I once got slapped really hard by a girl once. Actually, it was more of a punch/slap hybrid. It would have made a good photo for this post.
From memory I hadn’t really done anything wrong, although I’m sure I must have done something to deserve such treatment. My attacker was then shepherded away by Gerit, the German foreign exchange student. We used to call him “Gerit the woman beater”, or words to that effect (we were very mature). So it was rather ironic that he decided to protect her (as if I was going to retaliate).
Just to clarify, I was 17 at the time. Playground politics, eh? That reminds me of a post I wrote on this blog many moons ago, the subject matter of which slots in with today’s topic rather fittingly. See how I’m weaving this all together? It’s a thing of beauty.
Anyway…
I don’t login to Google Webmaster Tools as often as I feel I should. But just last week I did, as part of the research I was doing for this article. And I got a rather unpleasant surprise, in the form of one of Google’s now infamous canned messages:
Dear site owner or webmaster of https://www.leavingworkbehind.com/,
We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
Yep – Google has penalized Leaving Work Behind. I cast my mind back through the blog’s short history, trying to think of what I could have done to offend Google. Then I remembered – a few months ago, I built a few links using the now defunct Rank Jumpers. Since Google deindexed that private blog network, my guess is that they have penalized any site who used it (a wild assumption, but that’s how I roll).
The Effects
The message was received on 8th April. Here is how my search engine traffic levels have fared over the past 60 days, with the penalization date circled:
Yep – the day after the message was sent, I had a big spike in search engine traffic. But since then, there has been a decline.
It is not possible to draw a solid conclusion from the above data – especially since my site’s traffic numbers have been declining too (it seems my new casual approach to blogging is taking its toll). What I can draw a safe conclusion from though however is how my keyword rankings have been affected:
I am only tracking three keywords (my SEO work on this blog is pretty woeful), but it would appear that Google has gotten a bit slap happy with my poor little blog.
No Mercy
I am surprised to be honest. There are plenty of completely natural links pointing to this blog, and the effect of those 20-30 links I built back at the end of last year must be absolutely minimal. In fact, I am pretty sure that Rank Jumpers said they would be removing the links (although whether or not they have done so is another question altogether).
I think we can see here another clear example of Google’s absolute ruthlessness in penalizing any and all sites that engage in any kind of overt link building whatsoever. There would appear to be little in the way of human consideration (as in a recognition of the fact that this is a site of substance). Robot says kill the site, and the site shall be dead.
What Next?
The first obvious step would be to submit a reconsideration request. I have heard so many stories of this having absolutely no effect, but I can’t see any harm in doing so. I have no problem with being up front and confessing to building the Rank Jumpers links.
But there is one thing holding me back at present. I would like to think that Google would see sense and lift whatever penalties it has imposed on the site, but I would be really pissed off if it didn’t. The whole canned message followed up by a canned message really gets on my nerves. If an actual person takes the time to manually review a site following a reconsideration request, you would think that they could take an extra 10 seconds to briefly inform you of the reason for their decision.
Of course I am anticipating something that might not occur, but just thinking about it gets me irritated. Some people argue that you shouldn’t complain, as Google owes you nothing, but that is absolute rubbish. Google wouldn’t exist without websites. Collectively, your blog, my blog, Amazon, theChive, Cheese.com and every other damn site out there facilitate Google’s existence. So yes, if I submit a reconsideration request which is subsequently rejected without a human response, I do feel that Google is being an asshole.
What Do YOU Think?
So what do you think I should do? Submit the request? I guess I have to – but how should I phrase it – what should I say? Have any of you had success in submitted reconsideration requests? Let us know in the comments section!
Oh, and in case you were wondering – that girl who slapped me? We’re still good friends. I don’t know what happened to Gerit.
Creative Commons image courtesy of peterp
Jeffrey Trull says
Hi Tom,
Oh no!
I think you should simply remove the links (hopefully you can), but not necessarily submit the reconsideration request. The reason is that you might not have been penalized, just warned.
This is a good post about it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice
Under “Submitting a Reconsideration Request,” the author says “If your site hasn’t been penalized yet, but you received the warning, you can skip this step.”
Do you have any proof of penalty other than seemingly losing some traffic? I’m not entirely convinced by your chart above, but maybe you’ve analyzed it more closely.
Do you track SERP rankings for this site? Or know of any terms that you ranked highly for before? I’d check those if possible before assuming that you’ve been penalized.
Jeffrey Trull says
Hi Tom,
Oh no!
I think you should simply remove the links (hopefully you can), but not necessarily submit the reconsideration request. The reason is that you might not have been penalized, just warned.
This is a good post about it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice
Under “Submitting a Reconsideration Request,” the author says “If your site hasn’t been penalized yet, but you received the warning, you can skip this step.”
Do you have any proof of penalty other than seemingly losing some traffic? I’m not entirely convinced by your chart above, but maybe you’ve analyzed it more closely.
Do you track SERP rankings for this site? Or know of any terms that you ranked highly for before? I’d check those if possible before assuming that you’ve been penalized.
tomewer says
@Jeffrey Trull Thanks for the tips and the article Jeff – I think I’ve read that before, but obviously needed to go over it again!
I think the rankings above show that Google has imposed some sort of penalty – the one that has dropped sharply was previously pretty solid.
msharron says
@tomewer @Jeffrey Trull
msharron says
Couple of questions.
Are you familiar with -50 / -100 slaps?
Are you familiar with negative SEO?
tomewer says
@msharron As in a penalty imposed by Google where they drop your rankings by 50 or 100 spots? I’m familiar with the concept. As for negative SEO – do you mean over-optimization?
jose barrios says
I am a newbie to SEO and link building so take my comment with a grain of salt. Would it be possible that you are being penalized for having links too quickly? My thought is that you are an authority figure on the internet- with your freelance work and being the editor at managewp.
I forgot how I found out about who you are and your sight but if I recall correctly it was through a link to your sight from another site doing internet marketing. So you had a following before leaving work behind and with your great and insightful articles you had many sites linking to you quicker than is “normal”. Could it be that the sight didn’t have a human take a look and the message was sent from a bot that just categorized your site as spammy?
I apologize if I am being too naive as a newbie and/or I don’t understand what the problem is.
Good luck and please keep us posted.
tomewer says
Hi Jose,
Thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t think that’s the issue. Google would be in a right state if a natural backlinks profile as modest as mine resulted in automatic penalizations.
Cheers,
Tom
Jon Clayton says
Certainly Google is not worth messing with. It is their sandbox, so to speak. I will continue to read your blog through my (Google) reader…
tomewer says
@Jon Clayton Haha – they’ve taken over 😉
Justicewordlaw says
Google should offer some sort of human communication when it comes to penalizing a person either through adsense or seo in this case but it seems as if they don’t care. It’s kind of fun because Google really does show that their all about their users but they have no customer service for their users at all. The only interaction they seem to have is when they create a product that seems to never work out 90 days later.
tomewer says
@Justicewordlaw It’s a sore spot for many webmasters, but their “no communication” policy seems pretty set in stone…
Steve_Rice says
Sorry about your situation, Tom. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I”m off to check my site. I (like you) have paid less attention to it than I should.
I did notice that Pat Flynn mentioned something about Google ranking a blogspot site for “making money online” (or some similar keyword) first…even though it had no content. Interesting. I hope this is just a time of “adjustment” cuz if Google loses their credibility, their competitors will swoop in, I’m sure.
I know…just speaking for myself…and speaking emotionally, I trust Google because they provide great services, but I don’t like being taken advantage of…and if I feel their “do no harm” motto has slipped to much, i’ll begin to look elsewhere for (even less than perfect) alternatives.
tomewer says
@Steve_Rice Hi Steve, thanks for dropping by!
I also saw Pat mention that…very odd. Google is certainly imposing big changes (what with the blog network deindexing), but I would be surprised if the overall effects were that considerable.
I use and enjoy an awful lot of Google’s services, but I certainly don’t trust them. They’re profit-hungry, like any other corporation.
AndreGarde says
This is another sick joke from Google.
Anyway, when you take a look at LWB in Majestic you can clearly see what generated the WMT notice (look at March 26): https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/compare-domain-backlink-history?d0=leavingworkbehind.com&IndexDataSource=F
AndreGarde says
Sorry I should be clear: I’m not insinuating that Tom made these links himself. I would just ignore the notice anyway.
tomewer says
@AndreGarde Whoa. Interesting…is it possible to find out more about that surge of backlinks? And is ignoring the notice in my best interests if it would appear that my search engine rankings are suffering as a result?
scotty_webb says
@tomewer I just tested my own site out too and that seems as if it’s a default there. http://cl.ly/3n3W1w3m393v0c150C24You’ll see that my site reports that same surge but I don’t think it’s actually anything at all. Probably every site will show that way.
tomewer says
@scotty_webb Ah, I see…thanks Scott.
Duy Nguyen says
Hi Tom,
I’ve just read your post and my first reaction was “Oops, he submitted the reconsideration request already!” Seriously, you might not have been penalized just by building a few links with Rank Jumpers. I did receive that “death note” on April 4th with one of my Amazon niche site which was heavily pumped with links from ALN. And guess what, that site continued to perform even better until last day when Google launched its new “crazy update”
What I want to point out is, yes, google might notice about the unnatural links coming to your site, but to base the conclusion that your site got penalized just because you received that automated message is not solid. I myself and many other webmasters realized that it’s more of a scare tactic from Google to force webmasters report their link building pattern to them so they can go and nuke down the sources.
But that’s just my own observation with my sites as well as from many other webmasters. I can’t tell you with 100% confidence but I think your loss of traffic has more to do with the recent Google update than with that automated message.
Anyway, I wish LWB will come back even stronger 🙂
Duy.
tomewer says
@Duy Nguyen Hi Duy,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and for your kind words 🙂
It would be a shame if the recent update negatively affected my rankings…99% of my link profile is natural, the content is all original…what could I be doing wrong?
Cheers,
Tom
Kent @ Make Extra Money Online says
Tom, you have a lot of loyal readers and great content on this blog. Don’t think you get much impact.
I hope your guest post links didn’t get “webspam” signals.
tomewer says
@Kent @ Make Extra Money Online Ugh…Google.
ebryanr says
I agree that Google thinks they have become self sufficient and can exist on their own. They are all to good at not giving justified reasons for their actions. I believe you will have to give a response or worse actions will take place.
tomewer says
@ebryanr Yeah I’m still not sure…haven’t made a decision yet.
Marc Bell Marketing says
Wow! Sorry to hear the news…but do you think using Google’s Webmaster Tools has given Google more info about your site than you would actually allow?
Marc Bell Marketing says
Wow! Sorry to hear the news…but do you think using Google’s Webmaster Tools has given Google more info about your site than you would actually allow?
Marc Bell Marketing says
Wow! Sorry to hear the news…but do you think using Google’s Webmaster Tools has given Google more info about your site than you would actually allow?
tomewer says
@Marc Bell Marketing To be honest, there’s nothing about this blog that I would consciously choose to hide from Google – I’ve got nothing to hide!
elizabethbarone says
I’d submit the request. Often, the “horror stories” were unsubstantiated; people just didn’t want to go through the effort of fixing their sites, or were actually using black hat methods. You made an honest mistake, and though it won’t happen right away — I’m sure there’s a queue — Google will probably reinstate you.
tomewer says
@elizabethbarone I think I’m with you Elizabeth – it’s on the to do list!
Jim McKee says
Google is a bully. We should take our business elsewhere.
tomewer says
@Jim McKee If only it were that easy…
msharron says
Im running a couple of case studies at the moment using thehoth seo service. A few of my sites got death notes. The effect was on over optimised keywords, 30 days after receipt of my notices I incurred a -50 SERP penalty against those keywords. I am currently optimising 15 keywords on one affected site using theHOTH service with a mixture of valuable and benign keyword variations in at attempt to neutralise the footprint and avert the need to contact Google. Yes I tried that for one site and nothing good came from it. I even tried pleading with Google claiming my children would starve. It did not good and I the site was slapped. Case study 2 involves changing the URL, meeting he same content and starting the seo process again. Will know more in 3 weeks :))
tomewer says
@msharron Most of what you said went completely over my head, but good luck! 😉
Tom says
Yeah, the service I have received from Google is nill. They just won’t spend anytime trying to help out the publishers do better. It is a customer service problem.
Tom Ewer says
At this stage I have given up on actively pursuing SEO. I’ll set my sites up for good onsite SEO, but will leave it at that. The rest of my time will go into networking.
Jean Galea says
Hey Tom, do you use any software for rank tracking?
Tom Ewer says
Yep — ManageWP 🙂
Alex says
Well Jean may have spotted your problem then.
Automated queries from ranktracking software are totally against Google Guidelines. I just spotted a couple of my blogs that had rank tracking plugins and removed them.
( Shhh, I had backlinks plugins too, sheesh!)
🙂
Tom Ewer says
I doubt that’s the issue — I don’t think a query of say 30 keywords once per week is going to lead to Google penalizing my site.
Shawn says
The easiest thing to do is use Google to search for “link:” to your site, which would help you determine what might be negatively affecting your rankings. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to look at your referers list in your stats software, either, but most low quality sites won’t ever actually generate real clicks, so the referers list may never include them.
Then use the new Google “Disavow Links” tool to eliminate the penalty those links are having to your site.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1
Of course, this won’t prevent other bad links from popping up that hurt your SERPS, but it’s the first step in ensuring that Google’s new penalty mindset doesn’t hurt you too much.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks for the suggestion Shawn — that’s actually been on my to-do list since the disavow tool was released, just haven’t got round to it yet. Thanks for the reminder!