Whatare the google penalties

[VirtualHoney]

I have been wondering, what are the things that google penalizes the most?

I know bad backlinks can be penalized but what else?

[briggidere]

bad back links don't count too much so i wouldn't worry too much about them. If they did, we would all be out submitting our competition to link farms. ;-)

things they do not like:

hidden text
linking out to bad sites
too high keyword denstiy
doorway pages

there are a lot of filters as well which would not be classed as penalties:

brand new domain
too many links to quickly (dependant on previous link growth pattern)
too much content too quickly (dependant on previous content growth patterns)

There will be many more to add to both categories. This will start them off.

[janhvizdak]

Originally Posted by briggidere

too many links to quickly (dependant on previous link growth pattern)

I completely agree! I have experienced real problems in Google with one of my sites. When a domain is new, links should be acquired slowly. Maybe 1 link per week and slowly increase this speed after a few weeks.

Originally Posted by briggidere

too much content too quickly (dependant on previous content growth patterns).

I currently started a sub-domain with nearly 500 pages which were created in about 2 weeks (manually, of course; it's a database). And it is already receiving some traffic from G. Moreover, it got very good starting positions for competitive phrases (usually top50 for phrases with up to 2K monthly searches). So this aspect (content built too fast) might not apply to you if you're starting something under the wings of any existing and well-trusted domain.

[Forsh]

I think my new site is experiencing the "building new backlinks too quickly" for a new domain penalty. Is this a penalty that lasts long-term for the site, or is there a time-frame under which the issues of ranking bad for terms will go away?

Appreciate any advice on this.

[janhvizdak]

Originally Posted by Forsh

I think my new site is experiencing the "building new backlinks too quickly" for a new domain penalty. Is this a penalty that lasts long-term for the site, or is there a time-frame under which the issues of ranking bad for terms will go away?

Appreciate any advice on this.

My penalty expired after 6 months. Then I saw a rocket boost from the top700 to the top10 for primary phrase. Overnight! Until that moment I didn't believe that it can really happen.

[dman_2007]

Originally Posted by Forsh

I think my new site is experiencing the "building new backlinks too quickly" for a new domain penalty. Is this a penalty that lasts long-term for the site, or is there a time-frame under which the issues of ranking bad for terms will go away?

Appreciate any advice on this.

Don't worry about the penalty, it will go away after sometime. The specific time period of this penalty depends on what keyword you targeting and what are quality of backlinks. In the meantime keep building backlinks, once the penalty period is over your site will come out very strong in the SERP rankings.

[VirtualHoney]

Thanks for all the useful tips. It is very much appreciated

[Educator]

Originally Posted by dman_2007

Don't worry about the penalty, it will go away after sometime. The specific time period of this penalty depends on what keyword you targeting and what are quality of backlinks. In the meantime keep building backlinks, once the penalty period is over your site will come out very strong in the SERP rankings.

OK.....for the newbies in the room (of which perhaps its only me):

1. what do you mean Google penalties - do you mean that Google will on purpose not include your side in search results at all or only after the first X %?

2. what is a SEPR ranking and where does one find out what one's blog SEPR ranking might be?

Thank you in advance.

[briggidere]

OK.....for the newbies in the room (of which perhaps its only me):

1. what do you mean Google penalties - do you mean that Google will on purpose not include your side in search results at all or only after the first X %?

I would say it's a filter rather than a penalty. If they notice something funny, they may only let 5% of the link value pass across to your domain for a certain time period (maybe 6-12 months to get 100% of what it's worth) and after that it starts to increase, possibly quite slowly and gradually. (5% is a guess as is the 6-12 months, no one knows) It will not take you out of the serps, just not pass the link juice immediately. Think of it as a long term investment. Not a quick return, but gradual.

2. what is a SEPR ranking and where does one find out what one's blog SEPR ranking might be?

Search Engine Result Page - The page where the listings are.

[Clarissa101]

Google always says, they want a natural linking and they doesn't like paid ads and directories. but i haven't seen one that got penalized by google...

[briggidere]

there have been a lot of blogs that use pay per post that have lost PR recently.

Google is cracking down on it, but it is quite hard for them to detect.

[sniperhiga]

Easy Penalty: Few drops in rankings
Easy Penalty: Pagerank decrease
Good Penalty: Removal from top positions (sandbox) for a sertain amount of time.
Hardcore: Complete removal from index.

They can punish a website for:

- fast link building from low quality websites and directories.
- instant submission in 20 000+- "search engines and catalogs".
- cloaking
- hidden text
- keyword spam ( targeting the same keyword in anchor text)
- spam links (blog comments, guestbooks, social sites, forums)
- human hand (removal by hand when 100% website reach top positions for popular keyword)
- spam reports from another webmasters
- selling links
- buying links
- content (illegal, violence, child pornography etc)

... and more

[Educator]

Originally Posted by sniperhiga

Easy Penalty: Few drops in rankings
Easy Penalty: Pagerank decrease
Good Penalty: Removal from top positions (sandbox) for a sertain amount of time.
Hardcore: Complete removal from index.

They can punish a website for:

- fast link building from low quality websites and directories.
- instant submission in 20 000+- "search engines and catalogs".
- cloaking
- hidden text
- keyword spam ( targeting the same keyword in anchor text)
- spam links (blog comments, guestbooks, social sites, forums)
- human hand (removal by hand when 100% website reach top positions for popular keyword)
- spam reports from another webmasters
- selling links
- buying links
- content (illegal, violence, child pornography etc)

... and more

What happens if you have a blog, say on blogger, with oh, I don't know, about 75 posts, one per day, that you then copy over to a domain name. Won't that create the apperance of a brand new site with lots of contents, inclusion in oh, say 20 directories, lot's of articles published, and so on?

Also, how will you know if this has happened to your site? Will they send you an email or something?

Thanks!

[briggidere]

no. google will see that the blog had the posts on there first and the new domain that the content gets placed on will have duplicate content and will probably get nowhere in the serps.

you can use copyscape.com to see if someone has taken your content but you have to manually do this unless you want to pay for it. You do not get emails otherwise.

[dman_2007]

Originally Posted by Clarissa101

Google always says, they want a natural linking and they doesn't like paid ads and directories. but i haven't seen one that got penalized by google...

Detecting paid links from natural link is very difficult for a bot. Most of the sites which got penalized recently for link selling or for participating in pay per post type programs were identified either by manual paid link reports by other people or due to a pattern such as linking to payperpost site with affiliate id.

[Educator]

Originally Posted by briggidere

no. google will see that the blog had the posts on there first and the new domain that the content gets placed on will have duplicate content and will probably get nowhere in the serps.

you can use copyscape.com to see if someone has taken your content but you have to manually do this unless you want to pay for it. You do not get emails otherwise.

OK, thanks briggidere. I'm about to create a domain, copy all my posts to the domain blog, place a redirect from the old blogspot name to the new domain name, and so on.....a lot of effort and since I am that close to getting my first $100 of Adsense revenue I wouldn't want to mess it up now!

Thanks very much.

[rhyswynne]

I noticed if you sell links that your PR drops, but not your SERPS.

[dman_2007]

Originally Posted by rhyswynne

I noticed if you sell links that your PR drops, but not your SERPS.

Well thats the first stage of warning, if you don't stop selling links and file a reconsideration request you can lose your SERP rankings as well. I have seen people losing their SERP rankings for selling text links. Heres an example.

[guinanie]

This are the list of Google website guidelines that you should got avoid.

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
* Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
* Don't send automated queries to Google.
* Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
* Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
* Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
* Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
* If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

[sniperhiga]

Originally Posted by Educator

What happens if you have a blog, say on blogger, with oh, I don't know, about 75 posts, one per day, that you then copy over to a domain name. Won't that create the apperance of a brand new site with lots of contents, inclusion in oh, say 20 directories, lot's of articles published, and so on?

Also, how will you know if this has happened to your site? Will they send you an email or something?

Thanks!

Use 301 redirect.