mariehaynes

This has been bugging me for days...trying to figure out how you knew to go down, right, left, etc. I finally figured it out.

Start at the end. That's a 9. The only way that we could have landed on that 9 is either moving down or right. So, look at each number on that path and see which one would have got us there. There is an 8 that is 8 squares above 9, so that's the second last number. Now, how did we land on the 8? There is a 1 that is one square to the left, so the next number is 1. And so on.

How did you figure out the directions? (i.e. down, right, left...)

This looks like a new site. Did you just recently develop this domain? Any chance it was used for spam in the past? If that's the case, then just file for reconsideration and let Google know that you are the new owner and they'll lift the manual action.

Otherwise, file for reconsideration and explain your plans for developing the domain and you should be fine.

I do admit that it's a bit strange for a brand new site with one post to be given a pure spam penalty...unless, again, the domain was previously used for spam.

I'm on Mavericks and I see it as my top CPU hog occasionally too.

I feel like a few people are missing the point as to why MetaFilter dropped in their rankings. It was likely not a manual penalty but rather a change in regards to the Panda algorithm. According to this article (https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0) the drop happened in November of 2012. It doesn't say which date, but November 5 and November 21 were both days that Google refreshed the Panda algorithm.

Panda was created to filter down poor content and filter up good content. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but generally if a site is being filtered down it's because there are too many pages of the site in the index that are apparently not helpful to users.

I do think that the design has a lot to do with MetaFilter's demise. I have landed on this site, and, not knowing what I know now after reading articles about the quality information that is on MetaFilter, I have immediately clicked away because it looked like a spammy page. If enough users do this then this shows Google that users don't want to engage with this site.

I haven't had a deep look into the technical structure of the site but there's a good possibility that with a redesign and a review of their architecture, the site could see a return to normal levels with the next Panda refresh.

I think that a lot of people are missing the point that sites that are being penalized or demoted in the Google search results because of unnatural linking received that penalty because they were cheating.

When webmasters are writing to ask for a link to be removed it's because they believe that that link could possibly be one that was made with the intention of increasing their PageRank and manipulating Google. BUT...sometimes it's hard to tell whether a link was naturally placed or whether it was one that a former SEO made on their behalf. As such, it's certainly possible that an email requesting link removal could be sent out in error. If that's the case, then ignoring the request is fine...or even better, writing back to inform them that the link was not purchased, solicited or self made would be really helpful.

Google doesn't tell you exactly what links to remove when you have an unnatural links penalty. They'll often give you 2-3 examples but then it's up to you to determine which links were made with the intentions of manipulating Google and then asking for removal.

If this site used to rank well for things like "photo pillows", it's not because it was the best site to show users, but rather, it was because the site was being propped up by self made backlinks. Here are some of the links that are all anchored with the word "photo pillows":

http://www.bobmarketing.com/links/page_Business_Marketing_17...

http://stardir.info/stardir/subcategory.asp?IDsubcate=494&of...

http://www.cyberpathway.com/cgi-bin/recip/internet/recip.cgi

The majority of the backlink profile is made up of self made low quality directory links.

It's possible that the Penguin algorithm has realized this and as a result is not trusting links to the site. But, it's also possible that Google has just gotten better at not counting this type of link when it comes to ranking. It's also possible that the site is under a manual penalty (which would be evident by looking at the Webmaster Tools manual spam action tool.)

When I look at the site's keyword positions on semrush.com, it appears that the rankings started a gradual decline as of May 2013. There was a Penguin refresh on May 23, so this is certainly a possibility. If the site is affected by Penguin, then in order to make the algorithm trust the site again, she's going to have to disavow each of the links that are self made. If there are good, truly natural links in the profile then she stands a chance of ranking well again. But, the likelihood is that the site won't get back to the previous rankings by just clearing up the backlinks because those rankings were not deserved in the first place.

It's not Google's fault that this site is not ranking well now. But, one could argue that it was Google's heavy reliance on links and on a system that could be scammed that allowed this site to reign for the time that it did.