I have a penalized site and don't know what the cause is
-
I have a site which appears to have a Google indexation penalty. According to Google because its violating the T/Cs.
Here are some background details about the site:
The site is a online poker + deposit methods related site on a .co.uk TLD. It has 30+ uniquely written pages, and no advertising at the moment.
In June of 2010, June 10 to be precisely, I bought this site from a fellow webmaster/affiliate. After the site 's ownership changed I tried accessing the server, but I couldn't log into it . I noticed that this host had serious problems and the IP was unreachable. After trying for some time the previous owner got me all the content in Word files and I created a new hosting account and re-launched the site on June 28.
Between a couple of days after June 10 and June 28, the site was unreachable, and completely de-indexed from Google.
When I re-launched the site, I used the default Wordpress Template Twenty Ten, and created new pages with the Word files I received from the previous owner.
I waited a bit, but noticed the site didn't get re-indexed. So on August 18th I moved the content of domain xxx.com to yyy.co.uk/xxx/ and 301-ed all the former locations, hoping that this might help yyy.co.uk get indexed..... but nothing.
On October 28 of 2010 I submitted my first reconsideration request, which was processed on November 17th without any change. At that time Google didn't say if anything was wrong like now, so I just waited... and waited... and waited some more.
At some point I was ready to let this one go, as I didn't/don't see any problems with it. In fact, it used to be indexed before.
By now, I removed all links pointing to it that I had control off, and there are hardly any left over. The site as well doesn't have any outgoing links left, so that can't be it either. I also removed a kind-a duplicate keyword heavy menu from the sidebar, as well as the widgets from the footer. Finally I also fixed a problem caused by Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin, but I only installed this plugin recently, so that could not be the problem that caused the penalty.
So after another reconsideration request Google again let me know this site still has issues, but I really have no clue which, or how to find out. I don't feel like doing any work on this site, as there is no guarantee that it will ever lose its penalty.
What should I do now?
-
Was a bit sarcastic with my answer
but yeah the site is added to WMT and nothing funky to discover that explains the penalty.
-
Nope, but WMT has a diagnostic section that would tell you if Google thought you had anything bad on your site or maybe give you a little clue as to why you were excluded.
I assume your reluctance stems from some other Google Account infraction that you've not mentioned?
-
Uhm, do you know of a way of requesting for a re inclusion outside of Webmaster Tools?
-
Firstly let me congratulate you on choosing such an excellent poker room to promote
Our promos are a bit out of date though you'll want to get the Summer Gifts up as players generally like it and can usually get something from it
Task in hand though... Hard to tell, you're obviously not indexed, but couldn't tell you why just by looking.
Add webmaster tools to your site as it will often tell you why you have received a penalty.
It could be you'll just have to keep submitting reinclusion requests until you get someone sympathetic. You don't seem to be doing anything wrong (no adsense on the site, nothing dodgy in the code... that I can see). If you had malware on your old host it could be getting held against you, but unless Google tells you what's wrong...
Maybe they just don't like you using Piwik's analytics over theirs!
-
Thanks for your reply.
When I bought the site, before the down period, it didn't have any issues and all content was still indexed.
Unfortunately, Google didn't say anything about it. I get the awkward feeling the reviewer in question might have a personal problem with the specific niche being online poker.
The site's URL is depositpoker.co.uk - I used the default Wordpress template to avoid any possible issues, but that doesn't mean I don't have the intention to use a nicer one, once the site gets indexed
On every re inclusion attempt I explained exactly what I did and tried to address everything that could have been wrong. Now, it's just content, but I am left clueless why they don't allow it back in the SERPs.
I have one site pages, just being there to age domains, which have no problem getting indexed. So I don't see why this one is.
-
The summary is you bought a site which had problems with Google. You addressed some of the issues, but clearly there are issues which remain.
Did Google offer any other details other then the site violates their T&Cs?
Do you have any idea what the problem could be?
What is the site URL? We need to be able to see the site to determine if there are any apparent issues.
The bottom line, you need to correct any issues, then submit another reconsideration request. You will need to explain to Google that you purchased the site and have been trying to clean it up.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Country and Language tags-Running an SEO audit on a site that definitely has more than one language, but nothing is pulling up. I don't quite understand href lang or how to go about it. HELP HELP!
Ran an SEO audit and I don't really understand country and language tags. For example, sony.com definitely has more than one language, but how do I seo check href lang ? Do I inspect the page? etc?
Technical SEO | | Mindgruver0 -
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Specific pages won't index
I have a few pages on my site that Google won't index, and I can't understand why. I've looked into possible issues with Robots, noindex, redirects, canonicals, and Search Console rules. I've got nothing. Example: I want this page to index https://tour.franchisebusinessreview.com/services/franchisee-satisfaction-surveys/ When I Google the full URL, I get results including the non-subdomain homepage, and various pages on the subdomain, including a child page of the page I want, but not the page itself. Any ideas? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | ericstites0 -
Duplicate Meta Descriptions From Pages That Don't Exist
Hi Guys I am hoping someone can help me out here. I have had a new site built with a unique theme and using wordpress as the CMS. Everything was going fine but after checking webmaster tools today I noticed something that I just cannot get my head around. Basically I am getting warnings of Duplicate page warnings on a couple of things. 1 of which i think i can understand but do not know how to get the warning to go. Firstly I get this warning of duplicate meta desciption url 1: / url 2: /about/who-we-are I understand this as the who-we-are page is set as the homepage through the wordpress reading settings. But is there a way to make the dup meta description warning disappear The second one I am getting is the following: /services/57/ /services/ Both urls lead to the same place although I have never created the services/57/ page the services/57/ page does not show on the xml sitemap but Google obviously see it because it is a warning in webmaster tools. If I press edit on services/57/ page it just goes to edit the /services/ page/ is there a way I can remove the /57/ page safely or a method to ensure Google at least does not see this. Probably a silly question but I cannot find a real comprehensive answer to sorting this. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | southcoasthost0 -
Way to find how many sites within a given set link to a specific site?
Hi, Does anyone have an idea on how to determine how many sites within a list of 50 sites link to a specific site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Pictures 'being stolen'
Helping my wife with ecommerce site. Selling clothes. Some photos are given by producer, but at times they are not too good. Some are therefore taking their own photos and i suspect ppl are copying them and using them on their own site. Is there anyting to do about this - watermarking of course, but can they be 'marked' in anyway linking to your site ?
Technical SEO | | danlae0 -
Are lots of links from an external site to non-existant pages on my site harmful?
Google Webmaster Tools is reporting a heck of a lot of 404s which are due to an external site linking incorrectly to my site. The site itself has scraped content from elsewhere and has created 100's of malformed URLs. Since it unlikely I will have any joy having these linked removed by the creator of the site, I'd like to know how much damage this could be doing, and if so, is there is anything I can do to minimise the impact? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Nobody15569050351140 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0