Google's 950 Penalty

[CaptainJSparrow]

Does anyone here know if google actually has a 950 penalty and, if so, do you know of a tool to check to see if your site has been penalized with it? Also, same question regarding the 30 penalty?

[Bill]

I don't really believe in it.

Notwithstanding the fact that I've got pages suffering from it, ha ha.

Never heard of a tool to test for it.

[Jim]

Greenie is a believer
This tip and trick was given to me in January
http://www.greenguysboard.com/newsle...letter387.html

[DangerDave]

Another bullshit theory...

Unproven... unprovable... and another waste so time..


DD

[Halfdeck]

Just avoid triggering the MSSA (My Site Sucks Ass and Google Just Found Out) penalty.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Thanks Jim.

[DangerDave]

Googles "No Brain" Penalty
by DangerDave


Webmasters have discovered a new Google filter that Google uses to downrank web sites in its result pages. Has this filter been applied to your web site? How can you avoid that Google applies that filter to your site?

What is Google's No Brain filter?
The No Brain filter is a penalty that Google applies to web sites that are run by webmasters with no brains. If Google applies the penalty to a web site, the rankings of that site are downgraded by 9875.354 positions.

Many webmasters reported that they had top rankings on Google and now they cannot get beyond position -485.12 in Google. Some webmasters even have #5854.54 rankings for all of their keywords on Google.

Why does Google apply the No Brain filter to some web sites?
It seems that Google applies the No Brain filter to web sites whose webmasters hang out on WebmasterWorld too much talking about bullshit theories that can never be proven or unproven. It seems that following the current theory-of-the-month triggers the No Brain filter on Google:


-30 penalty
If the webmasters age is below thirty google penalises the site for being run by an immature nincompoop.

-950 penalty
If a site was ranked at any number and is now ranked at any other lower number then webmasters can say that this penalty has been applied without showing any reason, argument, proof or supprt.

Standing on left leg penalty
If the webmaster of a site in the northern hemisphere stands on one leg and then falls to the right , then this penalty is applied. Of course the opposite is true for webmasters in the southern hemisphere.(Though this could change due to global wamring.)

Pull a rabbit out of my arse penalty
If a webmaster(wether standing on one leg or two) can pull a rabbit out of their arse, and the rabbit comes out clean, then no penalty applies. If the rabbit comes out stained, skidmarked or suffocated, the webmaster and their site suffers the RSPCA penalty.( also known as the dog penalty) In this case Google delivers savage dogs via UPS to the webmasters home and they are torn limb from limb.(Webmasters must also pay the return postage for the savage dogs)


First of all, you should remove the spam elements from your web site - because if you don't you are a fucking spammer and you will die a horrible death. If you use JavaScript redirects or doorway pages, then you are a redirecting lame-arse spammer and you deserve everything you get

The NO Brain filter seems to be an automated filter. If you remove the spam factors from your site then you'll probably turn your site into something that may actually be of value to the surfer and therefore you may get your rankings back after some time. You can also send a I am a spamming cunt and I want to be forgiven request to Google.

If nothing helps, then the only way to get reincluded in Google is to stand on one leg, pull a rabbit out of your arse, face mecca, and state three times in a lound voice "George Bush is the smartest man in the world"(or you could just get a new domain name to start spamming with)

Google doesn't like spammers. If you want lasting results then you should focus on NOT BEING A FUCKING SPAMMER!




Jim, you could include this in the next newletter, as it contains the same amount of factual information as this article did..


DD

[Bill]

Dave, it's easy to say that kind of thing (and the "Pulling Rabbit From Arse" penalty is pretty funny), but pretty much by definition 98% of adult sites are spammy.

I don't doubt that most adult sites, with their reliance of reciprocal linking, inherently heavy keyword loading, and multiple pages any one of which is inherently indistinguisable from so-called doorway pages, are likely to get some kind of knocked-back penalty applied automatically by the algos.

To say the knock-back is 30 positions or 950 positions is probably bullshit - to think that there's a knockback probably has some truth to it.

But, ultimately, we are still left with the problem that adult sites are inherently spammy - they exist to acheive a commercial goal, not to provide commercial free information, which is what google prefers and rewards.

[Halfdeck]

First of all, you should remove the spam elements from your web site - because if you don't you are a fucking spammer

Yeah but if you got no brains you wouldn't even know you're spamming.

[Cleo]

Personally I'm just trying to get this fucking rabbit unstuck from my arse.

[oldbrad]

Dame, i gotta wait 21/2 years to get better results

[Ms Naughty]

Here's the thing.

Since January one of my sites has been consistently listed on the very last page of results for one particular search term. Previously this site was in the top 10 for that term.

I've been going through my site, trying to make sure there are no spammy elements to it, and I'm fairly certain it's clean. It was pretty clean to begin with.

Still, there I am, stuck on page 9 (and sometimes booted off into the omitted results). It doesn't matter what I do, I'm still there. It's maddening.

What's more, I'm in the company of several other well known GG&J webmasters, people who I know aren't spammers. Greenie's site was there with me for a while.

This thread http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3215939.htm (yes, it's at Webmaster world, bear with me) shows a lot of other sites who have had the same thing happen, and they're not spammy sites.

Google gives no clue as to why this might have happened. I've done a bit of reading and I'm still in the dark.

I think I'm going to have to try a reinclusion request.

I guess this post is just a whinge on my part. I do my best to make clean, non-spammy sites that users will like, just like Google says we should. And then shit like this happens and I'm left wondering what the hell I did wrong. It's very, very frustrating.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by grandmascrotum

I think I'm going to have to try a reinclusion request.

Well, a reinclusion request definitely won't help.

From everything you've said, you are clearly already included in the database.

Otherwise, it sounds pretty classic. A lot of people have experienced what you are experiencing.

As for what you can do about it, well, that's just not easy to say with any certainty.

I'm sure we would all have our theories about what to do, but there's no guarantee any of them would work.

[CaptainJSparrow]

[CaptainJSparrow]

I'm pretty sure that the penalty is real. Whether you call it a 950 penalty or something else, it's pretty easy to check for. To do that, follow these steps:
1) go to http://google.com
2) click on "Advanced Search" ... this is to the right in small text
3) type in the search term (the keyword phrase that you're targetting) in the first field of the "Find Results" area that says "with all of the words"
4) change the "drop down" to the right to "100 results"
5) click the button labeled "Google Search"
6) scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the #10
7) click on the link that says "repeat the search with the omitted results included." ...note, you should really do everything without this step first and then do it if you don't find your site/page
8) use your web browser's "find" or "find in this page" capability to search for your domain name
9) if you're not on page 10 then go to page 9, etc until you find your domain

I've heard from folks that it's not too difficult to get your site (so far the penalty appears to just be a page by page penalty as opposed to penalizing a whole website) unpenalized for this particular penalty. I'm hoping that folks won't turn this into a lynch mob and see other familiar sites with this penalty and immediately assume they're a "bad neighborhood."

One of the things that I'm guilty of, and have some pages that have gotten penalized for, is hyperlinking in link trades to too many different sites using the same keyword phrase on the same page...ie linking to too many sites from my amateur page using the phrase "amateur sex" to link to each one. To fix this, I'm just changing the anchor text in the links to differentiate each one a bit.

What other thoughts do ya'll have regarding this?

[spacemanspiff]

I don't know if there's a 950 penalty or a rectal rabbit penalty, but there's definitely something going on. Google applied for a patent in December of '06 for a "phrase based information retrieval system". While this new system appears to have some storage savings and document retrieval speed benefits, the main focus appears to be on identifying spam documents, keyword stuffing and the like.

Here's the patent application:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...DN/20060294155

Here it is in plain english:

http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=413

[Jim]

Dave, I'm just not sure if you don't believe in a spam penalty or if you just don't like what people call it.

[Halfdeck]

I'm pretty sure that the penalty is real.

You don't need a stamp of approval from Dave - he doesn't work at Google and neither do I, so what do we know? Just because the problem isn't impacting any of our sites doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. I wouldn't assume it exists, either.

Let's talk facts - opinions on whether a penalty is real or myth don't solve problems.

Your site doesn't have to be spamming to show up in the last page of results. Grandmascrotum's site is far from spammy but it nevertheless ranks 900+ for several related terms.

All I can suggest at this point is to get rid of any negative signals - cleaning up questionable outbound links (e.g. linktrades with low-quality hubs), nofollowing aff links, reducing duplicate content, fixing 404s, eliminating canonical issues, reducing keyword frequency, etc.

Filing a re-inclusion request, after all that's done, is an option. You are allowed to file one not only when a site is banned but also when a site is penalized. Whether you're just ranked poorly or penalized is up to you to decide.

The best cure for any site IMO is to gain links from authoritative sites with your target keywords in anchor text as part of an article - that's more powerful than blogroll links, thousands of cheap recips, etc, but in adult, as we all know, "quality links" are hard to come by.

[Bill]

You really think filing a reinclusion request could help in a case like this?

I think it's more likely to cause harm than good.

And I don't see how it can cause a good result with an adult site, which is, as I've said, basically a commercial platform.

I tend to think you are applying a mainstream hope to the adult site arena, and that as soon as a google worker sees that reinclusion request for an adult site like ours, he's going to either ignore it completely, or assume that a reinclusion request wouldn't be filed unless there was something sneaky going on, and start looking for something to penalize the site for.

Do you have some reason to believe a reinclusion can help an adult site that hasn't previously been banned?

---

Having too many links with identical anchor text has been a known risk for two years or so now, it's one of the things we do have a bot of control over, and one of the things that can be worked on.

The phrase thing - which is basically the newest term for keyword stuffing - has probably been affecting adult sites for months now. It's not easy to create a large adult site without putting too many related phrases on any given page - that's the nature of describing porn that's for sale, and putting any more than a few links on any given page. You are going to end up with "too many" related phrases on the page.

[Halfdeck]

You really think filing a reinclusion request could help in a case like this?

Bill, saying re-inclusion is an option for penalized sites is not the same as saying I recommend filing a re-inclusion request.

Many adult sites, including some I own, are low value, disposable surfer-traps. But Ms. Naughty's blog? I see no reason not to file a reinclusion request for a quality sex blog if her blog is really penalized.

...that as soon as a google worker sees that reinclusion request for an adult site like ours, he's going to either ignore it completely, or assume that a reinclusion request wouldn't be filed unless there was something sneaky going on, and start looking for something to penalize the site for.

Unless you're guilty of spammy tactics, there's nothing to worry about.

I've emailed Adam Lasnik asking him to take a look at one of my sites. He emailed me back, saying there's no penalty applied.

You think Adam doesn't occasionally surf porn? Even Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Spam Team, regards Link O Rama, Persian Kitty, and The Hun as "quality porn sites." Not all adult sites offer value - but that goes without saying for any niche, adult or mainstream.

[Halfdeck]

As for adult VS mainstream, here's a quote on Threadwatch by Mr. Turner (whoever he is) in response to Matt Cutts admitting Google cannot tell the difference between a quality porn site and porn spam:

To understand why the results are poor in adult, you have to understand how adult sites work. You essentially have under 1% of the sites that actually sell something, and over 99% of the sites pushing traffic to those sites as affiliates. There is very little middle ground here. You have very few sites that put up porn for the fun of it. It’s essentially like taking a mainstream industry and dropping every site in it that doesn’t sell something or is an affiliate for someone.

So what that leaves is a group of webmasters all fighting for the same dollar. No one is giving up links to other affiliate sites because they feel it is beneficial to their user. No one is linking to adult sites just for the hell of it as well. The primary way of getting links has been through trades. While this was fine and dandy in the past, as Google’s algorithm advanced to spot link schemes, adult has been sacrificed because of it. Since most sites have relied on reciprocal link trading and since the industry lacks any natural linking because of its nature, it simply doesn’t work in an algorithm geared toward mainstream sites.

So what you’re seeing is sites that were popular in the past become untrusted, which in turn flourishes to new sites that receive links from them. A lack of “trusted” and “authority” sites has made it difficult for new sites to flourish as well.

To me, it’s not about Google blocking out adult content. Heck, a good percent of their searches are adult oriented and there are certainly better ways to block out that content than this. I think it’s just a case of adult having a completely different structure than most mainstream industries.

Here's an unfounded theory for thought:

If Google is using a variation of the TrustRank algorithm, then Google cannot tell the difference between low PageRank quality pages and low PageRank spam. Because most links on adult sites are devalued due to lack of trust, average TBPR in adult compared to mainstream is low. Specifically, I don't know any adult sites with a TBPR 9. Even if low TBPR has no impact on rankings, it means that you'll see more spam on adult SERPS than in mainstream. It also means adult sites have a bigger tendency to lose rankings or go supplemental.

[Bobc01]

Anyone know if NASA are hiring?
I was thinking about applying as a trainee rocket scientist.
I think that's the only way i'd be able to understand search engine logic.

They say things like hidden text etc are banned by search engines but i can find several sites packed with the stuff in the top 10 links after a search on google.

[Bill]

Slightly interesting...

In a thread about google webmaster relations, Matt Cutts referenced the "950 penalty" and said:

annej, regarding the -950 thing, I'd watch this video I made: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...71648913#1m42s
Starting around 1:42 into the video is where I talk about this.

----------------------------------------------------------

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013473.html

"Matt Cutts of Google Comments on "-950 Penalty" as "Over Optimization Penalty""

http://groups.google.com/group/Googl...3f856edc10ec4/

"The points I got out of it.
...
-overly seo'd sites
-don't listen to what SEO forums say
-don't optimize quite as much

Which seo methods are the trigger? Link exchanges, Keyword density,
Header usage, interlinking, pagerank hoarding, nofollow abuse, uniform
anchor text, common link schemes? I don't know.

But he does concentrate on "on your site" so I'd think the answer is
still on the site, perhaps an examination between an SEO'd site and
one that is ranking but obviously put together without SEO in mind
would be good (gov or edu sites for example) "
------------------------------------------------------

Nothing dramatically new, but I thought it was interesting that Cutts used the 950 term, and mentions "overoptimization" as being the cause.

[Jim]

I saw that video a while ago Bill. That was kind of the point I was getting to about believing or not. If you take what he says about Google practices as gospel, you have to believe there is a penalty.

[Halfdeck]

When you're hit with any kind of penalty, I think the obvious course of action is to clean house. The problem is adult webmasters' sense of a "clean house", in general, is way dirtier than what Google considers clean.

For example, link list owners try to boost their ranking with identical anchor text on recip links. When you have thousands of recips with identical anchor text you have a problem. More you have them, more they're likely devalued. Then add the fact that those recip links are reciprocated and you have a bigger problem. New link list owners try to compete by accepting more and more free sites, but more links doesn't mean higher ranking. In fact, more links may lead to greater link devaluation.

If you take what he says about Google practices as gospel, you have to believe there is a penalty.

I don't necessarily take Matt's word as gospel, but I believe he is honest. And since his main responsibility is fighting spam, he's the man when it comes to ranking penalties.