iamned.com

A new google penalty?

Arguably the number one detriment to higher rankings is not insuficient linkage, but being hit by an unnamed google penalty. I have observed this penalty since summer of 2006 and it seems to affect sites that are compliant with google’s guidelines.

One such instance of this penalty has happened one of my sites www.myspooz.com. Myspooz.com is a myspace resource site that used to rank well for several competitive terms and was getting thousands of visits a day. Then I woke up one morning and all my rankings had vanished. All my linking pointing to myspooz.com are still intact and the site is still indexed in google; it is just that the rankings are gone.

Why did this happen? Beats me. I didn’t conduct link spam and most of my links came from link exchanges to related myspace sites. Is the sandbox the culprit? I doubt it. Myspooz.com was already several months old when the penalty was applied. The sendbox is a filter that affects sites that were just launched. Nevertheless, it is futile trying to apply any more SEO to myspooz.com until the penalty is lifted and my original rankings come back; the benefits of any further SEO will be negated by the penalty.

Here are some previous sites I know of that have been hit by penalties.

1. Mypimpspace.com The myspace resource site used to rank in google for a slep of keywords until in summer 2006 when it was hit by a penalty. In spite of having a pagerank of 5, a three year old domain name, and a lot of inbound links its rankings have never been resorted. This is a total enigma wrapped in a riddle.

2. Myspacesupport.com used to have good rankings until a similar penalty was applied. Traffic has fallen substantially since. The site doesn’t contain any obvious spam and has numerous aged backlinks. The domain is over two years old.
3. Doobix.com same as #1 and #2.

4. Blingcheese.com. I already wrote about this site a month ago. A lot of inbound links, tons of original content, no good google rankings for some reason.

What is interesting about this penalty is that it affects whitehat sites that seem to be completely devoid of any of the well-known red flag spam triggers. None of these sites have spammy content or spammy links.

More research needs to be done regarding a penalty that is afflicting sites that are compliant with the google webmaster guidelines yet are having their rankings suppressed.

If your site is hit by this penalty I suggest building a new site and stopping all SEO campaigns to affected site until there is sufficient evidence that the penalty is lifted. Unfortunately, this penalty appears to be virtually impossible to lift.

2 Responses to “A new google penalty?”