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:
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.
> Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimes receive short
> comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> that, that may help as well.
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.
> Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimes receive short
> comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> that, that may help as well.
> 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:
> > I think that's a great start, ShyBoy.
> > Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> > may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> > other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimesreceive short
> > comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> > site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> > user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> > for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> > for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> > information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> > situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> > be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> > that, that may help as well.
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
> 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:
> 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:
> > I think that's a great start, ShyBoy.
> > Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> > may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> > other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimesreceive short
> > comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> > site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> > user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> > for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> > for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> > information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> > situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> > be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> > that, that may help as well.
> > 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:
> > > I think that's a great start, ShyBoy.
> > > Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> > > may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> > > other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimesreceiveshort > > > comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> > > site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> > > user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> > > for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> > > for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> > > information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> > > situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> > > be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> > > that, that may help as well.
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.
> > > Thanks for the reply Matt, but how can i stop links from themes that
> > > are already out there?
> > > On Feb 22, 8:02 pm, Matt Cutts wrote:
> > > > Shyboy, those are good steps and I'd tackle them in earnest. After you
> > > > feel comfortable about the paid links being gone, I'd do a
> > > > reconsideration request.
> > > > Matt
> > > > On Feb 22, 10:50 am, ShyBoy wrote:
> > > > > ok, forum is now gone. I know it's a bit drastic, but I had no choice
> > > > > and to be honest, it was a pain to moderate anyway for the amount of
> > > > > users it had. It was only a way for us to quickly announce new
> > > > > products etc with some extra pictures.
> > > > > Matt, Yes, I have sponsored links and I honestly had no idea it was a
> > > > > problem. I never actually bought a link from a high pr site just for
> > > > > the sake of the PR. The amount of people sponsoring links without ever
> > > > > saying they had any problems and a recommendation from my SEO guy led
> > > > > me to believe it was not something that was wrong.
> > > > > Removed the forum
> > > > > Removed reciprocal links
> > > > > Got rid of the proxy site
> > > > > Sent emails to all the other sites copying us to remove text
> > > > > Will never sponsor any themes ever again.
> > > > > Anything else you can suggest?
> > > > > Thanks everyone for all the great replies and advice up to now.
> > > > > On Feb 22, 6:30 pm, Matt Cutts wrote:
> > > > > > ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It
> > > > > > looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that.
> > > > > > For example, if you had been attempting to get PageRank via paid links
> > > > > > on various templates, then when that PageRank stops flowing (e.g. if
> > > > > > Google improves its detection in various ways), the fact that you have
> > > > > > less PageRank can also mean that a site won't rank as well.
> > > > > > If that applies to you, my advice would be to pay special attention to
> > > > > > that issue, in addition to the other good advice you've already
> > > > > > gotten.
> > > > > > Matt
> > > > > > On Feb 22, 10:12 am, ShyBoy wrote:
> > > > > > > Thanks guys. If I remove the forum tonight, how long would you say it
> > > > > > > will take for the site to return to normal? Aaron, you seem very sure,
> > > > > > > can I take that as a definite?
> > > > > > > Many thanks everyone, I feel much better now.
> > > > > > > On Feb 22, 3:59 pm, Aaron Pratt wrote:
> > > > > > > > JLH - Please warn people whn you link to malware sites, I clicked on
> > > > > > > > one of those spam links and it tried to take over my computer. :(
> > > > > > > > yes, that site is under a -SPAM penalty.
> > > > > > > > On Feb 22, 10:48 am, JLH wrote:
> > > > > > > > > I suspect spammy links may have been a culprit here, some have been
> > > > > > > > > indexed:
> > > > > > > > > This being said, anyone of those links that currently exist, or that
> > > > > > > > > you've already cleaned up could have triggered and automatic penalty
> > > > > > > > > from Google. Since the forum seems to be the problem, I'd get rid of
> > > > > > > > > it, at least from a robots point of view and block the crawling (since
> > > > > > > > > it uses session IDs is a good enough reason to not let a crawler into
> > > > > > > > > it)
> > > > > > > > > Cleaning up the spammy links, blocking the forum so it can't happen
> > > > > > > > > again, getting rid of the exchanged link scheme, should all be written
> > > > > > > > > up and included in the reconsideration request.
> > > > > > > > > On Feb 22, 6:51 am, silverstall wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > As Robo has pointed out there are other issues which may be the casue
> > > > > > > > > > for the loss in the serps.
> > > > > > > > > > Blocking the IP of the proxy server itself may help prevent further
> > > > > > > > > > attacks however you must check it is the proxy server you have blocked
> > > > > > > > > > and not a visitor - a human or a robot that accessed your site via
> > > > > > > > > > the proxy link that was indexed.
> > > > > > > > > > A proxy attack of this nature i think can sometimes bring the
> > > > > > > > > > attention of a closer scrutiny of your site by google. Previously
> > > > > > > > > > Pages may have escaped their filters but because they have been
> > > > > > > > > > recrawled and re-examined they are now subject to penalties. I am sure
> > > > > > > > > > this was the case when we recently had a proxy attack as when i looked
> > > > > > > > > > at some of our pages in finer detail i thought how the hell did i
> > > > > > > > > > overlook that or why the hell did she put that in etc. Also i ran a
> > > > > > > > > > check of ALL our pages at copyscape and was horrified to see how many
> > > > > > > > > > times some text had been copied. Regretably your homepage when i ran
> > > > > > > > > > it through copyscape churns up a lot of duplicate content found
> > > > > > > > > > elsewhere
> > > > > > > > > > I am afraid there is a lot of work ahead. I know i have recently been
> > > > > > > > > > there and it requires a closer loook at EVERY single page on your site
> > > > > > > > > > before thinking about filing for re-inclusion. Having re-styled,
> > > > > > > > > > rephotograped and rewritten our homepage and all key level 1 pages i
> > > > > > > > > > found our serps are returning so on a positive note a proxy attack can
> > > > > > > > > > act as a wake-ip call to improve quality and cut out all the errors.
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.
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.
> Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimes receive short
> comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> that, that may help as well.
> 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.
> 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 sitewww.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 groupshttp://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:
> > I think that's a great start, ShyBoy.
> > Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> > may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> > other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimesreceive short
> > comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> > site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> > user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> > for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> > for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> > information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> > situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> > be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> > that, that may help as well.
> 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:
> > 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.
> > 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 sitewww.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 groupshttp://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:
> > > I think that's a great start, ShyBoy.
> > > Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
> > > may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
> > > other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such ashttp://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.comsometimesreceiveshort > > > comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a
> > > site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
> > > user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes"
> > > for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
> > > for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
> > > information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
> > > situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
> > > be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
> > > that, that may help as well.
Interesting how this thread went from "a proxy site is hijacking me"
to "I have sponsored links", a forum full of spma and even use blog
spam. Jeesh, man, are you sure you dont have some cloaking to round it
out?
btw, as you can see, it doesnt pay to just to do the least possible
for reinclusion requests. Goog will just dig out the next thing you
*forgot to mention*. Better mention all the sites that you spammed and
all the other stupid stuff you did. Or was it the Seo guy? does he use
your name on digipoint and v7n? whatever.
How about the blog spam on districtchronicles.com, thetalon-
online.com, thenews.org, thewestgeorgian.com, asuherald.com,
diamondbackonline.com, michigandaily.com, thelantern.com,
tnhonline.com, lavalleystar.com, dailyillini.com,
dailynorthwestern.com, jeroenwijering.com, dukechronicle.com,
dailytoreador.com, thebatt.com, lsureveille.com, equinoxnews.com,
dailycollegian.com, dailytrojan.com, anchorweb.org,
hofstrachronicle.com, vermontcynic.com, dailygamecock.com,
mcgilltribune.com, dailypennsylvanian.com, redandblack.com, reflector-
online.com, blueandgreytoday.com, dailyorange.com, dailynebraskan.com,
bgnews.com, bsudailynews.com, theticker.org, louisvillecardinal.com,
mitsloanfifteen.com, missouri-miner.com, kansascityaurora.com,
thebridgenewspaper.com, thecolumbianonline.com,,, and i'll leave the
rest to you.
Dont forget your paid posts and paid links while your at it.
Man if I can find this stuff in 5 minutes I dont wantto know what Goog
can see. Your screwing with thier system and your screwing with
everyone here by hiding the things that youve done. Dont wait to see
if they offer you another hint on what you may have forgot. Fess up if
you want help.
Dont forget purelykinky.co.uk, carblackbox.co.uk while your at it.
Thanks for your comments. The forum was not full of Spam. Spam was
removed on a daily basis; it just got to the point where as soon as I
remove it, it got added on again. As for digital point, yes, I am a
member there, and that is exactly why I was led to believe that things
such as themes are a fine. In fact it was the seo guy who originally
told me to go and have a look there for more information. He is a
member there himself. In fact, if you look further you would have seen
that I have been asking people to justify buying links as a white hat
technique after my recent problems here:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=719943&page=2 especially after my experience over the last few days.
Thanks for the list of the other sites with spam on them, but I have
already filled out their contact forms for removal after finding the
list myself.
> Interesting how this thread went from "a proxy site is hijacking me"
> to "I have sponsored links", a forum full of spma and even use blog
> spam. Jeesh, man, are you sure you dont have some cloaking to round it
> out?
> btw, as you can see, it doesnt pay to just to do the least possible
> for reinclusion requests. Goog will just dig out the next thing you
> *forgot to mention*. Better mention all the sites that you spammed and
> all the other stupid stuff you did. Or was it the Seo guy? does he use
> your name on digipoint and v7n? whatever.
> How about the blog spam on districtchronicles.com, thetalon-
> online.com, thenews.org, thewestgeorgian.com, asuherald.com,
> diamondbackonline.com, michigandaily.com, thelantern.com,
> tnhonline.com, lavalleystar.com, dailyillini.com,
> dailynorthwestern.com, jeroenwijering.com, dukechronicle.com,
> dailytoreador.com, thebatt.com, lsureveille.com, equinoxnews.com,
> dailycollegian.com, dailytrojan.com, anchorweb.org,
> hofstrachronicle.com, vermontcynic.com, dailygamecock.com,
> mcgilltribune.com, dailypennsylvanian.com, redandblack.com, reflector-
> online.com, blueandgreytoday.com, dailyorange.com, dailynebraskan.com,
> bgnews.com, bsudailynews.com, theticker.org, louisvillecardinal.com,
> mitsloanfifteen.com, missouri-miner.com, kansascityaurora.com,
> thebridgenewspaper.com, thecolumbianonline.com,,, and i'll leave the
> rest to you.
> Dont forget your paid posts and paid links while your at it.
> Man if I can find this stuff in 5 minutes I dont wantto know what Goog
> can see. Your screwing with thier system and your screwing with
> everyone here by hiding the things that youve done. Dont wait to see
> if they offer you another hint on what you may have forgot. Fess up if
> you want help.
> Dont forget purelykinky.co.uk, carblackbox.co.uk while your at it.
Just to back up my side of the story, here is a post i managed to dig
out from a year and a half ago titled "Not sure about my SEO guy...
would appreciate some advice. "
> Thanks for your comments. The forum was not full of Spam. Spam was
> removed on a daily basis; it just got to the point where as soon as I
> remove it, it got added on again. As for digital point, yes, I am a
> member there, and that is exactly why I was led to believe that things
> such as themes are a fine. In fact it was the seo guy who originally
> told me to go and have a look there for more information. He is a
> member there himself. In fact, if you look further you would have seen
> that I have been asking people to justify buying links as a white hat
> technique after my recent problems here:http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=719943&page=2 > especially after my experience over the last few days.
> Thanks for the list of the other sites with spam on them, but I have
> already filled out their contact forms for removal after finding the
> list myself.
> On Feb 27, 9:07 pm, seosares wrote:
> > Interesting how this thread went from "a proxy site is hijacking me"
> > to "I have sponsored links", a forum full of spma and even use blog
> > spam. Jeesh, man, are you sure you dont have some cloaking to round it
> > out?
> > btw, as you can see, it doesnt pay to just to do the least possible
> > for reinclusion requests. Goog will just dig out the next thing you
> > *forgot to mention*. Better mention all the sites that you spammed and
> > all the other stupid stuff you did. Or was it the Seo guy? does he use
> > your name on digipoint and v7n? whatever.
> > Dont forget your paid posts and paid links while your at it.
> > Man if I can find this stuff in 5 minutes I dont wantto know what Goog
> > can see. Your screwing with thier system and your screwing with
> > everyone here by hiding the things that youve done. Dont wait to see
> > if they offer you another hint on what you may have forgot. Fess up if
> > you want help.
> > Dont forget purelykinky.co.uk, carblackbox.co.uk while your at it.
The yahoo link posted by seosares shows you made 4120 drop links on
unrelated sites including spam comments on sites such as goth-sex.com
What was your comment you made again on one of your 656 posts ... "It
never fails to amaze me how some people are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gullible.
Come on people... WAKE UP!!!!"
I must admit I am gullible as I thought this thread was a genuine
concern over a 302 redirect. If you had mentioned all this at the
beginning it might have given some credibility to a reinclusion
request and not feeding my paranoia over Google penalizing incoming
links. I have nothing against you and wish you all the best however it
really does pay to be honest from the beginning.
> The yahoo link posted by seosares shows you made 4120 drop links on
> unrelated sites including spam comments on sites such as goth-sex.com
> What was your comment you made again on one of your 656 posts ... "It
> never fails to amaze me how some people are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gullible.
> Come on people... WAKE UP!!!!"
> I must admit I am gullible as I thought this thread was a genuine
> concern over a 302 redirect. If you had mentioned all this at the
> beginning it might have given some credibility to a reinclusion
> request and not feeding my paranoia over Google penalizing incoming
> links. I have nothing against you and wish you all the best however it
> really does pay to be honest from the beginning.
This thread certainly has taken some interesting turns! I'm going to
try and be constructive here for what you can do going forward rather
than harp more on what you've already done and what's gotten you here.
I guess you've learned your lesson there :)
Considering the feedback your post is getting, the exposure on some of
the SEO blogs out there AND the fact that it's going to be REALLY hard
to get others to remove all these shady back links you put up (if I
ran a crappy site like that and allowed those comments and someone
came to me asking to to remove them all I'd say "sure, where's my cut
for the extra work" - that's what happened to bizrate in several
cases), I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe it's
time to just 'can the site'. The first reason is the work it's going
to take to get rid of all those back linked comments. If you're
*lucky*, you're pointing them all at a deep down page and in that case
you might stand a chance as you don't actually have to get rid of
them, just 301 them off your site somewhere else. I'll let you get
creative on where you decide to do that to, but if you were really put
in this situation by an SEO company/guy I'd be strongly considering
pointing them at their/his/her site :) Having said that, and realizing
the feedback a suggestion like that is going to get, I'd also add that
you're in the limelight right now and so you'd better tread carefully.
So re-directing them at for example the competitor who's been gloating
would not be recommended. Ditto to redirecting them to Google
(wouldn't accomplish anything anyway). If you are not so lucky, you've
pointed the links at your home page in which case 301'ing really isn't
going to do anything for you that you couldn't achieve by just
quitting all work on the site and starting a new one.
I know a lot of people here might disagree with this, but unless your
brand is incredibly strong (which I doubt or else you wouldn't have
ended up in this situation) I just don't see any benefit to working on
the site. Sure, keep it running if it's still giving you revenue off
other search engines, but be very careful if you do that AND want to
use the content on your new site. You mentioned having gotten 10 or so
really good links in the past, so I'd try and get those to point at
your new site, redo the entire site keeping all the good and ditching
ALL the bad (naturally!). Don't even consider shades of gray. You've
got to be so white hat that it makes Matt Cutts look gray!
Some people might consider this the easy way out, but it's not going
to be that easy. You will have to build the new site, build new back
links, build a new name etc. etc. From what I understand from your
posts, you don't actually know how to develop a site so you're going
to have to go out there and spend more money on getting this done. All
in all, it's going to be tough to start from nearly scratch, but
considering the situation you've put yourself in, I wonder if it's not
the wisest thing to do now.
> > The yahoo link posted by seosares shows you made 4120 drop links on
> > unrelated sites including spam comments on sites such as goth-sex.com
> > What was your comment you made again on one of your 656 posts ... "It
> > never fails to amaze me how some people are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gullible.
> > Come on people... WAKE UP!!!!"
> > I must admit I am gullible as I thought this thread was a genuine
> > concern over a 302 redirect. If you had mentioned all this at the
> > beginning it might have given some credibility to a reinclusion
> > request and not feeding my paranoia over Google penalizing incoming
> > links. I have nothing against you and wish you all the best however it
> > really does pay to be honest from the beginning.
Although that's the usual procedure with black hat sites when caught,
in this case I'd wait for the results of the reconsideration request
while continuing the removals of shady stuff where possible.
Referrer based 301ing of comment spam click throughs doesn't work with
crawlers, they don't leave a referrer, so that's just a noble gesture
that might gain a friendly smile from the reviewer. And why should the
Web designer who left the hollow comments get free traffic? Remember,
there's no such thing as bad traffic.
If the reconsideration request doesn't turn into a removal
confirmation, then this advice is pure gold:
> Don't even consider shades of gray. You've
> got to be so white hat that it makes Matt Cutts look gray!
> This thread certainly has taken some interesting turns! I'm going to
> try and be constructive here for what you can do going forward rather
> than harp more on what you've already done and what's gotten you here.
> I guess you've learned your lesson there :)
> Considering the feedback your post is getting, the exposure on some of
> the SEO blogs out there AND the fact that it's going to be REALLY hard
> to get others to remove all these shady back links you put up (if I
> ran a crappy site like that and allowed those comments and someone
> came to me asking to to remove them all I'd say "sure, where's my cut
> for the extra work" - that's what happened to bizrate in several
> cases), I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe it's
> time to just 'can the site'. The first reason is the work it's going
> to take to get rid of all those back linked comments. If you're
> *lucky*, you're pointing them all at a deep down page and in that case
> you might stand a chance as you don't actually have to get rid of
> them, just 301 them off your site somewhere else. I'll let you get
> creative on where you decide to do that to, but if you were really put
> in this situation by an SEO company/guy I'd be strongly considering
> pointing them at their/his/her site :) Having said that, and realizing
> the feedback a suggestion like that is going to get, I'd also add that
> you're in the limelight right now and so you'd better tread carefully.
> So re-directing them at for example the competitor who's been gloating
> would not be recommended. Ditto to redirecting them to Google
> (wouldn't accomplish anything anyway). If you are not so lucky, you've
> pointed the links at your home page in which case 301'ing really isn't
> going to do anything for you that you couldn't achieve by just
> quitting all work on the site and starting a new one.
> I know a lot of people here might disagree with this, but unless your
> brand is incredibly strong (which I doubt or else you wouldn't have
> ended up in this situation) I just don't see any benefit to working on
> the site. Sure, keep it running if it's still giving you revenue off
> other search engines, but be very careful if you do that AND want to
> use the content on your new site. You mentioned having gotten 10 or so
> really good links in the past, so I'd try and get those to point at
> your new site, redo the entire site keeping all the good and ditching
> ALL the bad (naturally!). Don't even consider shades of gray. You've
> got to be so white hat that it makes Matt Cutts look gray!
> Some people might consider this the easy way out, but it's not going
> to be that easy. You will have to build the new site, build new back
> links, build a new name etc. etc. From what I understand from your
> posts, you don't actually know how to develop a site so you're going
> to have to go out there and spend more money on getting this done. All
> in all, it's going to be tough to start from nearly scratch, but
> considering the situation you've put yourself in, I wonder if it's not
> the wisest thing to do now.
> On Feb 28, 7:57 am, ShyBoy wrote:
> > Silverstall, that is not a drop comment. Its a theme which i have
> > already admited to doing on this thread.
> > > The yahoo link posted by seosares shows you made 4120 drop links on
> > > unrelated sites including spam comments on sites such as goth-sex.com
> > > What was your comment you made again on one of your 656 posts ... "It
> > > never fails to amaze me how some people are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gullible.
> > > Come on people... WAKE UP!!!!"
> > > I must admit I am gullible as I thought this thread was a genuine
> > > concern over a 302 redirect. If you had mentioned all this at the
> > > beginning it might have given some credibility to a reinclusion
> > > request and not feeding my paranoia over Google penalizing incoming
> > > links. I have nothing against you and wish you all the best however it
> > > really does pay to be honest from the beginning.
> Referrer based 301ing of comment spam click throughs doesn't work with
> crawlers, they don't leave a referrer, so that's just a noble gesture
> that might gain a friendly smile from the reviewer.
You could always just redirect googlebot specifically on those pages,
although that is a gray area so really not something you'd want to
look at in this case.
> And why should the
> Web designer who left the hollow comments get free traffic? Remember,
> there's no such thing as bad traffic.
Well, if shyboy announces here that he's done the above for deeper
pages that he was linking to using comment spam, then Google would
immediately be aware of who the seo/developer was that had done the
work. That, coupled with the bad rep seeming to follow those links
might lead to substantially LESS traffic for the designer/developer if
Google takes steps based on it. In any case the traffic isn't very
targetted anyway and it means the OP doesn't have to worry about
getting 100 or so site owners to remove comment links (which they
might charge him a few hundred/thousand dollars per site to do if
they're smart).
Anyway, I'd say give it a few more days of hard work removing links,
file the recon request and if nothing's changed in a week and G
doesn't chime in anymore, start looking at other options.
> Although that's the usual procedure with black hat sites when caught,
> in this case I'd wait for the results of the reconsideration request
> while continuing the removals of shady stuff where possible.
> Referrer based 301ing of comment spam click throughs doesn't work with
> crawlers, they don't leave a referrer, so that's just a noble gesture
> that might gain a friendly smile from the reviewer. And why should the
> Web designer who left the hollow comments get free traffic? Remember,
> there's no such thing as bad traffic.
> If the reconsideration request doesn't turn into a removal
> confirmation, then this advice is pure gold:
> > Don't even consider shades of gray. You've
> > got to be so white hat that it makes Matt Cutts look gray!
> > This thread certainly has taken some interesting turns! I'm going to
> > try and be constructive here for what you can do going forward rather
> > than harp more on what you've already done and what's gotten you here.
> > I guess you've learned your lesson there :)
> > Considering the feedback your post is getting, the exposure on some of
> > the SEO blogs out there AND the fact that it's going to be REALLY hard
> > to get others to remove all these shady back links you put up (if I
> > ran a crappy site like that and allowed those comments and someone
> > came to me asking to to remove them all I'd say "sure, where's my cut
> > for the extra work" - that's what happened to bizrate in several
> > cases), I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe it's
> > time to just 'can the site'. The first reason is the work it's going
> > to take to get rid of all those back linked comments. If you're
> > *lucky*, you're pointing them all at a deep down page and in that case
> > you might stand a chance as you don't actually have to get rid of
> > them, just 301 them off your site somewhere else. I'll let you get
> > creative on where you decide to do that to, but if you were really put
> > in this situation by an SEO company/guy I'd be strongly considering
> > pointing them at their/his/her site :) Having said that, and realizing
> > the feedback a suggestion like that is going to get, I'd also add that
> > you're in the limelight right now and so you'd better tread carefully.
> > So re-directing them at for example the competitor who's been gloating
> > would not be recommended. Ditto to redirecting them to Google
> > (wouldn't accomplish anything anyway). If you are not so lucky, you've
> > pointed the links at your home page in which case 301'ing really isn't
> > going to do anything for you that you couldn't achieve by just
> > quitting all work on the site and starting a new one.
> > I know a lot of people here might disagree with this, but unless your
> > brand is incredibly strong (which I doubt or else you wouldn't have
> > ended up in this situation) I just don't see any benefit to working on
> > the site. Sure, keep it running if it's still giving you revenue off
> > other search engines, but be very careful if you do that AND want to
> > use the content on your new site. You mentioned having gotten 10 or so
> > really good links in the past, so I'd try and get those to point at
> > your new site, redo the entire site keeping all the good and ditching
> > ALL the bad (naturally!). Don't even consider shades of gray. You've
> > got to be so white hat that it makes Matt Cutts look gray!
> > Some people might consider this the easy way out, but it's not going
> > to be that easy. You will have to build the new site, build new back
> > links, build a new name etc. etc. From what I understand from your
> > posts, you don't actually know how to develop a site so you're going
> > to have to go out there and spend more money on getting this done. All
> > in all, it's going to be tough to start from nearly scratch, but
> > considering the situation you've put yourself in, I wonder if it's not
> > the wisest thing to do now.
> > On Feb 28, 7:57 am, ShyBoy wrote:
> > > Silverstall, that is not a drop comment. Its a theme which i have
> > > already admited to doing on this thread.
> > > > The yahoo link posted by seosares shows you made 4120 drop links on
> > > > unrelated sites including spam comments on sites such as goth-sex.com
> > > > What was your comment you made again on one of your 656 posts ... "It
> > > > never fails to amaze me how some people are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gullible.
> > > > Come on people... WAKE UP!!!!"
> > > > I must admit I am gullible as I thought this thread was a genuine
> > > > concern over a 302 redirect. If you had mentioned all this at the
> > > > beginning it might have given some credibility to a reinclusion
> > > > request and not feeding my paranoia over Google penalizing incoming
> > > > links. I have nothing against you and wish you all the best however it
> > > > really does pay to be honest from the beginning.
Ok, I have tried my best to explain myself but I am not going to let
this turn into a witch hunt. For the last time, I am guilty as hell.
My only defence is that it was done without realising it was wrong.
Most people on the DP forum say that themes are white hat. Go have a
look for yourself; so why is it so difficult to believe I did not
realise it was a black hat tactic?
We are a business, not just a site. We have a warehouse and small
number of employees. Yes, we have built links and yes, it is wrong.
But I re-iterate, we did so to compete with our competitors. Most of
our competitors have reciprocal links, Most have comment spam and most
have directly paid links. One has 270,000 links using the yahoo search
someone here suggested.
All have at least one if not more of the above.
As to the other accusations:
1. I was NOT responsible for the comment spam. The SEO person (who is
a link builder on DP was doing that as part of his job which I paid
for)
2. Yes I have a DP account. What does that prove? Have you seen a post
by me showing that I knew theme sponsorship was wrong? In fact it's
the opposite. Only since this has happened to my site that I posted
there arguing against the grain of the site saying that link buying/
selling is considered black hat: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=719943 to quote from my post on the 23rd of Feb:
-----
"1. Anything that artificially promotes links is black hat according
to Google: Agree?
2. Doing blog posting services and forum posting services offered here
is ' artificially inflating links': agree?
If both 1 and 2 are true, then yes, it is black hat.
"
------
3. I genuinely thought it was a proxy attack to begin with. At no
point was this intended as a way to deceive anyone here. Don't believe
me? Read this: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=717164 Now, if I knew that theme sponsorship was so wrong, why would I
suspect the proxy attack and not the themes?
This is not something we can just give up on, as much as some here
would love to see us sink, its not going to happen. I won't let it.
There is more at stake here then just a simple online shop. Our home,
our children and our responsibility as employers.
So, yes, for the last time, we have done wrong. I am fully aware that
Google is within its right to not allow us back in. We are EXTREMELY
sorry for what we have done. But taking a step back, can any of you
really say that there is another teak garden furniture company on
Google in the UK that offers such a unique selection of furniture, a
company that not only delivers but assembles the furniture in your
garden, a company that makes sure all of its tradesmen/women know
their stuff when it comes to teak and spend a good hour at a
customer's home explaining how to treat their new furniture and all
the options open to them? A company that is not just a box shifter
(our whole philosophy when we started the business)? A company that I
can honestly say does not have ONE client that had a problem and it
was not resolved to their complete satisfaction? A company that works
with the United Nations Environmental Program and plants over 1000
trees a year on their behalf? (http://ezinearticles.com/?Has-Helping- The-Environment-Gone-Corporate?&id=542127), a company that donates a
teak set worth £1500 every year for a charity raffle which in 2007
raised £500 for Wheelpower UK through donating the set to be raffled
at Marketforce UK. As you can see I think very highly of our company
and there is no way that I will let this be the end of it. Worst case
scenario, if Google decides that we are not worthy of being in its
index, I will mothball the company as best as I can and think about
opening stores around the country in the future.
For the last time, Google, and everyone here, we are extremely sorry
for the actions we took and we will never do it again.
Thanks everyone for your comments, but I think its time for me to
leave this discussion and let Google decide what they need to do.
sorry Shyboy but my take on it is that Google will only entertain
reconsideration requests once you've removed all artificial links
pointing to your site.
sitelinkdomain:www.farawayfurniture.co.uk "furniture" - how can you
remove all the 12100 links revealed by just yahoo? I fear Sam I am's
and Sebastians advice has to be best as it is impossible to manually
remove that many links.
There are hundreds of Teak garden furniture sites eg. http://www.classicteak.co.uk/ who may or may not produce as good qaulity furniture as you, however
those sites have all sufferred in the serps because of being outranked
by sites gaining 10000's of unnatural links. Is that fair?
Shyboy, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm just trying to be
constructive here, since from where I'm sitting it looks like it's
going to be a tough job to remove all those back links. Now that
Google has gone on the record saying they are a problem, they also
have somewhat of an obligation to NOT let you back in till it's fixed
(ie. all those thousands of links removed). Seeing as you have no
control over those domains, that's a whopper of a task.
I run a few businesses, offline and online, and I know that when
things like this happens looking back is not going to be your friend.
Wishing G changes it's mind is also not likely to happen (I've been
there alongside with you :) ). So you're left with the choice of
spending an incredible amount of time, money and energy trying to get
all those sites to remove the links or you could copy everything from
your site that is good (which I'm led to believe is a lot) and set it
up under a different domainname and start informing your clients about
this. You have the benefit of a strong offline brand, so the links
will follow. Get the webmasters who put great links to your site to
change the URL-that's a much easier sell than getting the spammy
domains to remove the links! Try and get your suppliers to place a
link since you already have a relationship with them and they're
relevant businesses. Your domainname is not that memorable or valuable
that it's worth the hassle in my honest opinion.
Believe it or not, you're in an enviable position compared to other
webmasters that this happens to because you have the offline business,
reputation and referrals. Anyway, that's just how I look at your
situation from where I'm sitting!
> Ok, I have tried my best to explain myself but I am not going to let
> this turn into a witch hunt. For the last time, I am guilty as hell.
> My only defence is that it was done without realising it was wrong.
> Most people on the DP forum say that themes are white hat. Go have a
> look for yourself; so why is it so difficult to believe I did not
> realise it was a black hat tactic?
> We are a business, not just a site. We have a warehouse and small
> number of employees. Yes, we have built links and yes, it is wrong.
> But I re-iterate, we did so to compete with our competitors. Most of
> our competitors have reciprocal links, Most have comment spam and most
> have directly paid links. One has 270,000 links using the yahoo search
> someone here suggested.
> All have at least one if not more of the above.
> As to the other accusations:
> 1. I was NOT responsible for the comment spam. The SEO person (who is
> a link builder on DP was doing that as part of his job which I paid
> for)
> 2. Yes I have a DP account. What does that prove? Have you seen a post
> by me showing that I knew theme sponsorship was wrong? In fact it's
> the opposite. Only since this has happened to my site that I posted
> there arguing against the grain of the site saying that link buying/
> selling is considered black hat:http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=719943 > to quote from my post on the 23rd of Feb:
> -----
> "1. Anything that artificially promotes links is black hat according
> to Google: Agree?
> 2. Doing blog posting services and forum posting services offered here
> is ' artificially inflating links': agree?
> If both 1 and 2 are true, then yes, it is black hat.
> "
> ------
> 3. I genuinely thought it was a proxy attack to begin with. At no
> point was this intended as a way to deceive anyone here. Don't believe
> me? Read this:http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=717164 > Now, if I knew that theme sponsorship was so wrong, why would I
> suspect the proxy attack and not the themes?
> This is not something we can just give up on, as much as some here
> would love to see us sink, its not going to happen. I won't let it.
> There is more at stake here then just a simple online shop. Our home,
> our children and our responsibility as employers.
> So, yes, for the last time, we have done wrong. I am fully aware that
> Google is within its right to not allow us back in. We are EXTREMELY
> sorry for what we have done. But taking a step back, can any of you
> really say that there is another teak garden furniture company on
> Google in the UK that offers such a unique selection of furniture, a
> company that not only delivers but assembles the furniture in your
> garden, a company that makes sure all of its tradesmen/women know
> their stuff when it comes to teak and spend a good hour at a
> customer's home explaining how to treat their new furniture and all
> the options open to them? A company that is not just a box shifter
> (our whole philosophy when we started the business)? A company that I
> can honestly say does not have ONE client that had a problem and it
> was not resolved to their complete satisfaction? A company that works
> with the United Nations Environmental Program and plants over 1000
> trees a year on their behalf? (http://ezinearticles.com/?Has-Helping- > The-Environment-Gone-Corporate?&id=542127), a company that donates a
> teak set worth £1500 every year for a charity raffle which in 2007
> raised £500 for Wheelpower UK through donating the set to be raffled
> at Marketforce UK. As you can see I think very highly of our company
> and there is no way that I will let this be the end of it. Worst case
> scenario, if Google decides that we are not worthy of being in its
> index, I will mothball the company as best as I can and think about
> opening stores around the country in the future.
> For the last time, Google, and everyone here, we are extremely sorry
> for the actions we took and we will never do it again.
> Thanks everyone for your comments, but I think its time for me to
> leave this discussion and let Google decide what they need to do.
Thanks for your comments Sam, just to let you know that I have taken
your words on-board. I just cant beleive we have been so stupid to
follow the crowd like sheep and cause the harm we have done to our
site. What you are suggesting is an incredibly difficult decision to
take but we will have to make that decision very soon i suspect. I
will give the site another week or two and decide then.
> Shyboy, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm just trying to be
> constructive here, since from where I'm sitting it looks like it's
> going to be a tough job to remove all those back links. Now that
> Google has gone on the record saying they are a problem, they also
> have somewhat of an obligation to NOT let you back in till it's fixed
> (ie. all those thousands of links removed). Seeing as you have no
> control over those domains, that's a whopper of a task.
> I run a few businesses, offline and online, and I know that when
> things like this happens looking back is not going to be your friend.
> Wishing G changes it's mind is also not likely to happen (I've been
> there alongside with you :) ). So you're left with the choice of
> spending an incredible amount of time, money and energy trying to get
> all those sites to remove the links or you could copy everything from
> your site that is good (which I'm led to believe is a lot) and set it
> up under a different domainname and start informing your clients about
> this. You have the benefit of a strong offline brand, so the links
> will follow. Get the webmasters who put great links to your site to
> change the URL-that's a much easier sell than getting the spammy
> domains to remove the links! Try and get your suppliers to place a
> link since you already have a relationship with them and they're
> relevant businesses. Your domainname is not that memorable or valuable
> that it's worth the hassle in my honest opinion.
> Believe it or not, you're in an enviable position compared to other
> webmasters that this happens to because you have the offline business,
> reputation and referrals. Anyway, that's just how I look at your
> situation from where I'm sitting!
> On Feb 28, 4:52 pm, ShyBoy wrote:
> > Ok, I have tried my best to explain myself but I am not going to let
> > this turn into a witch hunt. For the last time, I am guilty as hell.
> > My only defence is that it was done without realising it was wrong.
> > Most people on the DP forum say that themes are white hat. Go have a
> > look for yourself; so why is it so difficult to believe I did not
> > realise it was a black hat tactic?
> > We are a business, not just a site. We have a warehouse and small
> > number of employees. Yes, we have built links and yes, it is wrong.
> > But I re-iterate, we did so to compete with our competitors. Most of
> > our competitors have reciprocal links, Most have comment spam and most
> > have directly paid links. One has 270,000 links using the yahoo search
> > someone here suggested.
> > All have at least one if not more of the above.
> > As to the other accusations:
> > 1. I was NOT responsible for the comment spam. The SEO person (who is
> > a link builder on DP was doing that as part of his job which I paid
> > for)
> > 2. Yes I have a DP account. What does that prove? Have you seen a post
> > by me showing that I knew theme sponsorship was wrong? In fact it's
> > the opposite. Only since this has happened to my site that I posted
> > there arguing against the grain of the site saying that link buying/
> > selling is considered black hat:http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=719943 > > to quote from my post on the 23rd of Feb:
> > -----
> > "1. Anything that artificially promotes links is black hat according
> > to Google: Agree?
> > 2. Doing blog posting services and forum posting services offered here
> > is ' artificially inflating links': agree?
> > If both 1 and 2 are true, then yes, it is black hat.
> > "
> > ------
> > 3. I genuinely thought it was a proxy attack to begin with. At no
> > point was this intended as a way to deceive anyone here. Don't believe
> > me? Read this:http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=717164 > > Now, if I knew that theme sponsorship was so wrong, why would I
> > suspect the proxy attack and not the themes?
> > This is not something we can just give up on, as much as some here
> > would love to see us sink, its not going to happen. I won't let it.
> > There is more at stake here then just a simple online shop. Our home,
> > our children and our responsibility as employers.
> > So, yes, for the last time, we have done wrong. I am fully aware that
> > Google is within its right to not allow us back in. We are EXTREMELY
> > sorry for what we have done. But taking a step back, can any of you
> > really say that there is another teak garden furniture company on
> > Google in the UK that offers such a unique selection of furniture, a
> > company that not only delivers but assembles the furniture in your
> > garden, a company that makes sure all of its tradesmen/women know
> > their stuff when it comes to teak and spend a good hour at a
> > customer's home explaining how to treat their new furniture and all
> > the options open to them? A company that is not just a box shifter
> > (our whole philosophy when we started the business)? A company that I
> > can honestly say does not have ONE client that had a problem and it
> > was not resolved to their complete satisfaction? A company that works
> > with the United Nations Environmental Program and plants over 1000
> > trees a year on their behalf? (http://ezinearticles.com/?Has-Helping- > > The-Environment-Gone-Corporate?&id=542127), a company that donates a
> > teak set worth £1500 every year for a charity raffle which in 2007
> > raised £500 for Wheelpower UK through donating the set to be raffled
> > at Marketforce UK. As you can see I think very highly of our company
> > and there is no way that I will let this be the end of it. Worst case
> > scenario, if Google decides that we are not worthy of being in its
> > index, I will mothball the company as best as I can and think about
> > opening stores around the country in the future.
> > For the last time, Google, and everyone here, we are extremely sorry
> > for the actions we took and we will never do it again.
> > Thanks everyone for your comments, but I think its time for me to
> > leave this discussion and let Google decide what they need to do.- Hide quoted text -
Hi - this is my first post in this group - so be kind :O)
I just cant beleive we have been so stupid to
> follow the crowd like sheep and cause the harm we have done to our
> site. What you are suggesting is an incredibly difficult decision to
> take but we will have to make that decision very soon i suspect. I
> will give the site another week or two and decide then.
I know you're hurting just now because of the problems your previous
strategy has caused you. However, from a business point of view, it's
risky putting all your eggs into the (very capable) Google eggbasket.
I notice that you are listed in Yahoo.co.uk and DMOZ - so you do have
some quality directory links there.
Most businesses (mine included!) tend to have old stock of some kind
lying around just begging to be sold on a famous auction site. Some
businesses (er, I'll count myself OUT here!) use eBay as lead
generation tools for their other products. Some creative thinking
might also twist this a little further and lead you to purchase some
ready-made garden chimes wholesale (just as an example) which you
could sell on eBay to bring qualified leads.
I also notice that potential clients can request a brochure - which I
presume is posted to them. Do you send out follow-up postcards with
your url on it? However, I don't notice any sign of you having a
double-optin email list where you can email clients when you have new
products, new product offers (eg your new indoor furniture range).
I notice that your site has a Trade section inviting trade buyers to
promote your products with a discounted pricing structure of some
kind. It might be beneficial to you to join one of the affiliate
networks and have other people acting as your salesforce. Most, if
not all, of the affiliate networks have the facility for you to
approve/disapprove sites/companies, so you need only work with your
selection of companies.
I would just like to add something Margaret mentioned ...
> However, I don't notice any sign of you having a
> double-optin email list where you can email clients when you have new
> products, new product offers (eg your new indoor furniture range).
Or, an RSS feed? Some, not myself though, consider visitors
registering to receive e-mails on updates to be old-school and RSS to
be THE way to do it now but I think both ways have their benefits even
now.
Make it stupid simple for a visitor to possibly become a repeat and
your workload is cut in half. The more ways one provides a visitor to
do that, the more effective one becomes at "capturing" an audience.
So yeah, definitely an e-mail "campaign" but give RSS a thought too,
if you haven't already.
If you have already, I'll shut up. :-()
Directly to ShyBoy, bite the bullet now because you will have to
sooner or later. We all end up down blind alleys sometimes and the
only way out is turning around and walking back out. As much as I
have looked for them at some points in time, there ain't no
shortcuts. :-(
> We are a small family business and we have just been dropped from the
> serps due to a proxy hijack (I think that's the term). We have blocked
> the IP for now while I look at ways of preventing this happening again
> in the future. (Not techy at all)
> When you searched on Google for a bunch of text on our page, his site
> appeared and upon clicking on the link, it forwarded us to our site,
> through a proxy site.
> It seems that the proxy version of our page was re-crawled last night,
> and, due to the IP ban, was de-indexed. Unfortunately, our ranking is
> still stuck between the 40 - 60 mark for all keywords, phrases and
> even our domain name. We used to rank really well and now we are at
> the bottom of the pond. We have (what we think) is a good site which
> we worked on for hours and hours every night to get just the way we
> wanted it.
> I have filed a re-inclusion form and a spam report when it first
> dropped us from serps.
> We have had the penalty for over 11 days now and it is really
> affecting our business. We just can't afford to miss out on the
> beginning of the spring season here in the UK. This is our only source
> of income and as such this is causing my wife and me great stress and
> sleepless nights. This is extremely serious for us, but we feel as if
> Google has let us down as we have not even had an automated response
> to say they are looking into it. We feel helpless and distraught. Why
> does it take so long for Google to act on these people who literally
> ruin honest people's lives? Why is there no-one to talk to even via
> email?
> Does anyone have any advice on this? The SEO guy we used for advice
> ran out of ideas.
