recommendations to the SA team:
Did Google switch off the link juice to these SA pages or did I miss something obvious?
For the curious, you can follow the SA forum discussion here.
Great chart, and some good details. It is always refreshing to get actual examples.
Of your sympathy to webmasters, I have written about this dillema on feedthebot in my description of the Google guideline "Avoid Tricks" which describes what a Google thinks a trick is
This is the dscription I get alot of thank yous from. Even if you know what a "trick" is, you may want to read that page.
Good overview Rand, even for early in the morning.
This is another, simple walk thru that I think serves those of us in "the know" as much as it serves those experiencing these issues... this is one of those perfect reminders that the things we so easily take for granted as basic knowledge, is anything but for the average website owner.
Things like this so easily happen because 1) you would probably have to go out of your way not to come across advice or instruction for doing exactly this, and 2) this is one of those "well if 10 are good, then 100 must be better, and 1,000 must be great" kind of thoughts.
As SEOs, we must remind ourselves everyday that we are not average users, we are anything but typical searchers, and we consider basic knowledge about SEO and web design, many site owners would consider to be deep, insider knowledge!
Valid points identity!
Good stuff - I think there is definitely a distinction to draw between people deliberately manipulating and those who have found a bit of advice online and gone ahead full steam but don't realise the possible unintended consequences.
Also. Go to bed!! Stop replying to my emails in the middle of the night: I send them when I'm up in the UK - doesn't mean you have to reply at 2am...
That is a good point Will. In my former life I worked as an online marketing consultant for Realtors. It was and still is common strategy for Realtors to trade links with other like minded Realtors to increase their link popularity. This was all being done without any knowledge that they were deliberately manipulating search engines. If you think otherwise, you are giving real estate agents too much credit. I would not consider Realtors to be the most technically proficient demographic. I think with emerging information like this post it will benefit a demographic that has the "I just want traffic' mentality, without necessarily knowing the semantics behind that statement.
Isn't one of the guidelines to take search engines out of the equation? Even if a search engine didn't exist it would still make sense to exchange links with other realtors outside of your area of service.
And Mike I've known a few realtors and to say they weren't the most technically proficient demographic is being very kind. I can't speak for the whole industry, but the few I've known it definitely applies.
Very useful post. I would add that before doing a site:url.com, I would simply check their PageRank bar. Assuming is not a new site, PageRank 0 vs no PageRank at all gives some initial clues.
After confirming they rank for unique terms on their site, I would carefully check their rankings for their money terms with allinanchor, allintitle, allintext and in other search engines (Yahoo, Live, etc.). Too many unnatural links with the same anchor text can trigger some of the advanced filters (ie.: Google bombing detection).
This conversation is such a perfect microcosm of both sides of the coin: the people that cheat on purpose (and Google has every right to try to stop) and the ones who get caught in the crossfire. Having gone through this with clients, it's hard not to be frustrated and angry when this is your livelihood.
It's also hard to not play the game when you see everyone else in your industry playing it. One of my clients has a competitor who's been flaunting the Google guidelines since at least 2004 and still, to some degree, benefits from his black-hat tactics. Does it piss me off? Yes. Do we play the same game? No. Like any aspect of my business (and theirs), I don't believe this behavior is ethical or productive in the long-term, so we don't engage in it.
If there's one piece of advice I'd encourage everyone to take away from this, it's that you shouldn't vest all of your marketing hopes and dollars on Google (or, to be fair, any one tactic). The only way to protect yourself from a game you can't control is to diversify your strategies and make sure you're actively involved in other games. This doesn't just mean running PPC on Yahoo; it means actively engaging in offline marketing, networking, etc.
Great point -- "diversify" your portfolio to protect against another Enron!!
Rand
new here. Great post. my site was hit.
Hi florida. Good to see people signing up for the premium stuff straight away (I'm not affiliated with SEOmoz but I like seeing their stuff succeed). I think you'll find the community here helpful as well as these gems from Rand ;)
I posted the comments below in another thread, but I think they are more relevant here:
Especially interesting was Part 2 at around the six minute mark where you talk with Matt about the reciprocal linking penalty against real estate sites and the thread going on at Real Estate Webmasters about this.
This is the first time I've heard anyone at Google acknowledge this was directed at real estate sites and that it had to do with reciprocal linking. Over at Real Estate Webmasters there has been a lot of talk and debate on what has actually occurred. Dozens of sites have been affected and people’s livelihoods have been destroyed because of it. The real estate site owners affected are not professional SEO’s. In most cases they were doing what virtually every other real estate site ranking well was doing – trading links. Many even hired SEO companies to help them rank better – and these SEO’s in turn traded links on their behalf. The intent of the real estate site owners was to try and improve their sites rankings. Just like everyone else who owns a website does.
This penalty looks to have occurred in two parts – first Advanced Access sites were penalized and then about 2 weeks later sites that were affiliated (or formerly affiliated) with Real Estate Webmasters were hit.
Greg Boser, Jay Griffin, and Morgan Carey have been giving advice on what to do to get your site back so that it can rank again. Their advice has been to remove the reciprocal linking state pages, use Google Webmaster central to have the offending pages removed from the Google index, and then file a reinclusion request outlining to Google what you did wrong and why you won’t do it again. According to Greg Boser if Google accepts your explanation your site will be allowed back into Google in 30 days or a little less.
The real estate sites associated with Real Estate Webmasters were penalized on May 9. It’s now been 32 days and only two sites have had the penalty lifted. Interestingly enough these two sites took no where near 30 days to get back. It only took them around 2 weeks. These two sites still have reciprocal linking on their sites just not inside of state pages. Meanwhile all the rest of the sites that were penalized have no idea what is happening and if/when their sites will actually be allowed back in the index again.
Especially frustrating is the vast number of sites that were not penalized who were engaging in the same reciprocal linking practices. Some of these unaffected sites removed their state pages, others did not. Yet there they are, at the very top of the rankings. Look in some of the markets where sites were hit: Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Chicago, San Diego and Destin to name a few. It’s easy enough to find sites engaging in the same practices who were not penalized.
If Matt Cutts or someone from Google would please comment upon this it would make a lot of people who were affected sleep a lot easier at night. These are real people with children, families, bills, and responsibilities whose sole source of income was basically destroyed in one day. I find it hard to believe that the intent of Google was to hurt people in this way. More likely this was meant as a wake up call to the entire real estate industry to stop reciprocal linking with state pages. Unfortunately only a few dozen sites were singled out to be made an example of.
Matt and Google: you message has been received loud and clear! Now please let those us of who have cleaned up our sites know if we can expect our sites to come back and if so when.
Where to begin? Let's start with the over obvious. Would it have really been bad business on Matt's team's behalf to have made a comment or post that state reciprocal pages as were the "norm" could very easily be considered by Google as spam tactics or excessive receptacle linking?
I exchanged links with what I considered quality agents and turned down many link exchange offers from sites like this https://www.debbieferrari.com/ which are in MHO God awful, spammy, non-consumer friendly sites (this site ranks page 1 for major KW's). What were my objectives? To add content, to have a state page for referral purposes ( I do receive referrals from all over the country on a regular basis -- now I can't exchange links with them in gratitude) and yes to increase the amount of links that are supposed to be good.
Were my intentions (or most any other Realtor's) to trick Google? No, everyone (emphasis on everyone) in Real estate had a set of state pages with reciprocal links. Was I supposed to be the only one with out one? Quite a few of us thought it was much better than that spammy home page logo link exchanging that a lot of sites were using (and it worked for them).
I'm competing for the key words "Collierville Real Estate" (has anyone heard of Collierville, Tn?) Come on, for gosh sakes, I am not after "Viagra", I am not selling porn, or illegal gambling, I am not trying to rank #1 for Paris Hilton, I am not cloaking, keyword stuffing, or overt, intentional black hat SEO practices. I am competing with maybe a dozen other Realtors for Collierville (and yes Memphis) for positioning in the SERP's. My intention was to create a consumer friendly site that brings them the information they want and need to make an informative decision and to maybe make $3,000 this month to feed my family. I had state pages which I thought were beneficial to my clients and my SERP (with 99% of all other Realtors). Evidently I was wrong, I am sorry. I have learned my lesson and several other lessons.
Was what I did so terribly wrong that 90% of my income had to be taken away from me and given to other more spammy websites than my own? If someone had made a simply announcement that in their opinion state pages might be considered excessive reciprocal linking in the near future I would have deleted them immediately.
My main question is: Why were we not given the opportunity to fix the problem with out someone reaching in to our families wallets? We didn't know there was a problem, we're Realtors. In my opinion we were sent to prison for violating a law that hadn't been passed by congress yet. In the least, give us access to that fact that the law exists, so we can have a half a chance to not break the law.
I apologize if this sounds like whining. I just simply don't think it was handled in the best way. If it was an Algo and 100% across the board, amen. But it wasn't. The ones benefiting right now are in a lot of cases a lot worse offenders then a lot of us hit were.
Khilley - sorry to disagree with you - I like a lot of what you write - but if this statement is true, I don't think it's whining. If we're talking hand-applied penalties to some sites ignoring other worse offenders (disclaimer: I don't know the target market and haven't done my own research) then I think there are certainly better ways of handling this.
On the other hand, Memphis - unfortunately I see an awful lot of people duped by people in our web dev / seo industry who either should or do know better and that is a very bad thing. Nevertheless, as it stands these things were against Google's guidelines, and they are perfectly within their rights to penalise those sites. Just as if you received bad advice from someone in real estate, you could still be liable if you ignored some regulations etc. It's a hard way to learn the lesson, though.
This is not just a post worth for real estate webmasters, I would put it into a must read before opening Google Webmaster Central. Great post and nice drawings. :D
Quite right Nedim!
I think that Google should link to this from one of their webmaster pages.
I assume that they would agree with Rand's presentation. To help webmasters they should link to some good third-party descriptions of how things work. That might be a small, but important way to educate webmasters - and that education would help convert a few penalized sites into quality sites.
Great idea, EGOL!
Or Google should just buy these from Rand or use this as a model going forward for their information... less word focused and more demonstrative visual guides.
I think it would make it plain simple and easy to understand for newbies and they may get a lot more site owners looking things over.
Rand:What in your opinion (or whispered in your ear) is the typical timeframe for the penalty to be lifted after one has done what you've pointed out on your chart? It's obviously not 30 days, since my site has gone past that.
I have no idea, really. My rough guess would be that if everything is 100% clean on your site and you submit a re-inclusion request detailing what you believe you did wrong, you probably have less than 60 days to wait.
However, if you submit that request while you still have some trouble spots or issues on your site, you can expect that the spam team might write you off entirely, or at least for a good long while. They have fairly high expectations for webmasters and don't like to be thought of as idiots who can't catch or spot your digressions from Google's preferred rules.
Thanks Rand.. I appreciate your help. This is real frustrating. I am assuming, deleting the state pages and removing the url's is what google would expect of me to clean up the site and that's what i did before submitting a reinclusion. Would you agree? I guess its another 30 days of not knowing...Again, thanks for your help here.
Excellent post, Rand, but it looks like you and I have a different definition of the word "banned". You wrote that if your home page is the only one still in the index, you're "most likely banned." I'd call that "most likely penalized" and wouldn't refer to a site as banned unless it was completely removed from the index.
I apologize, but I really dont see why specific fields need specialized webmasters/seo's (realestate seo's, country club seo's, etc...)
We built a website for homes in Madisonville Kentucky and we have not spent a lot of time working on collecting links, but due to decent layout of content, they rank well for the searches that matter and those are the searches where folks are looking for homes in that area.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-39%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=homes+in+madisonville+ky&btnG=Search
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-39%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=madisonville+ky+homes+for+sale&btnG=Search
Classa,
Very clean home page, I like the way it looks and is simple and to the point. JMHO, but I think it is very beneficial having someone who specializes in a field for website design and SEO. Different world building a customer user friendly site for a company that sells 10,000 different widgets and all the shopping cart, etc that goes along with that and a real estate website.
I mean no offense by this, just an observation from experience; Madisonville, KY can't be that highly of a competitive KW market, which makes it much easier to rank high and quicker for the keywords you target. When I shoot for Collierville or Arlington, TN I can achieve almost what I want when I want it. However, when I go to Memphis, it is much more sought after by national companies and a lot more agents - increasing the sandbox affect time wise.
It is a very nice looking site, I would recommend adding community information pages (new relevant content) to increase the longtail hits in the smaller markets around the area. You are absolutely right, good clean coding and then add new relevant content and it goes a very long way.
A few points for real estate website.
classa, I understand your opinion. However it is becoming more and more nessasary for SEO's to start specialising in specific fields. The main resource of good quality links are social link networks. There is nothing as effective as to get onto MSN and ask your buddy in France to link contextually to your one article you just published. Specialising is becoming more and more important, especialy amongst more competitive keywords.
A further point I would like to make is that SEO is becoming more and more related to the broader online marketing concept. This imo means that an SEO specialising in a specific market segment will do better than a general SEO. Conversion and a retention methods are more and more related to the market segment and that effects link building.
For a general SEO it is a huge job entering a new market segment and virtually impossible to compete for the top keywords, without quickly making friends in the appropriete industry.
Well I just took a look at Las Vegas and Chicago, since Fang mentioned those two towns first and they were the biggest areas mentioned.
Here is a look at the 4 untouched Google sinners of the sintown Las Vegas from the top 10 list of Las Vegas Real Estate keyword
#1 Greatlasvegashomes.com A ton of state link exchange pages linked directly from home page with tons of links and probably over 30 homepage link exchanges
#2 Lasvegaswebofhomes.com Probably one of the worse offenders with the entire home page being a cloaked text and a state directory with thousands of link exchanges.
#3 Senasellsvegas.com - Owned by one of the owners of the famous Wannanetwork.com which gives a sitewide link to the site. I have to give it to him. He buys links by giving charity to religious organizations but also from local city guides. Also clear indication of past of present link exchanges either three way or two way.
#7 Millionsaver.com - Homepage link exchanges and reciprocal linking galore with this website.
Rest of the sites were from authority sites (if you call the repetitive content homegain.com an authority) and a blog.Here is another list for Chicago. Ironically the sinners are doubling in Chicago Real Estate keyword top 10 with 8 out of 10.
#1 Greatchicagorealestate.com Gets 1000s of link from advertised unrelated sponsor links through a program that puts their links into webpages of people who download video music into their myspace and other comparable site webpages.
#2 Rubloff- A majority of their main links are purchased links from .edu sites and other unrelated websites
#4 Illinoisrealestate.com - Already banned by yahoo and still seeing links from other Real Estate Webmasters sites and other sites with similar design to illinoisrealestate.com (topic of this blog)
#5 sheldonchicago.com - Old Advanced access site which still continues on doing the same reciprocal linking that other advanced access sites got banned for.
#6 Dreamtown.com - Owns a lot of supplementary sites not identified with them so a lot of three way linking and other purchased in box links from sites such as Chicago.com, biggerpockets.com, virtualin.com etc.
#7 Buyersutopia.com - Purely reciprocal linking and also other purchased links from many tv channels and newspapers using a well know paid linking campaign company.
#8 Lincolnparkliving.com Tons of reciprocal links especially home page link exchanges with other real estate and directory sites.
#9 Lizshomes.com - Does a three way link exchange trying to deceive google by link exchanging through a third party domain name called lizshome.com (singular).
#4 is Chicago Tribune and #10 is Baird & Warner, from what I can see that brokerage gains most of its power from two of its two sister IDX sites and natural linking due to its size and history.
Just to give some support to Fang's argument. Google it really ain't fair to touch one single blip when you have a bigger issue to deal with algorithm rather than punishing small business owners in random. I can imagine it being the summer, I do believe even a month was punishment enough for these real estate companies who clearly do not have multi-million dollar companies (AKA Rubloff.com seems to be multi-million dollar brokerage)
It was great for you to bring up the issue with Matt Cutts in your video Rand. I was one of the REW sites that got penalized. I knew the reciprocal linking we were doing was over kill and done only to improve our rankings. I did not see any real benefit to my visitors. So, I just the left the links that were already there and stopped trading them well over a year ago. The problem is that I was ranking #1 or #2 for the most sought after key phrases in my market and did not want to rock the boat. When I had heard about the Advanced Access sites getting hit I deleted all of my state pages and reciprocal links. That was on the 5th of May. My site was then hit on the 9th. I imagine my site was marked for a penalty before the 5th and then they just got around to doing it on the 9th.
I was doing something wrong and will admit to it. The problem I have is that a bunch of my competitors in Sarasota are still getting away with it. With 80% of my business coming from the internet it really can take a toll on the income.
I have corrected the infractions, learned my lesson and now should be let back into Google. I have one of the best real estate sites in Sarasota and should be in the top 3. Preferably #1, my location before the penalty. ;-)
If anyone cares I posted a synopsis about the recent wave of Google penalties.
Google Spam Team Targeting Real Estate Websites
Great Post RandThe 800 pound gorilla not being addressed in this conversion is how various SEO/Webmasters are prying on this type of Small Business Owner. There are several Realtor CMS companies that are leading these webmasters/realtors down the wrong path. One such company who runs a Realtor CMS also gives the webmaster/realtor content articles for lead generation. However its consider duplicate content example search for this term “How To Get Your Agent to Work Twice as Hard” Google has it come up 509 times on 509 different sites. These poor realtors have NO idea the garbage that is being sold to them or why their site is having problems ranking.Just wanted to throw that in the mix, what are your thoughts?
I mean no offense by this, just an observation from experience; Madisonville, KY can't be that highly of a competitive KW market, which makes it much easier to rank high and quicker for the keywords you target.
I also wanted to state that even though we are in Madisonville, and the market for realestate may not be heavy, our website design company does rank #4 on Google for the term website design and #1 on MSN for the same term. Reguardless of your geographic location, that is a tough market...
Memphis,
Thanks for the input. We looked into doing custom IDX for this client, but their local MLS isn't set up for the feeds yet, and they didn't want to pay for it either. Remember, this is Madisonville, Kentucky. We get electricity a day later than everyone else :)
We did outfit the website with a content management system, and they assigned someone internal to the office to prepare the content about community and condo complexes (longtails), but that person has yet to do anything. We weren't contracted to do the seo or content generation for the site, just the layout and LAMP development of the site. I mentioned earlier in my post above that we didn't put a lot of seo work into the site.
I will make sure Tina Downey (controlling partner of this realestate company) views this blog entry and your comments and others as well. Maybe we can push Madisonville into the future yet...
As always, it is an absolute pleasure interacting with the members of this site. Maybe I will get outside of Kentucky and come to a conference sometime as I would love to meet and collaborate with you all.
Heh, i used to help those people get those real estate link, never liked it but hey, its what they wanted, no matter how much you preach to webmasters, they simply dont get that content is much more better..sigh
I started reading this eagerly in the hope of learning something new: who doesn't want to learn more about dealing with penalties? But I got another kind of boost: I know all of this already and it's made me feel confident in my own abilities. Thanks for that Rand. :)
After reading this post, I kept thinking back to an article Michael Martinez wrote where he refers to "Elite Directories" as a better solution to reciprocal linking campaigns/pages. I think that his post is very relevant to the RE industry.
Here's the link:
Crafting Content: Using Elite Directories On Business Sites
I am glad the slot machine guys got in here and added so much to the conversation...
@Bart
- I have nofollow to my about us, feed and contact us pages. Rest all the links are followed. You are true, I have no control over people linking me but can't have domain penalized for buying links from domains(which might be penalised), less likely.
- I guess more likely i added keywords which flagged google and that should be all.
Should i wait and watch for 2 weeks or change my page level link structures, i can just produce 12 categories and 7 top pages from the current page category instead of 12*7 page links.
Hard to say, there is a lot of things we are not considering... like what has been suggested by some others above is to sell the domain.
But bein gpatient is always a virtue, even in this high speed digital era.
Meaning, the "Who Is" or ICANN registry info data changes... IP address changes... content changes etc...
The idea is to actually get the domain "reset" in the Google system. Yes that does mean all you will have left is the links externally.
This is usually the last resort. It is also what a lot of black hats do. After they abuse a domain name. So be careful if you find your self doing thi, you may actually be overlooking some basic White Hat, or customer/user oriented tactics.
You might try private messages or sharing the domain name with all of us.
@Bart
Thanks for spending some time here. I appreciate that.
- True that is excessive link but not between the domains. I have total 12 categories in that site and i produce top 7 pages from those categories so what i finally see on any page is 12 links to categories and 12*7 links to top 7 pages from all the category top pages. Total 96 links to pages from same domain and few more.
- Keywords can be an issue as it happened on a major part of the site, which might flag google.
- I also checked the incoming links, few pages are down with some pr but that has been running smoothly for last 45 days. That's the reason where i lost 1 pr on index page but gained few on internal pages. I personally doubt that might be an issue. The links i bought was a period of time 2-3 months. That were optimised links targeting my page title. That can be an issue but lower to other 2 mistakes.
What you think?
From what my experience tells me and what Matt Cutts has said. "You can't control who links to you".
So if the links you bought left some sort of bred crumb... a bread crumb that was a negative flag to Google then at most Google will do is penalize the site with the links. Not your site.
So again the links should not be an issue.
Don't over think it... sometimes you just need more content and more targeted links to the right pages. Hva eyou tried using re="nofollow" for generic internal links?
I am wondering how I can check it if my site doesn't have a unique brand name. I mean the website name is a high competitive keyword, How do I figure out?
Hi American Lottery
Check out keyword spy where you can find profitable keywords related to your industry. www.keywordspy.com/
I still don't know what is the best option for me to look from here. Anyway, my domain is my user_name.com.
I has google penalty for 2.5 mounth.My website:
https://www.fullsurveysguide.com
Large free list of surveys and paid focus groups,forex and money market,paid to drive and shop,work from home information,scam list and games disaapear from google results.
Great article! I’ve recently lost some of my Google traffic & I’m trying to figure out why. I get most of my back links from article directories. I’ve heard mixed reviews concerning the value of article directory back-links. Is it a good idea to use article directories as a way to get back-links & approve your rankings?
I’ve also been submitting my sites to directories (I only submit to ones that offer one way linking) but now I’m thinking that may not be a good idea. Thoughts?
Its an ok idea as long as directories have any value. SEOmoz publishes good directories, so you may refer to that.
Also, you can participate in relevant forums/discussion boards etc.
I have a similar issue here.
My site is dropped in google serp pages for all my major terms. My site is still indexed, PR is as usual, rank for my domain name, rank for very little terms compared to previous list of terms.
What I did in past might caused this google serp penalty?
- before 10 days I added 5-6 keywords to 60% my existing pages meta keyword tag, all are unique and related to page. They were activated with a little code change and my previous version of keywords was only 2.
- I bought few related links from high PR site before 45 days. They all are related domains.
- I have all my pages with high number of internal links, I guess that is more than 100s, 12 category links along their top 7 pages (12*8 = 96 links). Few extra links like next, previous, home, contact us etc.
What I have done in the meanwhile to get out of the punishment?
- I changed the keywords to previous version that is 2 per page.
- Applied for reconsideration.
What you all suggest now?
Please help me, I will appreciate your time and advice. Help me if you wish to help…
Sounds like you did some "Excessive Linking" between your domains. If the websites are all on the same IP address then excessive linking is probably a larger problem than the keywords in your meta tags. Although both can hurt you.
Had a lot of new clients dealing with Yahoo bans. They seem to be cracking down on the "excessive linking" more than anything lately.
Never heard of anybody having problems with paid link advertising if they are done correctly.
I feel my site may have been penalized because my traffic has dropped to almost nothing. I've never done any blackhat tactics other than1 or 2 link exchanges[non paid]. I've also added my link to a few forums and Web 2.0 sites. Other than that I've not done anything sneaky. I would like to see if i can get thing back to normal.
"go to webmaster central, verify & submit a re-inclusion request" Im in Webmaster Central. Where do I go to verify & submit a re-inclusion request?
Thanks
I've been experiencing a penalty on my site 4insure.net for the past two months. It's been the most frustrating experience because it seems that everyone has a different opinion about why my site was penalized. We cleaned up everything on the site that we could thing of and have gone through multiple reinclusion requests yet we still do not have any answers or have noticed any movement in the SERPS. Perhaps you guys could take a look at my thread I have going right now on the Google Webmaster Central forums?
Hi All
I have a website : https://www.jetairways-konnect.com. This website is crawled in Google but every time when there is a new caching google disappear the website. can any one check this website and suggest what to do?
Love how you laid everything out & gave examples ... in English as I'm not an SEO expert, just a business owner. Thanks
my blog is iwwh.blogspot.com, help me whats my position in above chart, pls give some tipps to recover my penally
Long time member, first time spammer here, but we built a really cool tool which is really becoming quite popular:
https://tools.seomoves.org/penaltychecker/
Simply does the basic checks that you would normally do as an SEO, but people just love it.
Thanks guys, keep up the good work.
Thankyou so much for this post. I have been working with a client who has a filter/penalty applied for dodgy links. This link map helped me to define and identify the scope of the filter... and that is totally awesome :)
Wow what an interesting read guys!
If any of you are interesting i Email Marketing software please visit:
www.mailcommunicator.com
I've turned into such a geek after learning about SEO!! Lol
OOOh i knw its slightly irrelevant but can't wait till Google Wave is out!! Yay
That was a very good reading. I just got enlightened a bit on some aspects I've been unsure about since I was not able to keep up with the new trends during the last 9 months. Thank you!
This makes not being penalized sound just as bad as being penalized. Lol. I mean you could lose massive amount of traffic without being penalized that some may think you might as well be penalized for something you did or did not do.
Hey there Randfish, good post... especially the chart of penalties, if its okay is it alright if i use the chart on my blog in a post I will reference you in the post if you like to the chart.
One of my sites is not ranking for its own domain name. I am like number 500 something for my own domain name. I submitted a reconsideration request. They emailed me back and said after a manual review they did not find anything manual spam, etc and that it was nothing Google did to change my rankings. They suggested for me to see if I had any 404 errors or if the GoogleBot could access my pages. I noticed that I do have a lot of errors because I restructured my website's categories. I resubmitted a new sitemap. I am patiently waiting to see my domain name again in the top 10. Just thought I would add that perspective incase anyone is having this problem.
having similar issues with my real estate website https://www.ocrealestatefriend.com
hoping to get it sorted out soon.
Fang, well said. (I am the Fort Lauderdale site).
I apologizing for not reading through all of the replies ahead of time. If this is a repeat, scold the hell out of me!!!
How does this change effect the sites related directly to the brokerages? For example National Realtor #1 may link to all of it's branded brokersages nationwide, which often operate very independant of their mothership-esque website.
Could the national sites rankings be devalued? Could the brokers?
Search engines try to ascertain the intent of links. A large brokerage company such as REmax likely links to all its thousands of offices. This is a valid link scheme, and has a positive link signature in the indexing databse.
A webmaster buying 1000 sitewide links on newspsper and television websites will have a completely different link signature.
I've seen a rank drop for a website I'm working on in the last two-three weeks, well actually it's ranking fine, it just happened that one competitor shows up higher for the same keywords where it didn't before. I found the problem very fast, we have around 60 backlinks and our competitor about 1500 ( where more than 80% of his backlinks come from the same website ). I've checked this competitor and I'm not sure wether all their backlinks are of good nature so I won't panic now for his site ranking better than ours. If there's something wrong with the website, Matt and his gang ( I mean this in a good way ) will deal with it and if everythings fine I have to find much more backlinks.
First I thought starting a massive link campaign ( mostly submitting to some free directories, forum posts etc. ) but this would hurt the website more than it would help and I would become one of those people who would have this image about "How to handle a penalty at Google" set as desktop background and actually printed out on a 24"x12" wallpaper print to remind me what to do if I'm in deep s..t and not to get in deep s..t.
I thought about the same things to get backlinks you've pointed out, but in the end I refused to use any of them. One of the main reasons is the situation we have now with Google penalizing website. I'd rather get outranked by a competitor than to dissapear for a long time from Google's index. Also requesting backlinks from competitors wouldn't help that much since nobody wants to lose customers because they choose to buy from us. This is the same with our website, we don't want our visitors to go and buy products from our competitors ( if people visit our onlineshop ). The only webistes we can ( and will try to ) get backlinks are small companies that are working on the same service sector like we do and link to/from our partner companies. But here we go again, if we link to our partners and they link to us, we all might get penalized since Google will think we're using some bad techniques to spice up our rankings. So in the end I'm still stick to those few backlinks.
We don't want to start some huge campaigns and stuff, but still want people to link to our website the right way so I've done something that should be absolutely fine. I've put up "Link back to this page with the following source code:" on every page and in a box under this text I have the html source with the correct link, title tag and anchor text. This was also needed because we got backlinks with anchor text that was absolutely bad ( the company name was misspelled and such things ).
I'll keep this chart in mind not because I have other websites where I've done things wrong, more because this tells me what I'll be going throught if I decide to use one of the bad techniques to get backlinks.
Rand, in your experience what are the standard penalties? Do you see a 1 page drop for minor (possibly accidental violations) and a 20 page drop for blatantly obvious attempts to manipulate the system? Are all of the penalties reviewed and determined case by case?
If so, I'm sure that could get pretty ugly without a standard.
I wouldn't call this hard evidence, but, coincidentally, this morning I may have gotten a client's shady competitor called to task by Google. They had an obvious doorway page/URL that we've reported a few times (in increasing detail, to help the Googlers), and it just dropped from #7 for a key search term to #22. The site hasn't been banned, but that's a significant loss of link-love.
I should add that, while I'm sure there are industries where rankings frequently move, this particular keyword has been reasonably stable for a few months.
I think it's about time that google tells everyone who is getting a penalty, why the site gets this penalty and what the solution is. there is nothing wrong about that.
It's driving me crazy, i'm afraid to ask for links or do some SEO, everything could get a penalty.
That would be really great Jente. Wonder if they'll ever get round to it?
That was covered at the SMX Penalty Box conference, and hopefully the engines will start providing more comprehensive penalty information as appropriate to webmasters. The general consensus was that webmasters all want to know when their site is penalized, and many want penalty information on sites to be made publically available.
I'm sure this would help the myriad of webmasters who stumble into problems because they think they have a bright idea. But I think that with information like this you could get a lot of smart black-hatters figuring things out that Google doesn't want them to figure out.
I understand the concern, but I think the reality is, the really smart BHers are probably going to figure many of these things out on their own... in many cases, I imagine they have more time and/or resources to focus on doing just that.
However, by helping to further educate and inform the greater communitiy, they help to raise the overall quality level, which in turn, hopefully makes it more challenging for BH methods to succeed.
So rather than it being Google (or SE in general) versus BHs and WHs, it is like adding the WHs to their team.
Well said. I think opening up more information in general will help raise the average level among people who aren't immersed in it every day... The BH guys tend to be ahead of this kind of information game anyway.
thumbs up identity, i agree.
There's certainly a balance somewhere between publishing the algorithm and keeping everything behind closed doors that would work well. Isn't transparency good for business?
I understand Google not wanting people reverse engineering things, but still they shouldn't punish people who can't reasonably be expected to know otherwise without at least letting them know why they've been punished.
with information like this you could get a lot of smart black-hatters figuring things out that Google doesn't want them to figure out.
Yes, if a black hat viagra spammer knew exactly how and when their site was penalized, this information would be used to build a better cloaker. Google engineers are by definition reactive - they cannot program solutions to problems that don't yet exist.
The reason link manupulation schemes have traditionally been effective is because algorithm writers need to study the environment to create a cure.
Good info to put into the FYI pile...
I've noticed the heavy dependence on reciprocal links in the real estate world, also. I guess this is fair warning to our bosses and clients that the old fashioned linking stuff isn't just passe, it can be downright detrimental.
Totally. This is a great post to bookmark and send over to new clients (or summarize for them in your proposal) when they have such schemes existing on their sites. A great way to build confidence with a prospect is to tell them the *current* reality (as opposed to what they heard/did in 2001) of link exchange, how it can/is hurting them, but also that you know the exact steps to take to get them in good standing with Google again (grovelling on your knees in repentance thru Google Webmaster Central)
What is your opinion on the so called "-950" penalty? This does not appear to fit into your flowchart.
Dave - if you've got some examples, I'd love to see them, but my rumormill has been telling me that with that penalty, starting with a new site might be the way to go (of course, these are my black hat friends, who are accustomed to the churn and burn lifestyle with Google). You generally won't find a -950 for engaging in some mis-intentioned reciprocal linking in the real estate sphere.
This reminds me of Danny's "Daily Search Cast' rant about personalized search and the information disconnect there seems to be with Google.
"To turn off personalized search quickly, for specific search results, just add "&pws=0" to the end of the URL string in your browser."
Wow - why wouldn't every "Dick and Jane" be able to do that. You might think with all the resources Google has they might create a little image that turns off personalized search without having to pretend to be programmer.
My point is, Realtors over the past 10 years seem to have been victimized by Google's lack clear of communication with a sector that relied on the internet as much as any other industry over that time period.
I have the same problem with around 100 domains. We installed a script that checked the PR and indexed pages. It was a huge mistake and Google penalized all the domains. It was about 1 year back and still the site is not indexed. :(
I wish i could get a solution.
I guess you should throw those domains as they are worthless
Nice article, does anybody know a well working instrument to find out google filters and penalties? Would be very nice to know if there is one. The tool from SEOMoves currently offline.
Great article and well illustrated... thank you
This was a great post. I think that your example was very helpful to someone new to the industry like myself. I was really able to understand a practical use for mass linking. I continually learn from your blogs. Thanx!
It was nice to see that I was already asking two of the three questions. I hadn't thought about the top 10-20 title tag unique check.
Thanks
I ignored the number one etiquette rule in communication. Always start off with a positive remark, I did not and I apologize for it. Rand, thank you very much for bringing that to light with Matt and I meant in no way for my previous comments to be negatively directed toward you or Matt for that matter.
"Khilley - sorry to disagree with you - I like a lot of what you write - but if this statement is true, I don't think it's whining. If we're talking hand-applied penalties to some sites ignoring other worse offenders (disclaimer: I don't know the target market and haven't done my own research) then I think there are certainly better ways of handling this." (how did you get the quotation box?)
More to the point than I was for sure, but one of the points I was trying to make. Up until the Advance Access sites got hit there was no indication industry wide that state pages were black hat. All I was asking (whining about ;)) was the no notice and the hand job (yes the hand job is verified) to a select few.
I am a Realtor living in a town of 80,000. If there ever was a "whisper" at some convention about the issue, it would never make its way to me. And, a discreet "whisper" to a select few is not the way to spread the word. Post it some where so we know. I want my site to be 100% white hat with in all realms of compliances. But I can't insure that is true if I am not allowed access to the list of rules, and am penalized ahead of time for not being able to interpret what is coming down the line.
I keep referring to "I" ....I should be saying "We". There are a lot of us in this boat and feel this way, most just want to keep their heads down and out of sight for now. I appreciate everyone's input, and Rand for bringing our plight to light for some answers and Matt for answering them.
I hope to be able to contribute to the community in a positive manner in the future and look forward to my new membership.
I cheated... I don't know how other people do it, but I don't use the fancy javascript comment editor so I get to edit the html - so if you wrap the bit you want to quote in <blockquote>thing to quote</blockquote> you get that effect.
Thank you sir, I allow the basics to slip from time to time. I'm accustomed to just having a quote button, keep it simple stupid for us simpletons ;)
Im kinda suprised that no one noticed this but www.oaklandhomespecialist.com was a brand new site and he was in a google penalty for age of links or in other words he was sandboxed. The example got it wrong in my opinion. Then again I could be wrong but being he hasn't done any extensive linking since this post and he jumped to #9 for Oakland Real Estate it shows me that his links just needed to age. Anyways I hope disagreeing doesn't get me banned around here. I really love the site and read it constantly. :)
I appreciate you helping us Realtors find our way in the crazy world of SEO, especially with the latest shakeup. Thanks for choosing my site to use as an example.
Could you elaborate on the significance of my ranking for my title tag? You said it was definitely bad, but could you explain? Is it a matte of link quality/quantity?
The most frustrating part of this penalty is all of our competitors who did not get hit at all with his penalty STILL have their state reciprocal pages. Look at the Las Vegas examples Dreaming pointed out above. How can the #1 and #2 ranked site for the term "Las Vegas Real Estate" be getting away with this and yet other sites are penalized? The #2 site is showing the search engine a different page then what the surfer is seeing. Isn't that the classic definition of cloaking?
What also doesn't make any sense is the only two Real Estate Webmasters sites to come back from this penalty STILL have reciprocal links on their site. They aren't on state pages but they are still on their sites with what they call "contextual linking". But they are still reciprocal links.
I just can't figure out why these sites are allowed to stay in the index and keep their rankings while others were penalized and not let back in. And those who were left back in still have recips on thier sites. What are we supposed to think of all this?
Sorry for 2 Comments in a row but something else that is bothering me came to mind about this situation that may be of great use for SEO's both inside and outside of Real Estate.
Here is my question. Why did google manually penalize 15 sites for recip linking? Google has been working on this for quite some time. They hit AA almost a year ago and they still obviously don't have a algo change that will effectively deal with this problem. Google obviously isn't smart enough to deal with this problem and they are resorting to scaring and ruining small business owners (realtors) in an effort to hide a gapping hole in there algo. At the same time they allow large business like HomeGain, Homes.cum and yahoo real estate to dominate terms they have no content for.
My site didn't get hit, I dont have recips because I started to late in the game (After AA got nailed).
Anyways my real problem with Google is they penalized really good sites with quality content, amazing IDX searches, and active blogs while leaving the total garbage sites alone in an effort to make a point that only a select few SEO knowledgable agents will even see.
Google keep it up and we will be able to add you to the list of former #1 search engines.
This is sort of old news; but still relevant to me. Why did Google do that? Simple: they are trying to make a point that your site should be worthy of a link because it's a good resource. Not because you can hire the cheapest SEO link trader or send out email blasts to every Realtor in the country looking for multi-link trades. Was it unfair? Depends on who's side you're on.
Matt Cutts - Any chance you can shed some light on this for us? Please?
Fang:
I noticed Matt is a member here too, and was hoping he would comment...
HG, I am pretty sure he means, that although your website has not built enough authority to rank for your title, you are not penalized. Of course that is just my guess.
Hey what's up Morgan, thanks for the clarification.
A question: What is the difference between the rank for allintitle and rank when you search for the title tag as Randfish did in this example?
If Im #67 when you search for the title tag, but my allintitle rank is 9, then what does that mean?
Memphis, you are totally whining. You had plenty of warnings, but since they didn't come on Google letterhead and signed by Matt, you and many of the REW crew ignored them.
It is like speeding on the freeway. People do it 24/7 and they get where they are going faster without ever getting a ticket. Is it unfair you got stopped and while being written up on the shoulder, have to watch 1000's of others zoom by, all going faster than what the cop is writing you up for at the very moment? Doesn't matter because fairnes isnt the issue. What does matter is that you took a risk and got caught.
Just like the cop on the freeway, Google will never catch everyone, or even most everyone. At best they catch some to make an example of and hope these serve as a deterrent and reminder to others. Don't want to get caught? Either get a real good radar detector or don't speed.
<blockquote>You had plenty of warnings, but since they didn't come on Google letterhead and signed by Matt, you and many of the REW crew ignored them. </blockquote>
Sorry, you are incorrect, at least in my part. Show me where there were any penalties or direct talk about state pages being black hat before 3-months ago. If you have miraculous inside information, then share it, but I wasn't privileged to that information and evidently either were major SEOs - so step down off your typical high horse. If they want the general public to know about a rule or standard, then it should be made available to the general public, that was my point and I stand by it.
Whining? Have you done a thread search for SDHomes on other sites? That is the epitome of smoke, mirrors, knee high Bull Crap and continuous whining and degrading of anyone who posts a comment you are not in 100% agreeable with.
You have a short memory. There was plenty of discussion, especially after numerous client sites from one real estate web design company started removing recip link pages in 2nd half of 2006 as a result of a Yahoo penalty for excessive reciprocal linking.
There were references to comments made at PubCon where the panel of Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, Greg Boser, Danny Sullivan and Todd Friesen all attacked reciprocal linking, specifically within the real estate industry. The arguments made by many at REW was that their recips didnt stink or that their contextual recip links were fine.
SD - No sir, your analogy is incorrect. It is not like speeding the freeway. There are very clear speed limit signs posted and people break the rules, knowing they are breaking them.
You commented on very clear "signs". There was talk and mis-interpretation going on, not very clear signs (I'm not talking about two months ago)...Like I said, I don't go to PubCon or what ever, I do have access to my Google account and the webmasters information. If there is a "rule" that is going to be enforced or revamped, then place something to that affect in there so the Realtors and ma and pop stores that do their own websites have access to the information and not just a select few that happen to go to some conference. That was one of my points. Now we know, now it's easy to not violate the "rule", and I won't - just like I didn't key word stuff, because I knew.
My goal is to have a very clean site with zero spam in the SE's eyes, just please allow me the access to the information and guidelines so I can accomplish that.
Thanks for everyone's input - it's nice to have discussions on this, so we can learn from it.
This thread from REW is dated 11/28/06:
https://www.realestatewebmasters.com/showthread.php?t=10794
Because many Realtors on the forums are new to Google webmasters, and not sure what "re-inclusion" means, or how to do it etc, I created this tutorial for you: https://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/1728/show/
Rand, I gotta learn how to do this flow charts, my text only blogs are getting old!
PS! Just so no-one thinks I am being a kiss ass, or riding on the coattails, I just wanted to point out that I wrote this post on June 5th, 6 days before Rand posted this heh.
One other issue that was raised at SMX Advanced was the idea that the neighborhood (server) your site is in can impact how your behavior is rated. So if you're a Mom-n-Pop, but you're being provided the basis for your site by a large provider of hosting space/design for real estate sites, you're going to be treated relative to that large provider, and not as much as a mom-n-pop.
I actually sort of find this quease-inducing, because 'local hosting' is less and less common, and getting hosting from large national companies in various verticals is more common. Given that I work for one such provider, it concerns me a lot that a Mom-n-Pop who works through a big company can get penalized as if they have the full knowledge base of the company providing their hosting.
Whoa, 10 thumbs down? What the heck was that for, is there something wrong with this statement that I should know about?
Another great post!