On July 1st this site (www.boldrugs.com) was hit with some sort of
Google Penalty. I am unsure what type of penalty it is called, but it
appears to be either a name suppression or rank suppression penalty.
If you search for sitename.com it shows up at #1, but if you search
for sitename or site name it doesn't show up until #20-30 whereas it
used to show up #1. More importantly, the site used to show up in the
top 10 for some very competitive keywords and those have all dropped
way off to around #50-75. The site is still indexed, showing
site:sitename.com with over 3,620 pages. Link:sitename.com shows 253
links. No warning or notices are showing up in Google Webmaster Tools.
I believe this penalty has occurred because of sponsoring wordpress
themes. I wasn't aware that sponsoring themes was considered bad by
Google since it appears to fall under the paid linking category. After
some research it appears that if we get these links removed and submit
a reinclusion request Google will reconsider the site. I have tried to
contact the theme creators to have them remove the links. Some have
and some haven't. What is making this particularly difficult to fix is
that the theme owners submitted these themes to dozens of other theme
download sites, thus making it nearly impossible to track down all
download locations. I have also contacted some of the users that are
using the themes on their sites and they either fix it or don't reply.
Some of these themes are being used on questionable sites such as porn
or gambling sites, thus making the links appear to be coming from bad
neighborhoods. Of course contacting these types of sites and asking
them to remove the links has been futile. After several days of work
of contacting theme owners, download sites and users that are using
the themes I have barely made a dent in getting these links removed.
I am wondering what I should do? I have a few ideas but not sure which
one to take.
1. Wait and see what happens. This penalty has only been in effect for
16 days now.
2. Get as many links removed as possible. I doubt I will be able to
get all of the links removed. There are literally thousands of them.
Some of the site's don't have contact info and their whois info is
private. Even if I were able to remove all of the offending links and
Google re-included the site, would I still be able to get the rankings
that I had or would the site be "tainted" by these old links?
3. Drop the domain and go onto another one. This is the last step I
would like to take since this appears to be the most drastic. The
current domain is brandable and not sure what you do with it if you do
drop it.
4. Any other ideas?
Additional background on site:
Online for about 10 months.
Brand new domain name.
On dedicated server with dedicated IP.
There are around 3,200 products but they might show up in multiple
categories.
No pagerank changes. Not sure if this would trip up a duplicate
penalty or not, but this has been in use since day one.
Links from wordpress themes, directory listings, blogs, forums, press
releases, articles, etc. Varied link text going to varied landing
urls.
Not sure if there are any issues on the site that might be causing
issues. The wordpress themes is the best guess that I have that is
causing this penalty.
The site's traffic is down by 90% and has evaporated all sales on the
site. I am looking for any feedback and recommendations.
> On July 1st this site (www.boldrugs.com) was hit with some sort of
> Google Penalty. I am unsure what type of penalty it is called, but it
> appears to be either a name suppression or rank suppression penalty.
> If you search for sitename.com it shows up at #1, but if you search
> for sitename or site name it doesn't show up until #20-30 whereas it
> used to show up #1. More importantly, the site used to show up in the
> top 10 for some very competitive keywords and those have all dropped
> way off to around #50-75. The site is still indexed, showing
> site:sitename.com with over 3,620 pages. Link:sitename.com shows 253
> links. No warning or notices are showing up in Google Webmaster Tools.
> I believe this penalty has occurred because of sponsoring wordpress
> themes. I wasn't aware that sponsoring themes was considered bad by
> Google since it appears to fall under the paid linking category. After
> some research it appears that if we get these links removed and submit
> a reinclusion request Google will reconsider the site. I have tried to
> contact the theme creators to have them remove the links. Some have
> and some haven't. What is making this particularly difficult to fix is
> that the theme owners submitted these themes to dozens of other theme
> download sites, thus making it nearly impossible to track down all
> download locations. I have also contacted some of the users that are
> using the themes on their sites and they either fix it or don't reply.
> Some of these themes are being used on questionable sites such as porn
> or gambling sites, thus making the links appear to be coming from bad
> neighborhoods. Of course contacting these types of sites and asking
> them to remove the links has been futile. After several days of work
> of contacting theme owners, download sites and users that are using
> the themes I have barely made a dent in getting these links removed.
> I am wondering what I should do? I have a few ideas but not sure which
> one to take.
> 1. Wait and see what happens. This penalty has only been in effect for
> 16 days now.
> 2. Get as many links removed as possible. I doubt I will be able to
> get all of the links removed. There are literally thousands of them.
> Some of the site's don't have contact info and their whois info is
> private. Even if I were able to remove all of the offending links and
> Google re-included the site, would I still be able to get the rankings
> that I had or would the site be "tainted" by these old links?
> 3. Drop the domain and go onto another one. This is the last step I
> would like to take since this appears to be the most drastic. The
> current domain is brandable and not sure what you do with it if you do
> drop it.
> 4. Any other ideas?
> Additional background on site:
> Online for about 10 months.
> Brand new domain name.
> On dedicated server with dedicated IP.
> There are around 3,200 products but they might show up in multiple
> categories.
> No pagerank changes. Not sure if this would trip up a duplicate
> penalty or not, but this has been in use since day one.
> Links from wordpress themes, directory listings, blogs, forums, press
> releases, articles, etc. Varied link text going to varied landing
> urls.
> Not sure if there are any issues on the site that might be causing
> issues. The wordpress themes is the best guess that I have that is
> causing this penalty.
> The site's traffic is down by 90% and has evaporated all sales on the
> site. I am looking for any feedback and recommendations.
I would suggest going with option #2. I realize that it might be
harder to get them removed than to get them included, but it would
definitely be a good idea to make sure that they are removed before
submitting a reconsideration request through your Webmaster Tools
account. Once any open issues are resolved, your site will generally
rank as it should, there are generally no issues that "taint" a site/
domain forever.
Thanks for you comments John. The problem is we are not able to get
all of those links removed. As I mentioned in my original post:
2. Get as many links removed as possible. I doubt I will be able to
get all of the links removed. There are literally thousands of them.
Some of the site's don't have contact info and their whois info is
private. Even if I were able to remove all of the offending links and
Google re-included the site, would I still be able to get the rankings
that I had or would the site be "tainted" by these old links?
We have spent several days trying to contact site owners to get them
to remove their links. Most sites don't have contact information.
When trying to get this from the domain's whois data it is almost
always not listed since it was a private registration. In other
words, we are out of luck. I would like to contact Google for a
reinclusion request, but I am unsure of how they would react since it
appears that they want you to get rid of all of the offending links
before making such a request. But what can you do if you have no
control over these links?
Gosh, this has turned into a nightmare. If you take a look at our
site you can tell we are not a shoddy outfit. The site really stands
out in comparison to some of our competitors and it would be a
disaster to change the domain name. That is our last resort though.
Has anyone else been in a similar situation with outside links that
they have no control over?
Also, as a side note, what is to stop a dishonest person from doing
this to a competitor? I would never do this, but someone could just
sponsor a bunch of wordpress themes, use them on porn, gambling and
drug sites and then report the site to Google.
> I would suggest going with option #2. I realize that it might be
> harder to get them removed than to get them included, but it would
> definitely be a good idea to make sure that they are removed before
> submitting a reconsideration request through your Webmaster Tools
> account. Once any open issues are resolved, your site will generally
> rank as it should, there are generally no issues that "taint" a site/
> domain forever.
> Thanks for you comments John. The problem is we are not able to get
> all of those links removed. As I mentioned in my original post:
> 2. Get as many links removed as possible. I doubt I will be able to
> get all of the links removed. There are literally thousands of them.
> Some of the site's don't have contact info and their whois info is
> private. Even if I were able to remove all of the offending links and
> Google re-included the site, would I still be able to get the rankings
> that I had or would the site be "tainted" by these old links?
> We have spent several days trying to contact site owners to get them
> to remove their links. Most sites don't have contact information.
> When trying to get this from the domain's whois data it is almost
> always not listed since it was a private registration. In other
> words, we are out of luck. I would like to contact Google for a
> reinclusion request, but I am unsure of how they would react since it
> appears that they want you to get rid of all of the offending links
> before making such a request. But what can you do if you have no
> control over these links?
> Gosh, this has turned into a nightmare. If you take a look at our
> site you can tell we are not a shoddy outfit. The site really stands
> out in comparison to some of our competitors and it would be a
> disaster to change the domain name. That is our last resort though.
> Has anyone else been in a similar situation with outside links that
> they have no control over?
> Also, as a side note, what is to stop a dishonest person from doing
> this to a competitor? I would never do this, but someone could just
> sponsor a bunch of wordpress themes, use them on porn, gambling and
> drug sites and then report the site to Google.
> On Jul 16, 6:33 pm, JohnMu wrote:
> > Hi sirandrew
> > I would suggest going with option #2. I realize that it might be
> > harder to get them removed than to get them included, but it would
> > definitely be a good idea to make sure that they are removed before
> > submitting a reconsideration request through your Webmaster Tools
> > account. Once any open issues are resolved, your site will generally
> > rank as it should, there are generally no issues that "taint" a site/
> > domain forever.
