Google's 950 Penalty

[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?

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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.