Yuuuuuuup lol, under penalty for almost a decade now.
In my case I had a forum (remember those!) in support of my software product.
Bots would occasionally create accounts and post links to knockoff handbags and watches. I'd tolerate (and swiftly kill!) them because our users really loved having a place to meet. (This was back in 2011, ironically, reCAPCTAHA landed in 2012)
Unbeknownst to me those links were part of a larger spam network where thousands of low-quality links pointed back to my site, presumably to those fake accounts(?).
When the penalty hit the process of trying to figure out what the heck went wrong and trying to do something about it -- identical.
In short, I've been penalized out of existence because of an obvious and in my humble opinion, easy to identify spam campaign. Sadly Google placed the cleanup burden on me, and try as I did nothing actually helped. The article's mention "hidden" penalties feels...accurate.
I often tell folks when you perform a Google search you're given worse results than you deserve. My site and goodness knows how many others have been placed so far below the fold that if we're not outright killed, we never reach the users and potential we should.
No biggie if the search market were more diverse, sadly, that is simply not the world we live in.
I can see how that sucked for you, but personally, I don't want google sending me to forums infested with spam bots. I don't agree with google's hidden penalties, I think transparency is crucial, but the burden of cleaning up your spam filed website was yours and I'd expect every search engine to bury you until you managed to get it under control.
Hey. I don't know much about SEO and have a question. Does sub-domain (forum.example.com) vs sub-path (example.com/forum) make a difference? Now days would it be better to isolate anything with user generated content onto a completely separate domain (example.net)?
It doesn't look like there is any penalty against The Online Slang Dictionary. Google even one-boxes their site as the preferred answer for some searches!
For some queries, Online Slang Dictionary even ranks above sites like Stack Exchange or Urban Dictionary. (Usually Urban Dictionary isn't so reputable, but for this sort of query, it's probably pretty relevant.)
What's the evidence here - some anonymous Google employee claimed the site was penalized back in 2013? That is not "hard confirmation" at all. Most likely, the site is not penalized at all. It just doesn't show up as often as Urban Dictionary and sites like english.stackexchange.com, and the operator is angry about that, but it honestly just isn't quite as good as those sites.
When you put "slang dictionary" in the query it's going to significantly boost The Online Slang Dictionary's results, because you've included part of the site's name in the query.
If you just search squeege, Urban Dictionary is #2 and The Online Slang Dictionary is not in the top 10. If you just search "as much use as a chocolate teapot", Urban Dictionary is #5 and Online Slang Dictionary is #9.
Honestly, the whole thing reads as a conspiracy fed by an anonymous (outdated?) source, and the Wikileaks-esque drip of leaks "culminating with full headers!" doubles down on feeling more like a cry for attention/help than an actual argument against (or even proof of) any kind of manual penalty actually being applied.
I used to manage a fairly popular web site. About 30,000 unique visitors a day. Harmless content about a particular profession. Informative. Updated almost daily. Ranked #1 for dozens of terms for years and years.
Then one day Google decided it didn’t like the site and it disappeared from the results. You could do a site: search and the pages would come up, so they were indexed. But they just didn’t rank anymore. Webmaster Tools was zero help. Showed everything was normal. No errors. No oddities.
The obvious notion is that it got hacked or there was content spam or something like that, but there wasn’t. No commenting system to game. Pages were all static HTML with no ads. Not even JavaScript to screw with.
The regulars kept coming, but with no Google referrals, traffic dwindled. I eventually took it offline since it wasn’t fun anymore.
In my eyes, headers such as "Matt Cutts lies" loses a lot of credibility for Walter (the author of the complaint).
IMHO, Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had no incentive to lie to anyone, as he could simply ignore any questions from the website owners who wanted his response.
The fact that Matt actually bothered responding suggests that he was trying to help. He may have failed to help because he just didn't care enough, or ran out of time, or didn't understand what's going on, etc. But referring to his attempt as "lies" tells me a lot about Walter. In particular, it tells me that Walter isn't the type of person I'd like to help. Why bother, if things don't go to his satisfaction, he might just call me a "liar" later.
Mmm sure but I think your comment is a little "seeing the forest for the trees" regardless of whether Walter is lashing out the fact that this was one of the few avenues he had to get help is telling about Google. They don't care about their users whether that is site owners, ad buyers or searchers.
Walter should have never had to have had the interaction in the first place where Matt has to make the decision to help him because there should have been support avenues and no secret penalties in the first place. That's like blaming the abused.
Accusations like that can be a bad look, but I can understand the frustration of your website being snuffed out by the whims of Google, and there's no way to figure out what happened and nobody who can tell you what really went wrong or how to fix it.
I even understand that there's a ton of actual spammers out there, and it's not scalable to tell each of them "yes, you're really a spammer, you deserve de-ranking, go away". Still, I'd like to see someone at least try to find a better way to fix both problems.
> Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had no incentive to lie to anyone
Umm. Yes, he had a paycheck and bonus package as incentive. Performance reviews too.
But as to Walter's attacking on Cutts, that's just someone not willing to put in the work to being a responsible adult. When it comes to Google search, you can't accidentally hurt yourself/your-site unless you're a bull in a China shop. Also, Google's search is really complicated and I can't generalize for his specific situation but it's extremely likely that it was OP's fault for using 'black hat' techniques (either directly or indirectly).
- No details; promise to "leak" details later (but that never happened, and this page seems from ~2013?)
- Emotional language doesn't inspire confidence in reasonable and rational thinking about this, and it doesn't consider the possibility that Cutts was merely mistaken in his email, or mixed things up, or that there is something else not obvious that could explain the email.
- Calls the Google ranking algorithm a "penalty"; that this penalizes pages with quotations and the like is unfortunate, but lifting text from random websites is a a technique spammers use frequently. This is a rather unnuanced way to describe it.
- Even the mysterious "whistleblower" email doesn't strike me as very convincing.
- Insinuation that the site is penalized just because Cutts has ties to UrbanDictionary; which strikes me as unlikely.
Are parts of it true? Probably. The "automated penalty" probably is, but I wouldn't phrase it like that myself. The rest? Meh.
> No details; promise to "leak" details later (but that never happened, and this page seems from ~2013?)
Last update was October 2020.
That he intends to release the whistle-blower mails with full headers suggest that he has confidence that they were sent from Google servers. We'll see, I guess.
Do agree that the language leans a bit too much in the emotional/conspiracy direction. Really doesn't help his case.
This is one of the reasons among many that search needs more competition. Having one dominant search engine means that abuses towards site owners can't simply be remedied by being listed somewhere else. Yes there are other search engines right now but they either serve Google's results or Bing's and that means they're actually furthering this problem.
Full disclosure, I recently founded a search engine and we are serving our own indexes to fight problems exactly like this.
> I am going to start releasing details of my email conversation with the Google employee, culminating in my release of an MBOX file including full headers.
That seems like a bad thing to do against the whistleblower, since according to the redacted excerpts the whistleblower was using their Google mail address.
Well that's extremely interesting to have hard confirmation that they do this. I wonder what other sites have secret artificial boosts and penalties locked away in Google's systems somewhere, and for what reasons.
If we have to regulate the financial system, I don't see how we can't regulate information systems, at least to the point wherein Search Engines are required to provide reasoning, demonstrate their policy is applied consistently. 'Search' is like 'Banking' or 'Electricity' it's just a core good. That, or do something to ensure competition.
Regardless of the particular complaint's merits, yeah I definitely agree -- though it will have some chilling effects on new companies entering the space, the sheer amount of power these information systems have amassed with precious little regulation is a bit disappointing.
AML and KYC-like regulations for the information monopolies. I think we're heading in that direction, seeing the backlash to Facebook et al.
I don't think this is necessary a product of malfeasance or anything, but rather lack of complete knowledge on certain areas.
Put it another way: Sucks for this guy that google seems not to know about dictionaries and the importance of citations; and that whoever placed the manual penalty (assuming there's one) isn't completely well versed on intellectual property law.
Suppose that, again, the solution would be on more competition; it would encourage google to improve on nuances like those.
There needs to be a whistleblower from a Googler about what’s going on.
I strongly suspect that a few Googlers have too much time on their hands. This speaks volumes to Google’s eventual downfall that they can’t keep their employees busy doing more important work.
My second theory it’s tied to Google’s outsourced workforce in India that handles their advertising accounts and the advertising platform. I think those workers are penalizing the sites that don’t respond or buy more advertising. This workforce has too much access to try to manipulate advertising spend.
Also, everyone should know by now that Google counts on brands to buy advertising for their trademarks to keep them as the first result. Otherwise these company names show up as 2-10.
Google knows which sites should be #1 for any given term. These are manually curated.
This needs to make it to the front, especially as I have heard rumours the last several years that these programs have grown in usage and that there is virtually nothing to be done about it.
Decades from now, our children will look back on this time and wonder how we could be so stupid to think that all this software, costing billions to build, was being given to us for free by kind-hearted technology companies in exchange for a few simple ads. This is, and always has been a devil's bargain.
I was there at the beginning and I wish more than anything we could have saved the web from becoming this mutated monstrosity that is hurting our civilization so badly.
I have a penalty on https://garyshood.com/rsclient/ which used to be the number one term for "autoclicker" several years running.
I think it was due to comment spam since I didn't moderate the comments and since then the invisible penalty has never gone away. I've given up on trying. people just have to search "garys autoclicker" if they want to find it now, or have it bookmarked. "autoclicker" is pushed all the way back to page 4 for my site now. on bing I am page 2 behind basically autoclicker dot org and every other variation of the TLD
Good. Blatant cheating software. You're not even trying to hide it since you specifically talk about using it in RuneScape. I hope "this program has never been detected or banned by any site or game" is put there as a honeypot to get cheaters banned because it's clearly not true.
[+] [-] rackforms|5 years ago|reply
In my case I had a forum (remember those!) in support of my software product.
Bots would occasionally create accounts and post links to knockoff handbags and watches. I'd tolerate (and swiftly kill!) them because our users really loved having a place to meet. (This was back in 2011, ironically, reCAPCTAHA landed in 2012)
Unbeknownst to me those links were part of a larger spam network where thousands of low-quality links pointed back to my site, presumably to those fake accounts(?).
When the penalty hit the process of trying to figure out what the heck went wrong and trying to do something about it -- identical.
In short, I've been penalized out of existence because of an obvious and in my humble opinion, easy to identify spam campaign. Sadly Google placed the cleanup burden on me, and try as I did nothing actually helped. The article's mention "hidden" penalties feels...accurate.
I often tell folks when you perform a Google search you're given worse results than you deserve. My site and goodness knows how many others have been placed so far below the fold that if we're not outright killed, we never reach the users and potential we should.
No biggie if the search market were more diverse, sadly, that is simply not the world we live in.
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|5 years ago|reply
This may be the most relevant synopsis of Google search, that has ever been crafted.
[+] [-] autoexec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donmcronald|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] im3w1l|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lacker|5 years ago|reply
For example:
https://www.google.com/search?q=slang+dictionary+%22as+much+...
https://www.google.com/search?q=slang+dictionary+%22squeege%...
For some queries, Online Slang Dictionary even ranks above sites like Stack Exchange or Urban Dictionary. (Usually Urban Dictionary isn't so reputable, but for this sort of query, it's probably pretty relevant.)
What's the evidence here - some anonymous Google employee claimed the site was penalized back in 2013? That is not "hard confirmation" at all. Most likely, the site is not penalized at all. It just doesn't show up as often as Urban Dictionary and sites like english.stackexchange.com, and the operator is angry about that, but it honestly just isn't quite as good as those sites.
[+] [-] Thorrez|5 years ago|reply
If you just search squeege, Urban Dictionary is #2 and The Online Slang Dictionary is not in the top 10. If you just search "as much use as a chocolate teapot", Urban Dictionary is #5 and Online Slang Dictionary is #9.
[+] [-] drusepth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
“Frequently asked questions
I just did a Google search and your site appeared in the first few results. Does that mean that the penalty has been removed?”
[+] [-] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
Then one day Google decided it didn’t like the site and it disappeared from the results. You could do a site: search and the pages would come up, so they were indexed. But they just didn’t rank anymore. Webmaster Tools was zero help. Showed everything was normal. No errors. No oddities.
The obvious notion is that it got hacked or there was content spam or something like that, but there wasn’t. No commenting system to game. Pages were all static HTML with no ads. Not even JavaScript to screw with.
The regulars kept coming, but with no Google referrals, traffic dwindled. I eventually took it offline since it wasn’t fun anymore.
The Google giveth, and the Google taketh away.
[+] [-] Gibbon1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _cs2017_|5 years ago|reply
IMHO, Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had no incentive to lie to anyone, as he could simply ignore any questions from the website owners who wanted his response.
The fact that Matt actually bothered responding suggests that he was trying to help. He may have failed to help because he just didn't care enough, or ran out of time, or didn't understand what's going on, etc. But referring to his attempt as "lies" tells me a lot about Walter. In particular, it tells me that Walter isn't the type of person I'd like to help. Why bother, if things don't go to his satisfaction, he might just call me a "liar" later.
[+] [-] ianbutler|5 years ago|reply
Walter should have never had to have had the interaction in the first place where Matt has to make the decision to help him because there should have been support avenues and no secret penalties in the first place. That's like blaming the abused.
[+] [-] ufmace|5 years ago|reply
I even understand that there's a ton of actual spammers out there, and it's not scalable to tell each of them "yes, you're really a spammer, you deserve de-ranking, go away". Still, I'd like to see someone at least try to find a better way to fix both problems.
[+] [-] heimatau|5 years ago|reply
Umm. Yes, he had a paycheck and bonus package as incentive. Performance reviews too.
But as to Walter's attacking on Cutts, that's just someone not willing to put in the work to being a responsible adult. When it comes to Google search, you can't accidentally hurt yourself/your-site unless you're a bull in a China shop. Also, Google's search is really complicated and I can't generalize for his specific situation but it's extremely likely that it was OP's fault for using 'black hat' techniques (either directly or indirectly).
[+] [-] arp242|5 years ago|reply
- No details; promise to "leak" details later (but that never happened, and this page seems from ~2013?)
- Emotional language doesn't inspire confidence in reasonable and rational thinking about this, and it doesn't consider the possibility that Cutts was merely mistaken in his email, or mixed things up, or that there is something else not obvious that could explain the email.
- Calls the Google ranking algorithm a "penalty"; that this penalizes pages with quotations and the like is unfortunate, but lifting text from random websites is a a technique spammers use frequently. This is a rather unnuanced way to describe it.
- Even the mysterious "whistleblower" email doesn't strike me as very convincing.
- Insinuation that the site is penalized just because Cutts has ties to UrbanDictionary; which strikes me as unlikely.
Are parts of it true? Probably. The "automated penalty" probably is, but I wouldn't phrase it like that myself. The rest? Meh.
[+] [-] donatzsky|5 years ago|reply
Last update was October 2020.
That he intends to release the whistle-blower mails with full headers suggest that he has confidence that they were sent from Google servers. We'll see, I guess.
Do agree that the language leans a bit too much in the emotional/conspiracy direction. Really doesn't help his case.
[+] [-] lebaux|5 years ago|reply
- no SSL because there was "no time"? It is trivial to enable SSL on such a simple website.
- the person has no idea how SEO works, I see no mention on noindex, nofollow, disavow or other common thingies to fight penalties.
I don't like google at all, just look at my twitter, but as arp242 said, this doesn't pass the sniff test at all.
[+] [-] ianbutler|5 years ago|reply
Full disclosure, I recently founded a search engine and we are serving our own indexes to fight problems exactly like this.
https://www.whize.co
[+] [-] ryantgtg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codetrotter|5 years ago|reply
That seems like a bad thing to do against the whistleblower, since according to the redacted excerpts the whistleblower was using their Google mail address.
[+] [-] alex_young|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ufmace|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girvo|5 years ago|reply
AML and KYC-like regulations for the information monopolies. I think we're heading in that direction, seeing the backlash to Facebook et al.
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if Google will be able to identify that employee.
[+] [-] luord|5 years ago|reply
Put it another way: Sucks for this guy that google seems not to know about dictionaries and the importance of citations; and that whoever placed the manual penalty (assuming there's one) isn't completely well versed on intellectual property law.
Suppose that, again, the solution would be on more competition; it would encourage google to improve on nuances like those.
[+] [-] dilap|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iJohnDoe|5 years ago|reply
I strongly suspect that a few Googlers have too much time on their hands. This speaks volumes to Google’s eventual downfall that they can’t keep their employees busy doing more important work.
My second theory it’s tied to Google’s outsourced workforce in India that handles their advertising accounts and the advertising platform. I think those workers are penalizing the sites that don’t respond or buy more advertising. This workforce has too much access to try to manipulate advertising spend.
Also, everyone should know by now that Google counts on brands to buy advertising for their trademarks to keep them as the first result. Otherwise these company names show up as 2-10.
Google knows which sites should be #1 for any given term. These are manually curated.
[+] [-] drannex|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afarviral|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darepublic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] octoberfranklin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] santoshalper|5 years ago|reply
I was there at the beginning and I wish more than anything we could have saved the web from becoming this mutated monstrosity that is hurting our civilization so badly.
[+] [-] gjs278|5 years ago|reply
I think it was due to comment spam since I didn't moderate the comments and since then the invisible penalty has never gone away. I've given up on trying. people just have to search "garys autoclicker" if they want to find it now, or have it bookmarked. "autoclicker" is pushed all the way back to page 4 for my site now. on bing I am page 2 behind basically autoclicker dot org and every other variation of the TLD
[+] [-] Kiro|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verroq|5 years ago|reply