Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue

Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by keltex on Thursday May 17, 2012 @01:37PM (#3988101)

I think you've been hit by the "penguin" update, which is probably the biggest SEO embarassment from Google in a long time.

Unlike other updates which attempted to remove "web spam" from the search results by tweaking some of the parameters, this update (according to many in the SEO community) is an active attempt to catch people doing black hat or over SEO optimization. Unfortunately many legit sites have gotten caught in its net.

You can read about it in the WSJ among other places:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230350550457740...

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by Matt_Cutts on Thursday May 17, 2012 @02:11PM (#3988280)

No, safeshepherd.com has not been hit with the Penguin algorithm, nor with any kind of manual spam action.

If you look at the first website mentioned in that WSJ article, they even admit that they paid for hundreds of backlinks to their site, which is a violation of our quality guidelines.

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by Kiro on Thursday May 17, 2012 @02:01PM (#3988221)

IMO any SEO besides writing good content should be penalized and that what's Penguin does so personally I think it's great.

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by sixQuarks on Thursday May 17, 2012 @01:40PM (#3988120)

I've been following the Penguin update and this doesn't sound like the cause. The OP said they did not do any crappy link building.

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by jeebus on Thursday May 17, 2012 @01:46PM (#3988153)

I've even gone in to Alexa to start verifying all of our back-links. All of our links are from blogs / news / twitter , et al. That said, it doesn't mean Penguin didn't hurt us. Algorithms have corner cases.

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by keltex on Thursday May 17, 2012 @01:58PM (#3988209)

Use Open Site Explorer to start on your bad link search:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=safeshepherd.co...

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by sixQuarks on Thursday May 17, 2012 @04:26PM (#3988905)

OpenSE and Majestic SEO databases are not really going to find the spammy links that penguin is targeting:

http://www.branded3.com/seo/penguin-update-renders-seomoz-ma...

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Re:Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue by zackzackzack on Thursday May 17, 2012 @01:51PM (#3988180)

It's come out that for a few thousand, you can buy black hat's who will do crappy link building for your competitors. So, possible scenario: Safe Shepard stepped on somebody's toes and they retaliated by hiring (or creating) a ton of crappy back links to the website. Unlikely, but possible.

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