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JLH  
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(5 users)  More options Feb 26, 6:44 pm
From: JLH
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:44:43 -0800 (PST)
Local: Tues, Feb 26 2008 6:44 pm
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
In the reconsideration request form they specifically mention, "If you
used a search engine optimization (SEO) company, please note that.
Describing the SEO firm and their actions is a helpful indication of
good faith that may assist in evaluation of reconsideration requests."

If it was an SEO tactic put forth by an SEO firm to find sites that
accept links with any anchor text and deep links that are not reviewed
such as the ones John mentioned:

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3...

This may be a strong indication by Google to be as forthright as
possible about that, it also may be a strong indication that Google
may see some other questionable practices that took place and now
would be the time to mention them in the request.  Our tools are
limited, and they can go over old caches and history that none of us
on the outside have access to.

I'm hoping that this doesn't cause a storm of people now worried about
some shady seo linking to them in a spammy way to hurt their
rankings.  From what I gather from this thread is that once a site has
been flagged and penalized that all of the details including on site
and off site factors get looked at very closely, much closer than
before.  Remember that Google has a copy of every page on the web that
they've crawled and can quickly pull up any relationships between
them.  So if on 10/16/07 thirty seven links start appearing with the
anchor text "Dining Room Furniture" to a product page on sites that
don't monitor their commenter's links, they'll be able to notice it.
On it's own this may be ignored as it is generally accepted that
external sites cannot hurt your ranking (though that has been removed
from Googles documentation) but when coupled with other signals it may
add up to something.   I would imagine that it also has to be weighed
as fraction of the whole of the links.  In other words, if a site has
36,000 links to it and 34,000 links are from theme sponsorships, 1,000
are from keyword rich blog comments, 500 are from web directories, and
only 10 are from actual sites giving out an editorial link that would
be a pretty good sign that someone was trying to improve their ranking
by external methods.  If 99% of the links are questionable, then it
may give them cause to not only devalue them but devalue the site as a
whole as well.  It's like the interlinking of commonly owned sites
problem, or domain farming as its often called.  For legitimate sites
like Google, youtube, and blogger, some interlinking is possible, but
only because if you look at the millions of links they have, only a
very small percentage are from their own properites.  Where it gets a
site into trouble is when the majority of its links are from a common
individual that a ranking penalty would make sense.  I'm only guessing
here and have absolutely no inside knowledge, just trying to talk it
out.

On Feb 26, 4:50 pm, JohnMu wrote:


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ShyBoy  
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(2 users)  More options Feb 27, 3:55 am
From: ShyBoy
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:55:55 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 3:55 am
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
Thanks John, unfortunatly i have no information on the links you are
talking about. Can you email me the search result that will find them?
I will then contact the sites and ask for removal and will add it to
the request.

you can email me on cs*at*farawayfurniture.co.uk

Many Thanks!

On Feb 26, 10:50 pm, JohnMu wrote:


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JLH  
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(1 user)  More options Feb 27, 3:58 am
From: JLH
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:58:54 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 3:58 am
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
Click the link in the post above yours.

On Feb 27, 2:55 am, ShyBoy wrote:


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Sebastian  
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(3 users)  More options Feb 27, 4:31 am
From: Sebastian
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:31:11 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 4:31 am
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
I'd guess that when checking a site (and its link graph) that has
filed a reinclusion request stating the site was involved in some sort
of link monkey business, that's a completely other story than with a
site that was attacked by negative SEO methods. Although I (with my
last post in this thread) fell for the "since when do inbound links
count as negative votes" argument too, it's quite clear that removing
the traces (admitted shady links) is a prerequisite for a penatly
lift. I doubt that's common knowledge to folks who promote white hat
sites with black hat methods. Getting links wiped out at places that
didn't check the intention of inserted links in the first place is a
PITA, IOW it's impossible to get all shady links removed.
Sebastian

On Feb 27, 12:44 am, JLH wrote:


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ShyBoy  
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(2 users)  More options Feb 27, 5:24 am
From: ShyBoy
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:24:58 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 5:24 am
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
Cheers JLH. you are a star!

On Feb 27, 8:58 am, JLH wrote:


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xen  
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 More options Feb 27, 11:20 am
From: xen
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:20:36 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 11:20 am
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
Sorry I posted this in questions where I should have replied here.

Our problems are the same if not similar to that of Shyboy except the
real problem started from mid December. since 1994 we have
consistantly
been in the top 30 in our selected keywords.
We never subscribe to purchased links in any form. Our Site http://www.xen.co.za
we believe maintained and have made use of being as unique as our
market allows.

 We are indexed but lost all main index page positions while our
competitors remained the same.  Business is non existent, more so
because we have also lost our index page position on Google South
Africa English geolocation.

I have tried the tests and followed the info from all above.
I have discovered an interesting problem in using Mat Cutts's search.

We find a huge variety of sites that show our name but no links that
point to
those sites from the Xen site.

One entity operates from a number of free service servers under
the name of Blabest and Amduan.

An example of some 200 pages all have the keyword xen swimwear but no
back link. All http://www.amduan.freewebportal.com/tight-bikini.html.
Every one the same. This entity goes to point of claiming that the
linked website has been deleted but in truth appears to be within the
same operation.

Except for some pictures this is a perfect example of a spam artist.
He uses overlays on his pages. It appears that he uses contrast
backgrounds with all the text. Then overlays some rubbish links over
that.

We have others such http://www.swimwearboutique.com/ who do not stock
or advertise Xen product but have hidden pages named after ours and
other net established brands. The main object of is too gain hits from
another branding.

The question is, are we being penalized because these sites way of
operation?

We have checked server security_ mod files, XSS and even resorted to
joining
Webmaster tools. All to no avail.  December 25 was the last time that
www.xen.co.za/index.php has been list in the serps in any page under
position 600- 900 with keyword previously positioned pages 1-3.

I might add that besides visiting some 1044 links using the Matt Cutts
method I have individually tested some 200 of the five hundred links
we have on our site and found no evidence of spam. Sure some are
returning as dead link. So do our competitors.

Anyone further have suggestions?? Most greatfull for any input.

Thank you

Hugh Robinson
Xen Special Projects

On Feb 22, 10:46 pm, Matt Cutts wrote:

...

read more »


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ShyBoy  
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(5 users)  More options Feb 27, 11:51 am
From: ShyBoy
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:51:23 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 11:51 am
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.

Hi All, another update:

I sent a message to all the papers i could find that had our spam
links on them. I have notified them of the situation, apologised and
hopefully they will remove soon.

http://www.farawayfurniture.co.uk/images/pennsylvanian_spam_notice.jpg
http://www.farawayfurniture.co.uk/images/pennsylvanian_spam_accept.jpg

Anything else that anyone found that might be considered bad? I am
completely out of my depth now so would really appreciate a response.

I have amended the form to as follows:

-------------------------
Dear Sir/madam,

We are experiencing a massive drop in search results due to what seems
like a penalty on our site www.farawayfurniture.co.uk

We have submitted a previous re-inclusion form thinking that the
problem was cause by a proxy hijack.

After starting the following thread on Google groups
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_...
and reading some of Matt Cutts  and other helpful member's helpful
advice, it seems that our problems were of a much more serious nature
caused by bad practices primarily due to external bad advice and
naivety on our behalf. We are extremely sorry for our actions and we
take full reponsibility for them and the consequences and are taking
major steps to resolve any infractions.

The problems we believe have led to the penalty:

Theme sponsorship - We sponsored themes which were downloaded by
wordpress bloggers to use on their blog. These themes contained our
link in the footer of the page. We had no idea this was against
Google's guidelines. Now we do, we sincerely apologise and promise it
will not happen again.

Reciprocal link exchanges - We carried link exchanges with related
sites.

Forum with some spam from other users - Even though we moderated the
forum daily, it was filling up with user registrations with links to
questionable websites.

Spam Comments on Blogs - We have been pointed to some spam comments on
blogs that link to our site using keyphrases such as 'Dining
Furniture'.

Actions we took:
Theme Sponsorship - We have completely ceased to sponsor themes. Over
the last 5 days, we have spent countless hours trying to contact all
the worst of the themes (porn themes) to ask them to remove our links.
I have sent over 400 emails requesting the webmasters to remove our
link from the footer. We promise to never do theme sponsorships again
Reciprocal link exchanges - We have now completely removed the
reciprocal link exchange pages from our site. We will not do any type
of link exchanges again.

Forum - We have now completely removed our forum from our site. It was
too risky and time consuming and an easy target for spammers. We are
currently developing a blog for the site instead that will showcase
our driver's journeys complete with pictures

Spam on Blogs: I have contacted the sections of the blogs that I have
found up to now and apologised for the actions taken on behalf of
Faraway Furniture. I will personally ensure this does not happen again
in the future!

As already said, we are extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused
and we promise that Faraway Furniture will strictly adhere to the
Google Guidelines in the future.

------------------------------------------

On Feb 26, 10:50 pm, JohnMu wrote:


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cass-hacks  
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(2 users)  More options Feb 27, 12:29 pm
From: cass-hacks
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:29:53 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Feb 27 2008 12:29 pm
Subject: Re: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site.
I don't know what anyone else thinks, and it would be good for others
to chime in, but I think the recreq is very well written.

It covers all the points I think you need to make and the flow within
each point is logical.

Very nice!

Craig

On Feb 28, 1:51 am, ShyBoy wrote: