Thanks Webado. We have actually removed it now, as it wasn't helping
our sales much, and our customer service people hated it anyway. So,
we are now validating with no errors. I will definitely use your
encoding advice though if we end up going back to it.
> > OK, I've removed all the validation errors that I could. We have some
> > chat software that is showing some validation errors because of some
> > funky script tags. We are considering whether it's worthwhile to keep
> > that or not.
> > On Dec 19, 9:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > Webado, I will certainly do that...however it was not a problem up
> > > until last week sometime.
> > > Just for kicks here are our rankings last week:
> > > plus size: 2
> > > plus size clothing: 4
> > > plus size dress: 2
> > > plus size formal wear: 2
> > > Now, this week:
> > > plus size: 32
> > > plus size clothing: 34
> > > plus size dress: 12
> > > plus size formal wear: 12
> > > So that's exactly -30 for the first two phrases, then -11 and -10 for
> > > the second two phrases.
> > > > See that verificaiton meta tag? It's not clsoed properly fro the
> > > > doctype you are using.
> > > > It should be clsoed with > and not with /> (because that is for
> > > > xhtnml).
> > > > You are mixing xhtml syntax elsewhere too. You need to decide which
> > > > way you go and stick to it. Using xhtml syntax in a non-xhtml document
> > > > is bad. Doing this in the head is mortal.
> > > > On Dec 18, 10:27 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > Wow, thanks everyone, this is some dynamite information...I'll be
> > > > > trying these things first thing in the morning.
> > > > > On Dec 18, 7:10 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > duplicate site/canonicals - I would guess it is an issue, someone at
> > > > > > Google would have to verify the certificate thing though. do choose a
> > > > > > preferred domain and 301 redirect to your preferred domain as well to
> > > > > > tie up any loose ends...
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:07 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > To be honest, I have no idea.
> > > > > > > What won't help is the fact that you have two identical site's
> > > > > > > indexed. As you said , you are using www. in your internal lnks and
> > > > > > > this seems to be the choice. You could set this as the preference in
> > > > > > > Webmaster's Tools and 301 redirect from http:// to htttp://www.
> > > > > > > Can't say that is the cause of your sudden problem but can only help.
> > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:59 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > Yup that's exactly it - the security certificate is only forwww.igigi.com,
> > > > > > > > not igigi.com - but we try to make sure that all our links point towww.igigi.com.
> > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 6:45 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > That may well be the case. The home page, if not most of the site is
> > > > > > > > > cached for both versions.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:40 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hi Aaron
> > > > > > > > > > Can't suggest much more than it states, a security certificate error.
> > > > > > > > > > One possible cause for this is that the certificate is formed to act
> > > > > > > > > > forhttp://www.igigi.com/andnothttp://igigi.com/
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:10 am, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > I get some sort of security warning, can anyone educate me on what it
> > > > > > > > > > > is?
> > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 8:16 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > Appears that quite a few pages of your site have been cached over the
> > > > > > > > > > > > last few days but not the home page. May just be coincidence but as
> > > > > > > > > > > > you mentioned:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > do.
> > > > > > > > > > > > In some cases it's not so much scraping as using content, particularly
> > > > > > > > > > > > that on your home page. This is appearing within reviews of your site,
> > > > > > > > > > > > where they are also providing a link. Again, hope this isn't the
> > > > > > > > > > > > problem but worth looking at.
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:46 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > > I hope the server glitch is the problem and everything normalises for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > you. There is still the possibility that the SERPs positions are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > reflecting current perception ie. 25/30 sites have improved, or yours
> > > > > > > > > > > > > has fallen in some way.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > One possibility is that sites which used to pass value through links
> > > > > > > > > > > > > to you are no longer doing so, or not to the same extent. Although you
> > > > > > > > > > > > > may not have paid for blog posts, maybe those sites have seen their
> > > > > > > > > > > > > value in the chain diminish for other reasons. You do have a large
> > > > > > > > > > > > > number of links but as you said, many are from blogs and some from
> > > > > > > > > > > > > link exchange sites such ashttp://www.largeincharge.com/big_clothing.htm.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > I haven't looked through the list extensively, not looking for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > problems, just trying to take a view. Devaluation of the sort of link
> > > > > > > > > > > > > profile you portray could be having an effect.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:06 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Chibcha - they are generally saying that they like our products.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Occasionally they say they don't like our products, but I wouldn't
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > think that that would cause the problems we're seeing. I guess the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > point is that they are legitimate blog posts by ladies who like to
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > talk about fashion and whatnot, not paid for backlinks or anything
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > like that.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I appreciate you haven't seen savage SERPs changes but couldn't help
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > noting
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > What were their reasons for saying nice things about your company?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 11:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > not?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > it be
> Thanks Webado. We have actually removed it now, as it wasn't helping
> our sales much, and our customer service people hated it anyway. So,
> we are now validating with no errors. I will definitely use your
> encoding advice though if we end up going back to it.
> > > OK, I've removed all the validation errors that I could. We have some
> > > chat software that is showing some validation errors because of some
> > > funky script tags. We are considering whether it's worthwhile to keep
> > > that or not.
> > > On Dec 19, 9:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Webado, I will certainly do that...however it was not a problem up
> > > > until last week sometime.
> > > > Just for kicks here are our rankings last week:
> > > > plus size: 2
> > > > plus size clothing: 4
> > > > plus size dress: 2
> > > > plus size formal wear: 2
> > > > Now, this week:
> > > > plus size: 32
> > > > plus size clothing: 34
> > > > plus size dress: 12
> > > > plus size formal wear: 12
> > > > So that's exactly -30 for the first two phrases, then -11 and -10 for
> > > > the second two phrases.
> > > > > See that verificaiton meta tag? It's not clsoed properly fro the
> > > > > doctype you are using.
> > > > > It should be clsoed with > and not with /> (because that is for
> > > > > xhtnml).
> > > > > You are mixing xhtml syntax elsewhere too. You need to decide which
> > > > > way you go and stick to it. Using xhtml syntax in a non-xhtml document
> > > > > is bad. Doing this in the head is mortal.
> > > > > On Dec 18, 10:27 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > Wow, thanks everyone, this is some dynamite information...I'll be
> > > > > > trying these things first thing in the morning.
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:10 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > duplicate site/canonicals - I would guess it is an issue, someone at
> > > > > > > Google would have to verify the certificate thing though. do choose a
> > > > > > > preferred domain and 301 redirect to your preferred domain as well to
> > > > > > > tie up any loose ends...
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:07 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > To be honest, I have no idea.
> > > > > > > > What won't help is the fact that you have two identical site's
> > > > > > > > indexed. As you said , you are using www. in your internal lnks and
> > > > > > > > this seems to be the choice. You could set this as the preference in
> > > > > > > > Webmaster's Tools and 301 redirect from http:// to htttp://www.
> > > > > > > > Can't say that is the cause of your sudden problem but can only help.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:59 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Yup that's exactly it - the security certificate is only forwww.igigi.com,
> > > > > > > > > not igigi.com - but we try to make sure that all our links point towww.igigi.com.
> > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 6:45 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > That may well be the case. The home page, if not most of the site is
> > > > > > > > > > cached for both versions.
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:40 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > Hi Aaron
> > > > > > > > > > > Can't suggest much more than it states, a security certificate error.
> > > > > > > > > > > One possible cause for this is that the certificate is formed to act
> > > > > > > > > > > forhttp://www.igigi.com/andnothttp://igigi.com/
> > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:10 am, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > I get some sort of security warning, can anyone educate me on what it
> > > > > > > > > > > > is?
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 8:16 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Appears that quite a few pages of your site have been cached over the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > last few days but not the home page. May just be coincidence but as
> > > > > > > > > > > > > you mentioned:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > do.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > In some cases it's not so much scraping as using content, particularly
> > > > > > > > > > > > > that on your home page. This is appearing within reviews of your site,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > where they are also providing a link. Again, hope this isn't the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > problem but worth looking at.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:46 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > I hope the server glitch is the problem and everything normalises for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > you. There is still the possibility that the SERPs positions are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > reflecting current perception ie. 25/30 sites have improved, or yours
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > has fallen in some way.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > One possibility is that sites which used to pass value through links
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > to you are no longer doing so, or not to the same extent. Although you
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > may not have paid for blog posts, maybe those sites have seen their
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > value in the chain diminish for other reasons. You do have a large
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > number of links but as you said, many are from blogs and some from
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > link exchange sites such ashttp://www.largeincharge.com/big_clothing.htm.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > I haven't looked through the list extensively, not looking for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > problems, just trying to take a view. Devaluation of the sort of link
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > profile you portray could be having an effect.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Chibcha - they are generally saying that they like our products.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Occasionally they say they don't like our products, but I wouldn't
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > think that that would cause the problems we're seeing. I guess the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > point is that they are legitimate blog posts by ladies who like to
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > talk about fashion and whatnot, not paid for backlinks or anything
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > like that.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I appreciate you haven't seen savage SERPs changes but couldn't help
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > noting
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > What were their reasons for saying nice things about your company?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 11:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > not?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > It could be that an
Without doubt, sorting out the validation errors was important and
implementing the 301 to create one viable domain will help as well.
Whether these entirely solve the issue is still open to consideration.
In a sense, time may offer the only answer but you can do no harm by
exploring every issue raised.
> Ok, this is really weird. Up til yesterday, the home page for our
> site atwww.igigi.comthat Google showed as cached was dated December
> 11.
> Now when I look at the cached page, it is dated November 28. It has
> rolled back two weeks to a previous home page.
> Should I start a new thread for this? Why would this happen?
> Webmaster tools is still showing the last crawl as December 11.
> On Dec 19, 10:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > Thanks Webado. We have actually removed it now, as it wasn't helping
> > our sales much, and our customer service people hated it anyway. So,
> > we are now validating with no errors. I will definitely use your
> > encoding advice though if we end up going back to it.
> > > > OK, I've removed all the validation errors that I could. We have some
> > > > chat software that is showing some validation errors because of some
> > > > funky script tags. We are considering whether it's worthwhile to keep
> > > > that or not.
> > > > On Dec 19, 9:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > Webado, I will certainly do that...however it was not a problem up
> > > > > until last week sometime.
> > > > > Just for kicks here are our rankings last week:
> > > > > plus size: 2
> > > > > plus size clothing: 4
> > > > > plus size dress: 2
> > > > > plus size formal wear: 2
> > > > > Now, this week:
> > > > > plus size: 32
> > > > > plus size clothing: 34
> > > > > plus size dress: 12
> > > > > plus size formal wear: 12
> > > > > So that's exactly -30 for the first two phrases, then -11 and -10 for
> > > > > the second two phrases.
> > > > > > See that verificaiton meta tag? It's not clsoed properly fro the
> > > > > > doctype you are using.
> > > > > > It should be clsoed with > and not with /> (because that is for
> > > > > > xhtnml).
> > > > > > You are mixing xhtml syntax elsewhere too. You need to decide which
> > > > > > way you go and stick to it. Using xhtml syntax in a non-xhtml document
> > > > > > is bad. Doing this in the head is mortal.
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:27 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > Wow, thanks everyone, this is some dynamite information...I'll be
> > > > > > > trying these things first thing in the morning.
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:10 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > duplicate site/canonicals - I would guess it is an issue, someone at
> > > > > > > > Google would have to verify the certificate thing though. do choose a
> > > > > > > > preferred domain and 301 redirect to your preferred domain as well to
> > > > > > > > tie up any loose ends...
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:07 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > To be honest, I have no idea.
> > > > > > > > > What won't help is the fact that you have two identical site's
> > > > > > > > > indexed. As you said , you are using www. in your internal lnks and
> > > > > > > > > this seems to be the choice. You could set this as the preference in
> > > > > > > > > Webmaster's Tools and 301 redirect from http:// to htttp://www.
> > > > > > > > > Can't say that is the cause of your sudden problem but can only help.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:59 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Yup that's exactly it - the security certificate is only forwww.igigi.com,
> > > > > > > > > > not igigi.com - but we try to make sure that all our links point towww.igigi.com.
> > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 6:45 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > That may well be the case. The home page, if not most of the site is
> > > > > > > > > > > cached for both versions.
> > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:40 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Aaron
> > > > > > > > > > > > Can't suggest much more than it states, a security certificate error.
> > > > > > > > > > > > One possible cause for this is that the certificate is formed to act
> > > > > > > > > > > > forhttp://www.igigi.com/andnothttp://igigi.com/
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:10 am, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > I get some sort of security warning, can anyone educate me on what it
> > > > > > > > > > > > > is?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 8:16 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Appears that quite a few pages of your site have been cached over the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > last few days but not the home page. May just be coincidence but as
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > you mentioned:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > do.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > In some cases it's not so much scraping as using content, particularly
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > that on your home page. This is appearing within reviews of your site,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > where they are also providing a link. Again, hope this isn't the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > problem but worth looking at.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I hope the server glitch is the problem and everything normalises for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you. There is still the possibility that the SERPs positions are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > reflecting current perception ie. 25/30 sites have improved, or yours
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > has fallen in some way.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > One possibility is that sites which used to pass value through links
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > to you are no longer doing so, or not to the same extent. Although you
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > may not have paid for blog posts, maybe those sites have seen their
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > value in the chain diminish for other reasons. You do have a large
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > number of links but as you said, many are from blogs and some from
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > link exchange sites such ashttp://www.largeincharge.com/big_clothing.htm.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I haven't looked through the list extensively, not looking for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > problems, just trying to take a view. Devaluation of the sort of link
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > profile you portray could be having an effect.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Chibcha - they are generally saying that they like our products.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Occasionally they say they don't like our products, but I wouldn't
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > think that that would cause the problems we're seeing. I guess the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > point is that they are legitimate blog posts by ladies who like to
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > talk about fashion and whatnot, not paid for backlinks or anything
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > like that.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I appreciate you haven't seen savage SERPs changes but couldn't help
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > noting
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > What were their reasons for saying nice things about your company?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 11:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your
Hey Chibcha, when you use the ip address for the search like that,
does that go right to Google's primary data center or something? Just
wondering what the significance of that is, and why it would give a
different result than the one I'm seeing. Thanks for all this great
information.
> Without doubt, sorting out the validation errors was important and
> implementing the 301 to create one viable domain will help as well.
> Whether these entirely solve the issue is still open to consideration.
> In a sense, time may offer the only answer but you can do no harm by
> exploring every issue raised.
> On Dec 19, 6:51 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > Ok, this is really weird. Up til yesterday, the home page for our
> > site atwww.igigi.comthatGoogle showed as cached was dated December
> > 11.
> > Now when I look at the cached page, it is dated November 28. It has
> > rolled back two weeks to a previous home page.
> > Should I start a new thread for this? Why would this happen?
> > Webmaster tools is still showing the last crawl as December 11.
> > On Dec 19, 10:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > Thanks Webado. We have actually removed it now, as it wasn't helping
> > > our sales much, and our customer service people hated it anyway. So,
> > > we are now validating with no errors. I will definitely use your
> > > encoding advice though if we end up going back to it.
> > > > > OK, I've removed all the validation errors that I could. We have some
> > > > > chat software that is showing some validation errors because of some
> > > > > funky script tags. We are considering whether it's worthwhile to keep
> > > > > that or not.
> > > > > On Dec 19, 9:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > Webado, I will certainly do that...however it was not a problem up
> > > > > > until last week sometime.
> > > > > > Just for kicks here are our rankings last week:
> > > > > > plus size: 2
> > > > > > plus size clothing: 4
> > > > > > plus size dress: 2
> > > > > > plus size formal wear: 2
> > > > > > Now, this week:
> > > > > > plus size: 32
> > > > > > plus size clothing: 34
> > > > > > plus size dress: 12
> > > > > > plus size formal wear: 12
> > > > > > So that's exactly -30 for the first two phrases, then -11 and -10 for
> > > > > > the second two phrases.
> > > > > > > See that verificaiton meta tag? It's not clsoed properly fro the
> > > > > > > doctype you are using.
> > > > > > > It should be clsoed with > and not with /> (because that is for
> > > > > > > xhtnml).
> > > > > > > You are mixing xhtml syntax elsewhere too. You need to decide which
> > > > > > > way you go and stick to it. Using xhtml syntax in a non-xhtml document
> > > > > > > is bad. Doing this in the head is mortal.
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:27 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > Wow, thanks everyone, this is some dynamite information...I'll be
> > > > > > > > trying these things first thing in the morning.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:10 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > > duplicate site/canonicals - I would guess it is an issue, someone at
> > > > > > > > > Google would have to verify the certificate thing though. do choose a
> > > > > > > > > preferred domain and 301 redirect to your preferred domain as well to
> > > > > > > > > tie up any loose ends...
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:07 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > To be honest, I have no idea.
> > > > > > > > > > What won't help is the fact that you have two identical site's
> > > > > > > > > > indexed. As you said , you are using www. in your internal lnks and
> > > > > > > > > > this seems to be the choice. You could set this as the preference in
> > > > > > > > > > Webmaster's Tools and 301 redirect from http:// to htttp://www.
> > > > > > > > > > Can't say that is the cause of your sudden problem but can only help.
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:59 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > Yup that's exactly it - the security certificate is only forwww.igigi.com,
> > > > > > > > > > > not igigi.com - but we try to make sure that all our links point towww.igigi.com.
> > > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 6:45 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > That may well be the case. The home page, if not most of the site is
> > > > > > > > > > > > cached for both versions.
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:40 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Aaron
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Can't suggest much more than it states, a security certificate error.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > One possible cause for this is that the certificate is formed to act
> > > > > > > > > > > > > forhttp://www.igigi.com/andnothttp://igigi.com/
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Appears that quite a few pages of your site have been cached over the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > last few days but not the home page. May just be coincidence but as
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you mentioned:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > do.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In some cases it's not so much scraping as using content, particularly
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > that on your home page. This is appearing within reviews of your site,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > where they are also providing a link. Again, hope this isn't the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > problem but worth looking at.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I hope the server glitch is the problem and everything normalises for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you. There is still the possibility that the SERPs positions are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > reflecting current perception ie. 25/30 sites have improved, or yours
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > has fallen in some way.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > One possibility is that sites which used to pass value through links
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > to you are no longer doing so, or not to the same extent. Although you
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > may not have paid for blog posts, maybe those sites have seen their
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > value in the chain diminish for other reasons. You do have a large
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > number of links but as you said, many are from blogs and some from
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > link exchange sites such ashttp://www.largeincharge.com/big_clothing.htm.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I haven't looked through the list extensively, not looking for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > problems, just trying to take a view. Devaluation of the sort of link
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > profile you portray could be having an effect.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Chibcha - they are generally saying that they like our products.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Occasionally they say they don't like our products, but I wouldn't
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > think that that would cause the problems we're seeing. I guess the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > point is that they are legitimate blog posts by ladies who like to
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > talk about fashion and whatnot, not paid for backlinks or anything
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > like that.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I appreciate you haven't seen savage SERPs changes but couldn't help
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > noting
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > What were their reasons for saying nice things about your company?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 11:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > off with a
Generally a good way to get a picture of the site's situation.
These searches do not as such prove anything and I think the technical
improvements raised in this thread will be a great help. However, the
caches could be taken as an indication that you should still consider
other issues.
I know that's not what you want to hear. Better to find a defining
glitch and solve it but consider the situation. Your site has a large
number of links, many of these fit a similar profile. I know you
clearly stated you would not pay for links and I'm not wishing to
judge other sites but in some cases, the sites that offer your link
are open to debate. Some have done little more than copy your intro
text and add your link, others have odd ways of expressing the coupon
arrangements they have, including yours. On several sites, the posts
are simply not complimentary, difficult not to think they might be
there for more than editorial reasons. Some of these sites carry other
advertising that is not ideal and neither is their expression of how
they view paid advertising/links.
I am aware of the logical argument that you can not be penalised for
who links to you, or that opens an avenue to harm competitors.
Personally, I'm prepared to keep a slighty open mind on that. Even if
it is accurate, that does not eradicate a possibility the links may
lose their value, therefore creating harm in one sense.
Not saying that has happened, I can't read a search engine's mind but
in the situation I would take a long look at the link profile and
probably feel that work would be needed.
> Hey Chibcha, when you use the ip address for the search like that,
> does that go right to Google's primary data center or something? Just
> wondering what the significance of that is, and why it would give a
> different result than the one I'm seeing. Thanks for all this great
> information.
> On Dec 19, 11:01 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > Hi Josh
> > May be just a datacentre issue. In any event, I'm getting freshly
> > cached pages for both versions of your home page from 18th December.
> > Without doubt, sorting out the validation errors was important and
> > implementing the 301 to create one viable domain will help as well.
> > Whether these entirely solve the issue is still open to consideration.
> > In a sense, time may offer the only answer but you can do no harm by
> > exploring every issue raised.
> > On Dec 19, 6:51 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > Ok, this is really weird. Up til yesterday, the home page for our
> > > site atwww.igigi.comthatGoogleshowed as cached was dated December
> > > 11.
> > > Now when I look at the cached page, it is dated November 28. It has
> > > rolled back two weeks to a previous home page.
> > > Should I start a new thread for this? Why would this happen?
> > > Webmaster tools is still showing the last crawl as December 11.
> > > On Dec 19, 10:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Thanks Webado. We have actually removed it now, as it wasn't helping
> > > > our sales much, and our customer service people hated it anyway. So,
> > > > we are now validating with no errors. I will definitely use your
> > > > encoding advice though if we end up going back to it.
> > > > > > OK, I've removed all the validation errors that I could. We have some
> > > > > > chat software that is showing some validation errors because of some
> > > > > > funky script tags. We are considering whether it's worthwhile to keep
> > > > > > that or not.
> > > > > > On Dec 19, 9:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > Webado, I will certainly do that...however it was not a problem up
> > > > > > > until last week sometime.
> > > > > > > Just for kicks here are our rankings last week:
> > > > > > > plus size: 2
> > > > > > > plus size clothing: 4
> > > > > > > plus size dress: 2
> > > > > > > plus size formal wear: 2
> > > > > > > > See that verificaiton meta tag? It's not clsoed properly fro the
> > > > > > > > doctype you are using.
> > > > > > > > It should be clsoed with > and not with /> (because that is for
> > > > > > > > xhtnml).
> > > > > > > > You are mixing xhtml syntax elsewhere too. You need to decide which
> > > > > > > > way you go and stick to it. Using xhtml syntax in a non-xhtml document
> > > > > > > > is bad. Doing this in the head is mortal.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:27 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Wow, thanks everyone, this is some dynamite information...I'll be
> > > > > > > > > trying these things first thing in the morning.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:10 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > duplicate site/canonicals - I would guess it is an issue, someone at
> > > > > > > > > > Google would have to verify the certificate thing though. do choose a
> > > > > > > > > > preferred domain and 301 redirect to your preferred domain as well to
> > > > > > > > > > tie up any loose ends...
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:07 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > > To be honest, I have no idea.
> > > > > > > > > > > What won't help is the fact that you have two identical site's
> > > > > > > > > > > indexed. As you said , you are using www. in your internal lnks and
> > > > > > > > > > > this seems to be the choice. You could set this as the preference in
> > > > > > > > > > > Webmaster's Tools and 301 redirect from http:// to htttp://www.
> > > > > > > > > > > Can't say that is the cause of your sudden problem but can only help.
> > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:59 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > Yup that's exactly it - the security certificate is only forwww.igigi.com,
> > > > > > > > > > > > not igigi.com - but we try to make sure that all our links point towww.igigi.com.
> > > > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 6:45 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > That may well be the case. The home page, if not most of the site is
> > > > > > > > > > > > > cached for both versions.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:40 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Aaron
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Can't suggest much more than it states, a security certificate error.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > One possible cause for this is that the certificate is formed to act
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > forhttp://www.igigi.com/andnothttp://igigi.com/
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Appears that quite a few pages of your site have been cached over the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > last few days but not the home page. May just be coincidence but as
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you mentioned:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > do.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In some cases it's not so much scraping as using content, particularly
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > that on your home page. This is appearing within reviews of your site,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > where they are also providing a link. Again, hope this isn't the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > problem but worth looking at.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I hope the server glitch is the problem and everything normalises for
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you. There is still the possibility that the SERPs positions are
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > reflecting current perception ie. 25/30 sites have improved, or yours
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > has fallen in some way.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > One possibility is that sites which used to pass value through links
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > to you are no longer doing so, or not to the same extent. Although you
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > may not have paid for blog posts, maybe those sites have seen their
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > value in the chain diminish for other reasons. You do have a large
> Generally a good way to get a picture of the site's situation.
> These searches do not as such prove anything and I think the technical
> improvements raised in this thread will be a great help. However, the
> caches could be taken as an indication that you should still consider
> other issues.
> I know that's not what you want to hear. Better to find a defining
> glitch and solve it but consider the situation. Your site has a large
> number of links, many of these fit a similar profile. I know you
> clearly stated you would not pay for links and I'm not wishing to
> judge other sites but in some cases, the sites that offer your link
> are open to debate. Some have done little more than copy your intro
> text and add your link, others have odd ways of expressing the coupon
> arrangements they have, including yours. On several sites, the posts
> are simply not complimentary, difficult not to think they might be
> there for more than editorial reasons. Some of these sites carry other
> advertising that is not ideal and neither is their expression of how
> they view paid advertising/links.
> I am aware of the logical argument that you can not be penalised for
> who links to you, or that opens an avenue to harm competitors.
> Personally, I'm prepared to keep a slighty open mind on that. Even if
> it is accurate, that does not eradicate a possibility the links may
> lose their value, therefore creating harm in one sense.
> Not saying that has happened, I can't read a search engine's mind but
> in the situation I would take a long look at the link profile and
> probably feel that work would be needed.
> On Dec 19, 7:22 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > Hey Chibcha, when you use the ip address for the search like that,
> > does that go right to Google's primary data center or something? Just
> > wondering what the significance of that is, and why it would give a
> > different result than the one I'm seeing. Thanks for all this great
> > information.
> > On Dec 19, 11:01 am, Chibcha wrote:
> > > Hi Josh
> > > May be just a datacentre issue. In any event, I'm getting freshly
> > > cached pages for both versions of your home page from 18th December.
> > > Without doubt, sorting out the validation errors was important and
> > > implementing the 301 to create one viable domain will help as well.
> > > Whether these entirely solve the issue is still open to consideration.
> > > In a sense, time may offer the only answer but you can do no harm by
> > > exploring every issue raised.
> > > On Dec 19, 6:51 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Ok, this is really weird. Up til yesterday, the home page for our
> > > > site atwww.igigi.comthatGoogleshowedas cached was dated December
> > > > 11.
> > > > Now when I look at the cached page, it is dated November 28. It has
> > > > rolled back two weeks to a previous home page.
> > > > Should I start a new thread for this? Why would this happen?
> > > > Webmaster tools is still showing the last crawl as December 11.
> > > > On Dec 19, 10:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > Thanks Webado. We have actually removed it now, as it wasn't helping
> > > > > our sales much, and our customer service people hated it anyway. So,
> > > > > we are now validating with no errors. I will definitely use your
> > > > > encoding advice though if we end up going back to it.
> > > > > > > OK, I've removed all the validation errors that I could. We have some
> > > > > > > chat software that is showing some validation errors because of some
> > > > > > > funky script tags. We are considering whether it's worthwhile to keep
> > > > > > > that or not.
> > > > > > > On Dec 19, 9:29 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > Webado, I will certainly do that...however it was not a problem up
> > > > > > > > until last week sometime.
> > > > > > > > Just for kicks here are our rankings last week:
> > > > > > > > plus size: 2
> > > > > > > > plus size clothing: 4
> > > > > > > > plus size dress: 2
> > > > > > > > plus size formal wear: 2
> > > > > > > > > See that verificaiton meta tag? It's not clsoed properly fro the
> > > > > > > > > doctype you are using.
> > > > > > > > > It should be clsoed with > and not with /> (because that is for
> > > > > > > > > xhtnml).
> > > > > > > > > You are mixing xhtml syntax elsewhere too. You need to decide which
> > > > > > > > > way you go and stick to it. Using xhtml syntax in a non-xhtml document
> > > > > > > > > is bad. Doing this in the head is mortal.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:27 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Wow, thanks everyone, this is some dynamite information...I'll be
> > > > > > > > > > trying these things first thing in the morning.
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:10 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > duplicate site/canonicals - I would guess it is an issue, someone at
> > > > > > > > > > > Google would have to verify the certificate thing though. do choose a
> > > > > > > > > > > preferred domain and 301 redirect to your preferred domain as well to
> > > > > > > > > > > tie up any loose ends...
> > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:07 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > > > To be honest, I have no idea.
> > > > > > > > > > > > What won't help is the fact that you have two identical site's
> > > > > > > > > > > > indexed. As you said , you are using www. in your internal lnks and
> > > > > > > > > > > > this seems to be the choice. You could set this as the preference in
> > > > > > > > > > > > Webmaster's Tools and 301 redirect from http:// to htttp://www.
> > > > > > > > > > > > Can't say that is the cause of your sudden problem but can only help.
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:59 am, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Yup that's exactly it - the security certificate is only forwww.igigi.com,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > not igigi.com - but we try to make sure that all our links point towww.igigi.com.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Could that security certificate situation cause us to be pushed down
> > > > > > > > > > > > > in the SERP rankings?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 6:45 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > That may well be the case. The home page, if not most of the site is
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > cached for both versions.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Can't suggest much more than it states, a security certificate error.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > One possible cause for this is that the certificate is formed to act
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > forhttp://www.igigi.com/andnothttp://igigi.com/
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Appears that quite a few pages of your site have been cached over the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > last few days but not the home page. May just be coincidence but as
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you mentioned:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > do.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In some cases it's not so much scraping as using content, particularly
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > that on your home page. This is appearing within reviews of your site,
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > where they are also providing a link. Again, hope this isn't the
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > problem but worth looking at.
Hey Josh
The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
610.
> I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> of the system in any way.
> I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> happen or not.
> I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > Hey Josh,
> > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > not?
> > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > Sam
> > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > Hi JLH,
> > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > it be rectified when our site is re-cached? The last cache was Dec.
> > > 11, when might we expect to see the site re-cached?
> > > On Dec 18, 1:05 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > On Dec 18, 2:55 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > "I'm just wondering why something like that would happen without us
> > > > changing anything."
> > > > If you're not changing, you are loosing ground to your competitors.
> > > > Did the 32 sites above you change anything?
> > > > Did a site that linked to you previously remove the link?
> > > > Did other sites link to some of those 32 above you?
> > > > Those are an infinite amount of external forces that are primarily out
> > > > of your control.
> > > > Your site still comes up #1 for content exclusive to your domain, your
> > > > domain is #1 for it's search, and your site links are still in place.
> > > > I'm not getting a penalty sensation here yet.- Hide quoted text -
Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
Chibcha,
I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
anything too terrible.
> Hey Josh
> The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> 610.
> Roysnj
> On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > Hey Sam,
> > ColdFusion FTW!
> > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > of the system in any way.
> > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > happen or not.
> > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > Hey Josh,
> > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > not?
> > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > Sam
> > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > > it be rectified when our site is re-cached? The last cache was Dec.
> > > > 11, when might we expect to see the site re-cached?
> > > > On Dec 18, 1:05 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > On Dec 18, 2:55 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > "I'm just wondering why something like that would happen without us
> > > > > changing anything."
> > > > > If you're not changing, you are loosing ground to your competitors.
> > > > > Did the 32 sites above you change anything?
> > > > > Did a site that linked to you previously remove the link?
> > > > > Did other sites link to some of those 32 above you?
> > > > > Those are an infinite amount of external forces that are primarily out
> > > > > of your control.
> > > > > Your site still comes up #1 for content exclusive to your domain, your
> > > > > domain is #1 for it's search, and your site links are still in place.
> > > > > I'm not getting a penalty sensation here yet.- Hide quoted text -
As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
apples to have a problem.
Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
dice is better than just letting them roll.
> Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> Chibcha,
> I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> anything too terrible.
> On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > Hey Josh
> > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > 610.
> > Roysnj
> > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > Hey Sam,
> > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > of the system in any way.
> > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > happen or not.
> > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > not?
> > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > Sam
> > > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > > > it be rectified when our site is re-cached? The last cache was Dec.
> > > > > 11, when might we expect to see the site re-cached?
> > > > > On Dec 18, 1:05 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 2:55 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > "I'm just wondering why something like that would happen without us
> > > > > > changing anything."
> > > > > > If you're not changing, you are loosing ground to your competitors.
> > > > > > Did the 32 sites above you change anything?
> > > > > > Did a site that linked to you previously remove the link?
> > > > > > Did other sites link to some of those 32 above you?
> > > > > > Those are an infinite amount of external forces that are primarily out
> > > > > > of your control.
> > > > > > Your site still comes up #1 for content exclusive to your domain, your
> > > > > > domain is #1 for it's search, and your site links are still in place.
> > > > > > I'm not getting a penalty sensation here yet.- Hide quoted text -
It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
and the results are going down.
Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
the base url.
"How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
broadly, we suggest:
1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
canonical version.
2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
link juice from the affiliate links.
> As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> apples to have a problem.
> Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> dice is better than just letting them roll.
> On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > Hey Roy,
> > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > Chibcha,
> > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > anything too terrible.
> > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > Hey Josh
> > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > 610.
> > > Roysnj
> > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > > happen or not.
> > > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > not?
> > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > Sam
> > > > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > > > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > > > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > > > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > > > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > > > > it be rectified when our site is re-cached? The last cache was Dec.
> > > > > > 11, when might we expect to see the site re-cached?
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 1:05 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 2:55 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > "I'm just wondering why something like that would happen without us
> > > > > > > changing anything."
> > > > > > > If you're not changing, you are loosing ground to your competitors.
> > > > > > > Did the 32 sites above you change anything?
> > > > > > > Did a site that linked to you previously remove the link?
> > > > > > > Did other sites link to some of those 32 above you?
> > > > > > > Those are an infinite amount of external forces that are primarily out
> > > > > > > of your control.
> > > > > > > Your site still comes up #1 for content exclusive to your domain, your
> > > > > > > domain is #1 for it's search, and your site links are still in place.
> > > > > > > I'm not getting a penalty sensation here yet.- Hide quoted text -
JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> and the results are going down.
> Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> the base url.
> "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> broadly, we suggest:
> 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> canonical version.
> 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> link juice from the affiliate links.
> On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > Hi Josh
> > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > apples to have a problem.
> > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > Hey Roy,
> > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > Chibcha,
> > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > anything too terrible.
> > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > Hey Josh
> > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > 610.
> > > > Roysnj
> > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > > > happen or not.
> > > > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > > not?
> > > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > > Sam
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > > > > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > > > > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > > > > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > > > > > it be rectified when our site is re-cached? The last cache was Dec.
> > > > > > > 11, when might we expect to see the site re-cached?
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 1:05 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 2:55 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > "I'm just wondering why something like that would happen without us
> > > > > > > > changing anything."
> > > > > > > > If you're not changing, you are loosing ground to your competitors.
> > > > > > > > Did the 32 sites above you change anything?
> > > > > > > > Did a site that linked to you previously remove the link?
> > > > > > > > Did other sites link to some of those 32 above you?
> > > > > > > > Those are an infinite amount of external forces that are primarily out
> > > > > > > > of your control.
> > > > > > > > Your site still comes up #1 for content exclusive to your domain, your
> > > > > > > > domain is #1 for it's search, and your site links are still in place.
> > > > > > > > I'm not getting a penalty sensation here yet.- Hide quoted text -
> > > > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
different.
My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
that manner.
> JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > and the results are going down.
> > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > the base url.
> > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > broadly, we suggest:
> > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > canonical version.
> > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > Hi Josh
> > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > apples to have a problem.
> > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > Chibcha,
> > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > 610.
> > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > > > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > > > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > > > > happen or not.
> > > > > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > > > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > > > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > > > not?
> > > > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > > > Sam
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > > > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our major
> > > > > > > > competitors which are now ranking above us. Our backlinks are
> > > > > > > > generally people on blogs saying nice things about our company.
> > > > > > > > One thing that did happen a week or so ago is that our site was down
> > > > > > > > for several errors due to a server error, so it was giving a 500
> > > > > > > > response during that time. Could this be the culprit, and if so, will
> > > > > > > > it be rectified when our site is re-cached? The last cache was Dec.
> > > > > > > > 11, when might we expect to see the site re-cached?
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 1:05 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 2:55 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > "I'm just wondering why something like that would happen without us
> > > > > > > > > changing anything."
> > > > > > > > > If you're not changing, you are loosing ground to your competitors.
> > > > > > > > > Did the 32 sites above you change anything?
> > > > > > > > > Did a site that linked to you previously remove the link?
> > > > > > > > > Did other sites link to some of those 32 above you?
> > > > > > > > > Those are an infinite amount of external forces that are primarily out
> > > > > > > > > of your control.
> > > > > > > > > Your site still comes up #1 for content exclusive to your domain, your
> > > > > > > > > domain is #1 for it's
Well the results from that search show the internal links. I'm not
aware of any internal affiliate linking that we've done, that wouldn't
make any sense -- maybe they are really old mistakes or something.
I see what you're saying about the IBL's from affiliates, but that is
a legitimate program that we are not likely to discontinue, because it
brings us good revenue...also, those links do not seem to show up when
a search for link:www.igigi.com is done. I'm pretty sure they never
did, maybe Google automatically filters out links that have query
strings attached.
It is showing our links as being hidden. I am controlling the page
background using css so there is no "background" attribute in the body
tag. Is it possible that Google is seeing the body background color
as #ffffff which is the default, i.e. it doesn't use the css value?
If this is the case, it could be a source of the problem, since our
link color is also #ffffff --- egads!!! We made this change right
around the time of the drop....
> Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
> link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
> as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
> Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
> different.
> My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
> to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
> Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
> affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
> that manner.
> On Dec 19, 3:56 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> > with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> > those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > > and the results are going down.
> > > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > > the base url.
> > > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > > broadly, we suggest:
> > > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > > canonical version.
> > > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > Hi Josh
> > > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > > apples to have a problem.
> > > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > > Chibcha,
> > > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > > 610.
> > > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > > > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > > > > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > > > > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > > > > > happen or not.
> > > > > > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > > > > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > > > > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > > > > not?
> > > > > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > > > > Sam
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
> > > > > > > > > drop would be so large. In my mind it's not likely that 30 of our
> > > > > > > > > competitors would suddenly be better optimized than us -- I might
> > > > > > > > > expect to see us go from say, #3 to #6 or something.
> > > > > > > > > It could be that an authority site stopped linking to us, however, we
> > > > > > > > > have around three times as many backlinks as a couple of our
> Well the results from that search show the internal links. I'm not
> aware of any internal affiliate linking that we've done, that wouldn't
> make any sense -- maybe they are really old mistakes or something.
> I see what you're saying about the IBL's from affiliates, but that is
> a legitimate program that we are not likely to discontinue, because it
> brings us good revenue...also, those links do not seem to show up when
> a search for link:www.igigi.comis done. I'm pretty sure they never
> did, maybe Google automatically filters out links that have query
> strings attached.
> It is showing our links as being hidden. I am controlling the page
> background using css so there is no "background" attribute in the body
> tag. Is it possible that Google is seeing the body background color
> as #ffffff which is the default, i.e. it doesn't use the css value?
> If this is the case, it could be a source of the problem, since our
> link color is also #ffffff --- egads!!! We made this change right
> around the time of the drop....
> On Dec 19, 2:03 pm, JLH wrote:
> > So you are telling me that you linked to yourself internally with a
> > URL like:
> > Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
> > link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
> > as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
> > Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
> > different.
> > My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
> > to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
> > Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
> > affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
> > that manner.
> > On Dec 19, 3:56 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> > > with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> > > those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > > > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > > > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > > > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > > > and the results are going down.
> > > > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > > > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > > > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > > > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > > > the base url.
> > > > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > > > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > > > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > > > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > > > broadly, we suggest:
> > > > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > > > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > > > canonical version.
> > > > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > > > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > > > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > > > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > > > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > > > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > > > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > > > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > > > apples to have a problem.
> > > > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > > > Chibcha,
> > > > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > > > 610.
> > > > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > > > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > > > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > > > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > > > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > > > > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > > > > > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > > > > > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > > > > > > happen or not.
> > > > > > > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > > > > > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > > > > > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others dropping more along
> > > > > > > > > the lines of 900 spots. Are you seeing this too?
> > > > > > > > > In our case it ended up being duplicate content that did it (there's
> > > > > > > > > plenty of posts here documenting it if you want to read through it)
> > > > > > > > > which was quite strange since 80%+ of our content is unique to our
> > > > > > > > > site. Do you have any content on your site that a. could be being
> > > > > > > > > duplicated by a different site that has more authority or b. is copied
> > > > > > > > > off of another site? Your product descriptions for example - unique or
> > > > > > > > > not?
> > > > > > > > > Nice to see another coldfusion site by the way :)
> > > > > > > > > Sam
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 10:34 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hi JLH,
> > > > > > > > > > If we were losing ground to our competitors, I'm not sure that the
JLH - I didn't mean to disregard your advice. I'm in a bit of a panic
as there are a lot of jobs riding on whether we can get our rankings
back. I'm scrambling around and there are five or six different bits
of advice that have been given, so it's hard to try and digest
everything and sort through what needs to be done.
At any rate I have changed our background color so that we are not
showing hidden text anymore at http://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/? -- I will check out that article by Maile Ohye that you referenced and
see if I can make sense of how to handle the affiliate links.
> I never said anything about removing your affiliate program. I give
> up.
> On Dec 19, 4:16 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > Well the results from that search show the internal links. I'm not
> > aware of any internal affiliate linking that we've done, that wouldn't
> > make any sense -- maybe they are really old mistakes or something.
> > I see what you're saying about the IBL's from affiliates, but that is
> > a legitimate program that we are not likely to discontinue, because it
> > brings us good revenue...also, those links do not seem to show up when
> > a search for link:www.igigi.comisdone. I'm pretty sure they never
> > did, maybe Google automatically filters out links that have query
> > strings attached.
> > It is showing our links as being hidden. I am controlling the page
> > background using css so there is no "background" attribute in the body
> > tag. Is it possible that Google is seeing the body background color
> > as #ffffff which is the default, i.e. it doesn't use the css value?
> > If this is the case, it could be a source of the problem, since our
> > link color is also #ffffff --- egads!!! We made this change right
> > around the time of the drop....
> > On Dec 19, 2:03 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > So you are telling me that you linked to yourself internally with a
> > > URL like:
> > > Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
> > > link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
> > > as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
> > > Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
> > > different.
> > > My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
> > > to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
> > > Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
> > > affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
> > > that manner.
> > > On Dec 19, 3:56 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> > > > with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> > > > those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > > > > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > > > > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > > > > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > > > > and the results are going down.
> > > > > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > > > > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > > > > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > > > > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > > > > the base url.
> > > > > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > > > > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > > > > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > > > > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > > > > broadly, we suggest:
> > > > > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > > > > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > > > > canonical version.
> > > > > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > > > > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > > > > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > > > > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > > > > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > > > > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > > > > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > > > > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > > > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > > > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > > > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > > > > apples to have a problem.
> > > > > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > > > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > > > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > > > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > > > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > > > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > > > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > > > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > > > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > > > > Chibcha,
> > > > > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > > > > 610.
> > > > > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > > > > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > > > > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > > > > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > > > > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > > > > > > sounds like what happened to us), but some people say it's a myth, and
> > > > > > > > > also a "minus 950 penalty" which may have happened to us but I haven't
> > > > > > > > > dug down far enough for all our keywords to determine if that did
> > > > > > > > > happen or not.
> > > > > > > > > I'm really hoping our drop was caused by our site being down for a few
> > > > > > > > > hours a week or so ago, and that it'll come back up when we're re-
> > > > > > > > > cached. In the meantime I'll keep searching for answers.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 3:30 pm, Sam I Am wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh,
> > > > > > > > > > Know what you mean; have been there myself. 30 spots is one of those
> > > > > > > > > > 'is this or isn't this a penalty' amounts though our penalty started
> > > > > > > > > > off with a similar slide on top words with others
Just wanted to close out this thread...our rankings have returned now
to what they were before the drop/penalty. I am pretty sure it was
exactly the background color/hidden text issue, as once that was
corrected, our rankings returned after a couple of days. A rare
success story. So, people whose rankings suddenly drop, definitely
check the tool at http://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/? and
rule out any issues there before continuing to some of the more exotic
problems -- link neighborhood, 301 redirects/canonical issues etc.
> JLH - I didn't mean to disregard your advice. I'm in a bit of a panic
> as there are a lot of jobs riding on whether we can get our rankings
> back. I'm scrambling around and there are five or six different bits
> of advice that have been given, so it's hard to try and digest
> everything and sort through what needs to be done.
> At any rate I have changed our background color so that we are not
> showing hidden text anymore athttp://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/? > -- I will check out that article by Maile Ohye that you referenced and
> see if I can make sense of how to handle the affiliate links.
> On Dec 19, 2:18 pm, JLH wrote:
> > I never said anything about removing your affiliate program. I give
> > up.
> > On Dec 19, 4:16 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > Well the results from that search show the internal links. I'm not
> > > aware of any internal affiliate linking that we've done, that wouldn't
> > > make any sense -- maybe they are really old mistakes or something.
> > > I see what you're saying about the IBL's from affiliates, but that is
> > > a legitimate program that we are not likely to discontinue, because it
> > > brings us good revenue...also, those links do not seem to show up when
> > > a search for link:www.igigi.comisdone. I'm pretty sure they never
> > > did, maybe Google automatically filters out links that have query
> > > strings attached.
> > > It is showing our links as being hidden. I am controlling the page
> > > background using css so there is no "background" attribute in the body
> > > tag. Is it possible that Google is seeing the body background color
> > > as #ffffff which is the default, i.e. it doesn't use the css value?
> > > If this is the case, it could be a source of the problem, since our
> > > link color is also #ffffff --- egads!!! We made this change right
> > > around the time of the drop....
> > > On Dec 19, 2:03 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > So you are telling me that you linked to yourself internally with a
> > > > URL like:
> > > > Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
> > > > link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
> > > > as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
> > > > Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
> > > > different.
> > > > My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
> > > > to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
> > > > Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
> > > > affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
> > > > that manner.
> > > > On Dec 19, 3:56 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> > > > > with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> > > > > those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > > > > > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > > > > > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > > > > > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > > > > > and the results are going down.
> > > > > > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > > > > > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > > > > > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > > > > > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > > > > > the base url.
> > > > > > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > > > > > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > > > > > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > > > > > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > > > > > broadly, we suggest:
> > > > > > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > > > > > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > > > > > canonical version.
> > > > > > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > > > > > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > > > > > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > > > > > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > > > > > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > > > > > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > > > > > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > > > > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > > > > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > > > > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > > > > > apples to have a problem.
> > > > > > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > > > > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > > > > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > > > > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > > > > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > > > > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > > > > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > > > > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > > > > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > > > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > > > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > > > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > > > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > > > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > > > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > > > > > Chibcha,
> > > > > > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > > > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > > > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > > > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > > > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > > > > > 610.
> > > > > > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > > > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > scraping our content, but none that have a higher authority than we
> > > > > > > > > > do. And, our product descriptions are actually hand written one by
> > > > > > > > > > one, by one of our staffers. I mean we are so legit it's kinda
> > > > > > > > > > silly. We're not trying to get away with anything or take advantage
> > > > > > > > > > of the system in any way.
> > > > > > > > > > I looked into some posts regarding the "minus 30 penalty" (which
> > > > > > > > > > sounds like what
> Just wanted to close out this thread...our rankings have returned now
> to what they were before the drop/penalty. I am pretty sure it was
> exactly the background color/hidden text issue, as once that was
> corrected, our rankings returned after a couple of days. A rare
> success story. So, people whose rankings suddenly drop, definitely
> check the tool athttp://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/?and > rule out any issues there before continuing to some of the more exotic
> problems -- link neighborhood, 301 redirects/canonical issues etc.
> On Dec 19, 2:32 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > JLH - I didn't mean to disregard your advice. I'm in a bit of a panic
> > as there are a lot of jobs riding on whether we can get our rankings
> > back. I'm scrambling around and there are five or six different bits
> > of advice that have been given, so it's hard to try and digest
> > everything and sort through what needs to be done.
> > At any rate I have changed our background color so that we are not
> > showing hidden text anymore athttp://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/? > > -- I will check out that article by Maile Ohye that you referenced and
> > see if I can make sense of how to handle the affiliate links.
> > On Dec 19, 2:18 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > I never said anything about removing your affiliate program. I give
> > > up.
> > > On Dec 19, 4:16 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Well the results from that search show the internal links. I'm not
> > > > aware of any internal affiliate linking that we've done, that wouldn't
> > > > make any sense -- maybe they are really old mistakes or something.
> > > > I see what you're saying about the IBL's from affiliates, but that is
> > > > a legitimate program that we are not likely to discontinue, because it
> > > > brings us good revenue...also, those links do not seem to show up when
> > > > a search for link:www.igigi.comisdone. I'm pretty sure they never
> > > > did, maybe Google automatically filters out links that have query
> > > > strings attached.
> > > > It is showing our links as being hidden. I am controlling the page
> > > > background using css so there is no "background" attribute in the body
> > > > tag. Is it possible that Google is seeing the body background color
> > > > as #ffffff which is the default, i.e. it doesn't use the css value?
> > > > If this is the case, it could be a source of the problem, since our
> > > > link color is also #ffffff --- egads!!! We made this change right
> > > > around the time of the drop....
> > > > On Dec 19, 2:03 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > So you are telling me that you linked to yourself internally with a
> > > > > URL like:
> > > > > Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
> > > > > link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
> > > > > as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
> > > > > Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
> > > > > different.
> > > > > My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
> > > > > to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
> > > > > Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
> > > > > affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
> > > > > that manner.
> > > > > On Dec 19, 3:56 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> > > > > > with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> > > > > > those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > > > > > > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > > > > > > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > > > > > > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > > > > > > and the results are going down.
> > > > > > > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > > > > > > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > > > > > > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > > > > > > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > > > > > > the base url.
> > > > > > > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > > > > > > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > > > > > > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > > > > > > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > > > > > > broadly, we suggest:
> > > > > > > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > > > > > > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > > > > > > canonical version.
> > > > > > > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > > > > > > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > > > > > > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > > > > > > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > > > > > > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > > > > > > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > > > > > > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > > > > > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > > > > > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > > > > > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > > > > > > apples to have a problem.
> > > > > > > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > > > > > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > > > > > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > > > > > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > > > > > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > > > > > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > > > > > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > > > > > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > > > > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > > > > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > > > > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > > > > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > > > > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > > > > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > > > > > > Chibcha,
> > > > > > > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > > > > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > > > > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > > > > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > > > > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > > > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > > > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > > > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > > > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > > > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > > > > > > 610.
> > > > > > > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > Hey Sam,
> > > > > > > > > > > ColdFusion FTW!
> > > > > > > > > > > I did a search on copyscape and did see a few sites that looked to be
> > > > > > > > > > > scraping our
Thanks for following up, Josh. It's good to see that things are back
on track.
I just wanted to follow up myself with one item that came up which I
wanted to mention:
SSL certificate warnings are generally not problematic. There are many
reasons why such warnings can come up and I think it is important that
users are warned when users are warned about issues with security
certificates, but since they are warnings, search engines should
generally not worry too much about them.
That said, you can avoid the warning by 301 redirecting to your
preferred domain and making sure that the non-HTTPS version of your
site does not use images through HTTPS.
Well, yes and no. All are pretty equally important. Maybe the order
is:
1) remove any semblance of spam
2) fix dupplicate content by redirections of all urls concering the
same content to one single url which automatically includes taking
care of any canonical domain problem
> Just wanted to close out this thread...our rankings have returned now
> to what they were before the drop/penalty. I am pretty sure it was
> exactly the background color/hidden text issue, as once that was
> corrected, our rankings returned after a couple of days. A rare
> success story. So, people whose rankings suddenly drop, definitely
> check the tool athttp://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/?and > rule out any issues there before continuing to some of the more exotic
> problems -- link neighborhood, 301 redirects/canonical issues etc.
> On Dec 19, 2:32 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > JLH - I didn't mean to disregard your advice. I'm in a bit of a panic
> > as there are a lot of jobs riding on whether we can get our rankings
> > back. I'm scrambling around and there are five or six different bits
> > of advice that have been given, so it's hard to try and digest
> > everything and sort through what needs to be done.
> > At any rate I have changed our background color so that we are not
> > showing hidden text anymore athttp://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/? > > -- I will check out that article by Maile Ohye that you referenced and
> > see if I can make sense of how to handle the affiliate links.
> > On Dec 19, 2:18 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > I never said anything about removing your affiliate program. I give
> > > up.
> > > On Dec 19, 4:16 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > Well the results from that search show the internal links. I'm not
> > > > aware of any internal affiliate linking that we've done, that wouldn't
> > > > make any sense -- maybe they are really old mistakes or something.
> > > > I see what you're saying about the IBL's from affiliates, but that is
> > > > a legitimate program that we are not likely to discontinue, because it
> > > > brings us good revenue...also, those links do not seem to show up when
> > > > a search for link:www.igigi.comisdone. I'm pretty sure they never
> > > > did, maybe Google automatically filters out links that have query
> > > > strings attached.
> > > > It is showing our links as being hidden. I am controlling the page
> > > > background using css so there is no "background" attribute in the body
> > > > tag. Is it possible that Google is seeing the body background color
> > > > as #ffffff which is the default, i.e. it doesn't use the css value?
> > > > If this is the case, it could be a source of the problem, since our
> > > > link color is also #ffffff --- egads!!! We made this change right
> > > > around the time of the drop....
> > > > On Dec 19, 2:03 pm, JLH wrote:
> > > > > So you are telling me that you linked to yourself internally with a
> > > > > URL like:
> > > > > Or did someone else, on a another site using the affiliate ID 9Xj6vFP
> > > > > link to that page, which would be considered an external link, or IBL
> > > > > as you called it, BUT with a &aff=9Xj6VfP hanging off of it.
> > > > > Are not the same page, even though they look similar they are
> > > > > different.
> > > > > My point is that you probably got credit for your affiliates linking
> > > > > to you, and are probably not getting credit for them any more, as
> > > > > Google may have filtered them out as paid links, assuming you pay your
> > > > > affiliates I cannot think of another reason they would link to you in
> > > > > that manner.
> > > > > On Dec 19, 3:56 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > JLH, those are internal links though...I don't get what that has to do
> > > > > > with external affiliates' links which would be IBL's? Are you saying
> > > > > > those two things are connected? I'm not understanding the connection.
> > > > > > > It is possible that Google has simple devalued those incoming links
> > > > > > > that used to count for you and now made them not count based on the
> > > > > > > aff= parameter. I've been monitoring this query the last couple days
> > > > > > > and the results are going down.
> > > > > > > Meaning they are removing those extra URLS of yours which are
> > > > > > > duplicates because they have the aff= on the end of them.
> > > > > > > Maile Ohye has suggested that you redirect those types of links, must
> > > > > > > be handled within your store code to note the ID then 301 redirect to
> > > > > > > the base url.
> > > > > > > "How can you design your site to reduce duplicate content?
> > > > > > > Because of the way Google handles duplicate content, webmasters need
> > > > > > > not be overly concerned with the loss of link popularity or loss of
> > > > > > > PageRank due to duplication. However, to reduce duplicate content more
> > > > > > > broadly, we suggest:
> > > > > > > 1. When tracking visitor information, use 301 redirects to redirect
> > > > > > > URLs with parameters such as affiliateID, trackingID, etc. to the
> > > > > > > canonical version.
> > > > > > > 2. Use a cookie to set the affiliateID and trackingID values.
> > > > > > > If you follow this guideline, your webserver logs could appear as:
> > > > > > > Please be aware that if your site uses cookies, your content (such as
> > > > > > > product pages) should remain accessible with cookies disabled."
> > > > > > > So what may appear as a penalty to you, lowered rankings, could just
> > > > > > > be the site ranking where it should be based on Google removing the
> > > > > > > link juice from the affiliate links.
> > > > > > > On Dec 19, 2:54 pm, Chibcha wrote:
> > > > > > > > Hi Josh
> > > > > > > > As I said, just opinion. Even so, your quick scan may not be
> > > > > > > > sufficient. I only had the first 700 links listed and took half an
> > > > > > > > hour on a tiny proportion of those. Just scanning Yahoo's link list is
> > > > > > > > not sufficient and in any event, you might not need that many bad
> > > > > > > > apples to have a problem.
> > > > > > > > Up to you, could just correct all the technical problems and wait but
> > > > > > > > that may be wasted time. If you really go through the link situation
> > > > > > > > in detail, a couple of days work probably. You might choose to email a
> > > > > > > > few webmasters and ask if they would prefer to remove, or no follow
> > > > > > > > your link. Just as importantly, if link value has been lost, that may
> > > > > > > > need to be replaced if you are to get back to the top.
> > > > > > > > As you said, a crapshoot but doing everything you can to control the
> > > > > > > > dice is better than just letting them roll.
> > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 8:37 pm, JoshN wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Hey Roy,
> > > > > > > > > Yeah maybe it's a coincedence that we dropped exactly 30 spots...but
> > > > > > > > > on some other boards I saw that Google had changed the behavior so
> > > > > > > > > that now, you could get hit with a -30 and still have your domain
> > > > > > > > > search "www.domain.com" come up number 1. So there's some conflicting
> > > > > > > > > information out there, and like all things in regards to ranking
> > > > > > > > > apparently, it's pretty much a crapshoot.
> > > > > > > > > Chibcha,
> > > > > > > > > I looked through pretty much every IBL for our domain using a search
> > > > > > > > > on link:www.igigi.com, and the profile just doesn't seem that bad to
> > > > > > > > > me. There are a couple of bad actors in there but the vast majority
> > > > > > > > > are just plain old blogs or resource type sites that aren't doing
> > > > > > > > > anything too terrible.
> > > > > > > > > On Dec 19, 12:28 pm, roysnj wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > Hey Josh
> > > > > > > > > > The -30 penalty in my opinion is not a myth. I had a client who for
> > > > > > > > > > keyword "www.client-site.com" came in 31th when it used to come in 1.
> > > > > > > > > > I found the problem, fixed it and filed a reconsideration request.
> > > > > > > > > > Within 10 days it was back at number 1.
> > > > > > > > > > But your site as I did the search above (in other entry) was 1 out of
> > > > > > > > > > 610.
> > > > > > > > > > Roysnj
> > > > > > > > > > On Dec 18, 7:17 pm, JoshN wrote:
