Search Engines And Penalties – My Google Penalty
Posted on | February 9, 2009 | 5 Comments
February 12, 2009 Update: Rankings sort of back for the most part. Not exactly sure why, but there’s some ranking. Traffic is now lower than during the penalty. Weird 
I’ve been reading an awful lot about Google penalties and why exactly they occur. The obvious reason is to get rid of spam sites from the Google index, but what about the “innocent”? First off, I’d like to define the word innocent in this context: those that don’t do anything wrong and (hopefully) fill up Google with useful content. Like all bad things in life, at times, a few innocent suffer as well. So what the hell does this have to do with anything? For the last two weeks or so, Fka200.com has been “Google Bitch Slapped”. Not sure why, since everything on this blog is done 100% clean and there have never been any link sales. So, what do you do during these dark times? Try to fix the problem!
I’m still not out of the box, but here’s what I’ve done so far:
1. Researched Google’s webmaster guidelines. Maybe I did screw up?
Taking a look at Google’s webmaster guidelines, I really don’t see anything I did wrong. All I do is blog occassionaly and make sure the blog actually works. The only hiccup in the last month has been host gator server maintenance for about two hours. I highly doubt that did anything to my search rankings.
2. Tried to figure out what exactly happened.
Quick searches for my site and analyzing my traffic stats is what I did next. HUGE difference when you’re penalized. Having a website with much less traffic deeply hinders motivation to provide fresh content. Main goal is to find out what exactly went wrong in order to prevent it in the future.
3. Checked out various domainer/webmaster forums to see what others are saying
Although I can’t find the links I found 2 weeks ago, there were a couple people mentioning getting penalized by Google in the exact way I was. No helpful ideas on what exactly should be done, so I had to move on.
4. Links?
I removed some links off my site. Not sure if it will do anything, but I took some off.
5. Search “Google Penalty” on Google
I ended up searching the term Google Penalty. I read a bunch of websites and there is really no clear way on clearing a penalty. The most interesting story was this one that I found.
6. Last Resort: Webmaster Tools
I went for it and sent a reinclusion request for Fka200.com. I wrote a long message, and just crossed my fingers. It’s absolutely mind boggling why I would get penalized, but it happened. Of all the things I did to try to get this blog afloat again, I’m hoping that this the reinclusion request will get it back into the index properly. It’s not Google banned, but penalized. I’ve checked other domains I have, and they are doing alright. Traffic decrease on some, but not the way it is with this blog.
I’ll probably update once again for those interested in hearing what exactly happens. No helpful information as of yet, but hopefully a solution will be found. Yahoo/Live still sending over traffic and getting trickles of traffic from Google, but yep–February might be an awful month!
Comments
5 Responses to “Search Engines And Penalties – My Google Penalty”
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February 9th, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
Sammy,
Start with Google webmaster tools, log in and check everything. If you have technical issues, it will usually be there.
The only other thing that might make me nervous is the fancy blog tag plugin. Look at the page code. Putting so many keywords on a page might be an issue.
You say your site got slapped but you didnt say how. What terms were you searching for? Is it out completely or moved down in rank?
Do you have sufficent inbound links? Check whether there has been a change in the inbound linking.
Good luck
February 9th, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
I actually never thought of the blog tag plugin… that definitely was a recent addition (1-1.5 months now) now.
Mainly searching for the term fka200 on Google. Obviously with such a “keyword” I’ve been #1 ever since the blog was started, but now I’m at Page 5, so I assume the Google Page 5 penalty that I’ve been reading about. The blog isn’t banned from the index, just the whole page 5 penalty situation.
Also, I made a couple posts in January where I’ve received a lot of links back to the blog. All natural from people just re-posting the links to the articles, but that’s about it. Other than that, ZIP!
I’m going to be removing the blog tag plugin and see what happens. I’m sure the reinclusion request won’t be responded to for a while, so I’m not holding my breath. It’s just amazing how things can go haywire overnight.
Comment greatly appreciated
February 10th, 2009 @ 3:14 am
Hello,
Nice post thanks. I like your site very well and continue to do so. I have bookmark your site.
February 10th, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
Thank you
I really appreciate it!
February 11th, 2009 @ 8:03 am
Good post.
I thought Google only penalised sites for paid posting or paid linking I did not know they can penalise you for other thigns as well.
I have only just discovered Google webmaster tools and I’m having a bit of fun poking aorund with that.