Penguin 2.0 rolled out today

[GFPC]

Hey Frank,

Awesome! That is wonderful. Thanks so much also for your comments they are really appreciated. I think your right you did not indeed have a Penguin Penality lifted.

I think that is important as I reaffirm once a site is hit from Penguin it is not possible to recover. If anyone can prove me wrong please show me. I highly doubt I will see any examples though so best of luck all.

Steve

[lowrisk]

Sorry, but as Head of Affiliates, every comment you make on this forum is a reflection of your professionalism and to your brand.

Frank, you're wrong, childish and very petty!

If you knew Anthony and met him in person, you would know that he is loonier than Bugs Bunny on ectsasy!

He often makes comical comments, clearly you are one of the unfortunate people in society born with no sense of humor, or who take life extremely serious. Irrespective of which of these apply to you, I do feel for you, I truly do.

However, One thing I will say is, Anthony is a funny character and does say things which not everybody find funny all of the time (must be his age ) however he is a manager I respect, trust and would never doubt his professionalism. Just because somebody knows how to add a bit of fun to a crap situation (penguin) - does not mean he is unprofessional. He is Head of Affiliates for a reason, he knows his stuff, but also has fun doing it. Which is what we all should do! Why take everything so serious? What's the point? Get a grip

Also, lots of managers write things on here, far worse than what Anthony wrote, this does NOT mean that they are immediately unprofessional or it reflects badly on their brand, just means they have a fun factor and try and brighten up a dull thread with some humor, everybody needs laughter in their lives.

However, if I am wrong, maybe we should all get disclaimers in our signatures, or maybe we can sue?

In fact, on that note, if what I have written has offended you or anybody else, then feel free to email me at ryan@idontgiveadamn.co.uk

[Frank Benjamin]

Frank, you're wrong, childish and very petty!

If you knew Anthony and met him in person, you would know that he is loonier than Bugs Bunny on ectsasy!

He often makes comical comments, clearly you are one of the unfortunate people in society born with no sense of humor, or who take life extremely serious. Irrespective of which of these apply to you, I do feel for you, I truly do.

However, One thing I will say is, Anthony is a funny character and does say things which not everybody find funny all of the time (must be his age ) however he is a manager I respect, trust and would never doubt his professionalism. Just because somebody knows how to add a bit of fun to a crap situation (penguin) - does not mean he is unprofessional. He is Head of Affiliates for a reason, he knows his stuff, but also has fun doing it. Which is what we all should do! Why take everything so serious? What's the point? Get a grip

Also, lots of managers write things on here, far worse than what Anthony wrote, this does NOT mean that they are immediately unprofessional or it reflects badly on their brand, just means they have a fun factor and try and brighten up a dull thread with some humor, everybody needs laughter in their lives.

However, if I am wrong, maybe we should all get disclaimers in our signatures, or maybe we can sue?

In fact, on that note, if what I have written has offended you or anybody else, then feel free to email me at ryan@idontgiveadamn.co.uk

Never met the guy and don't know him from Adam. I do have a ******* great sense of humor; however, emotion doesn't come through a keyboard. I didn't know he was kidding and thought he was ******* with my typo.

If you knew me, you would know I don't take much very serious and can be the biggest screw up. But that is the point. You don't know me, so a comment meant to be funny could come off as being an ass or aragant.

Whatever....the comment, my retort and all these other comment about it take away from what this thread is about and that is fixing a site penalized by Penguin.

I apologize for taking the comment seriously, but since I don't know Anthony, I thought it was. Let's drop it and post comments that can actually help the OP instead of pointing out typos or mistakes whether it is meant to be funny or not.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Im just looking for an example and yet no one can show me. Thanks Frank at least for acknowledgement as most people do not even provide that.

Hi GFPC,

I can verify Frank is giving an example. I'm sure he would send you the url in a PM

[GFPC]

Hi GFPC,

I can verify Frank is giving an example. I'm sure he would send you the url in a PM

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the note - If you read on he does share the url but as agreed he really never got out of a penguin penalty. All he did was move his content to a sub domain and we discussed that he was lucky to not have the penalty follow.

What I want to know and for a full year now - not one single person on this earth can show me 1 single site that has been hit with a penguin filter penalty and then later on get that penalty removed. I am not talking about tricks or ways to bypass the filter like 301 redirects to new domains or sub domains.

I am talking about cleaning your site and using disavow tool or anything google suggests to have the filter removed.

This is what I believe is not possible! If your site has been hit it cannot be returned pre penalty!

Again not one single person can show me this! Yet everyone talks about how its possible.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I have several but they are clients not my own, therefor have NDA's. I'm just not sure why it matters if there is a fix. You can also search webmaster world and find examples as well.

[GFPC]

I have several but they are clients not my own, therefor have NDA's. I'm just not sure why it matters if there is a fix. You can also search webmaster world and find examples as well.

It matters if there is a fix because if there is a fix then a site that has been hit with a penguin penalty can be fixed.
Yeah i checked several places and do not really see proof of a site being hit and recovering.

If you have personally scene it great! Or know how to fix it wonderful! Im still trying to figure those details out.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

To be fair if there was a documented fix you will probably find it on LinkResearchTools - Christopher Cemper's deal (where you used the Detox Tool), or WebmasterWorld.

The other issue is that no sooner I/they/we figure out a fix the goalposts get moved with another update.

I have run a 1000+ site strong network for 6 years and hundreds of combinations of plugins, social media triggers and link sampling and when I identify winners and target 10 or 20 average sites in the network, then copy the signature/strategy to verify our conclusions, Google tweaks again.

So in terms of doing the same regarding penalties, I'm not so sure anyone will have an exact method for you because every site is completely different.

It sounds like you have done everything correctly and should expect results, but short term I suggest you do the same thing Frank did. Also create an A-Address and host the subdomain on a different server just to be on the safe side. With the right tools it doesn't take much to make the site unique. You can do that with a new front page title,geo-targeting and a new description tag. At least this is a short term fix if your traffic is affected right now.

The other issue is you say you have submitted a disavow link request, 5 or 6 re-inclusion requests and Link Detox.

The Disavow tool has been out 7 months.
When you resubmit a re-inclusion you also reset your position in the queue.
Link Detox, and the Disavow file it creates assuming this is when you may have identified the bad ones, has been out for a matter of weeks.

I can't tell you how many times the question is raised regarding penalties, and believe me I have seen a few offering recovery advice free when I charge clients five figures for this, and the common denominator is always time.

Another consideration is what penalties you incurred and why. Was it a bad outsourced link campaign? Was someone using SENukeX, Licorne AIO, Ultimate Demon or some other automated tool...irresponsibly? Half of my clients over the past 5 years for recovery campaigns were as a result of some unknown $500-a-month SEO campaign that's just an absolute disgrace. By the way everyone - if you have paid posts on blogs get them taken down and def add them to your disavow regardless of whether Link Detox says to or not.

So short of finding you a temporary solution, which outside of a subdomain and what I have mentioned above is all I have, I would say you have done everything you needed to do except wait.

GaryTheScubaGuy

[-Shay-]

Steve, I'm curious why you're differentiating between "fixes". If a way to remove the negative effects of Penguin means moving content to a sub-domain, why fight it?

If the goal is to get traffic back to get the money machine printing again and a sub-domain redirect accomplishes exactly that - I think it is quite obvious what I'd be doing. Is that your goal or is there another goal here?

[thebookiesoffers]

personally reading what a lot of people have seen I don't think it is quite black and white. I'm not saying this refers to GFPC or not but have seen others not even think about this

Pre-penguin - ranking page 1 with loads of dodgy links

penguin comes in - Bang, slapped right down

clear up spammy links - no increase, because although you removed the bad links they were the ones giving you high rankings in the first place

Also it is worth noting that from my learnings of it when it first came out it was called an 'over optimization penalty' as well as spam filter. So if you managed to clear all the spam crap links but have a massive % of anchor text for 1 or 2 phrases you will still trigger it

might be wrong but that is my interpretation

[F-L-C]

[QUOTE=clear up spammy links - no increase, because although you removed the bad links they were the ones giving you high rankings in the first place[/QUOTE]

I think you have made a really good point there which often gets overlooked

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

One more thing - this may be beneficial to know - a "site fix" timescale guesstimate takes anywhere from 3 to 12 months depending on the severity of the penalty and the time that passes after you have done everything you can to clean out the bad and add the new.

This campaign is a lot like the campaigns we have ran purging negative posts on blogs, review sites, etc. or brand sabotage, and the timing is the same as well. It is brand protection. And that's a stupid amount of money and work. Penguin 2.0 recovery is nothing compared to this.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

You're going to see a lot more in the near future because many benefitted from dual listings on long tail keywords and results showing both the homepage and an internal page. This is IMHO beneficial because you are not in competition with the over strength of a website but rather its internal page strength, therefor a more level playing field. I base this opinion on the point thebookieoffers made regarding over-optimisation of individual keywords.

If Google starts eliminating the main URL from 80-90% of queries and strictly looks at the merits of the individual internal page this may go good or bad for you.

There are plenty of tools and opinionated anchor splitting formulas, even one I did after 1.3, but we did see success. Specifically only linking back using brand on 30-40% of back linking anchor text.

[Voids]

I personally haven't seen any changes in my rankings, good or bad. It's probably because I'm not targeting the highly competitive key words, I've also never really created any back links.

I don't think this will do much to my sites, as 95% of all the work for rankings is based in my content. More so on footy-tipster.co.uk.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I thought of one I can tell you about, but its been fixed so a bit pointless. Anyways Bingo.com got hit with a severe penalty when they migrated sites and ended up on a cookie-cutter platform.

We created a subdomain and they recovered almost immediately to top position, even over wiki, when they had dropped 30 positions due to a penalty.

Funny thing is though when I do a search now (they have done their SEO for 2 years now), bingo.com comes up, but the subdomain http://online.bingo.com/en also shows when the direct url is entered, so I wonder if this is a new results from 2.0?

I'll drop the owner an email and see if they have seen the difference and when or if they tried to get re-inclusion via WMC tools.

Interesting I found this as a result of this thread. Maybe it can answer some questions.

Back at 11!

GaryTheScubaGuy

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

PaddyPower and WilliamHill are still showing for their subdomains for 'Hollywood' terms like online bingo so this is def worth looking in to.

[edgarf76]

Awesome post Gary. I was just reading an seo blog about it. So far I have been seeing a steady increase on most of my sites as normal. Hopefully this gets rid of some of the junk out there.

[GFPC]

Thanks Gary for your comments - I have been patient a year so i guess another year won't hurt.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

So this was a 1.0 update penalty? Hmmm. I def would have done subdomains then hindsight is 20/20.

I ask because as I mentioned before;
1. The Disavow tool has only been out 7 months.
2. When you resubmit a re-inclusion you also reset your position in the queue.
3. Link Detox, and the Disavow file it creates assuming this is when you may have identified the bad ones, has only been out for a matter of weeks.

So how have you done these things and given enough time to pass?

[GFPC]

Yeah i will give it more time I guess another year or so thanks Gary