How do you tell the difference between Jagger and Penalties?

[damarzee]

On Oct 16th...a day that will live in infamy...my primary website, Designing Online, http://www.designingonline.com , virtually disappeared from Google. Two days later, my home page PR went from 5 to 6 and many newer pages that had no PR for quite some time, finally got their ratings. Meanwhile, my primary keyword that was in the #1 to #3 position for years is now at #710.

I waited like a good boy for the Jagger dust to settle but nothing changed. A week later, I submitted a re-inclusion request in the event my site was being penalized for some reason, but three weeks have now passed and there is no word from Google, other than an auto-reply, and nothing has improved.

How do you know if you have been penalized? What are some concrete things that will occur that are specific enough to help draw a conclusion while waiting for Google to respond...if they respond?

On an even greater level, if Google is going to penalize or ban websites, why can't they create some sort of interface to help a person know what is going on? They're not poor and I'm sure they have more than there fair share of programmers on staff.

It was one thing to have to accept this kind of response when working with DMOZ, but they're all volunteer, so i can see why they might not want to devote the resources to create a system to report problems or list rejection reasons. Google, on the other hand, does have the resources to be considerate, and as a large corporation that so many have come to depend upon, they should be considerate.

Venting done.

Bottom line... Please somebody, point me to where I can find a few answers and resolve my issues with Google.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by damarzee

It was one thing to have to accept this kind of response when working with DMOZ, but they're all volunteer, so i can see why they might not want to devote the resources to create a system to report problems or list rejection reasons. Google, on the other hand, does have the resources to be considerate, and as a large corporation that so many have come to depend upon, they should be considerate.

I would assume that it has nothing to do with "the resources to create a system to report problems or list rejection reasons" and everything to do with not wanting to give the spammers too much information.

DMOZ and Google share at least one thing in common - they both exist to serve people looking for information. Web designers and site owners are not their primary audience.

[ADAM Web Design]

damarzee: have you tried querying your website at the http://66.102.9.104 Google datacenter for your keywords? This is the "up-to-date" (according to Matt Cutts) datacenter and a lot of sites that suffered during the Jagger1 and Jagger2 updates find themselves almost back to normal with Jagger3.

As far as telling the difference between being penalized and Jagger flux, the best way I've seen to tell is to monitor keywords and phrases once per day. I myself have noticed that my own site has gone from #11 pre-Jagger to #54 to #53 to #55 to #60 to its present #54 on the google.ca datacenter for my primary keyphrase.

Meanwhile, my monitoring of the J3 datacenter has shown me going from #8 to #25 to #9 to #30 to #15 to #22 to #28 and now presently at #12. All of this has occurred in the space of approximately 10 days.

This tells me that my own site is more the victim of flux than it is of any penalties; why else would it go down and then up again?

In your case, though, you might be getting peanlized for having so much text inside of a heading tag (in your case the H2 tag). A heading is something that's about 5-10 words tops; it's not an opening sentence or paragraph.

You also appear to be keyword-stuffing your alt tags, and you may be getting busted for that too.

Those are just things I saw on the surface, in case you are getting penalized (which I don't know, since I don't know your keywords.)

[damarzee]

Thanks for the advice ADAM.

I never gave the h2 tag a second thought when i expanded it to contain an entire sentence, but for the sake of argument, i just created a new paragraph class for that instance, so that eliminates that.

Also, i guess i never really understood the concept behind "keyword stuffing". i heard the phrase and i imagined it referred to using repetitive use of keywords and descriptions thoughout all the alt tags or titles within the page.

Somewhere, some way, I started including the page title in an alt tag within the page and also the page description within another alt tag and the keywords within another.

The title and description instances can probably be considered appropriate since i use them with the company logo, but the keywords are, as you say, "stuffed", since they are just added to a random alt tag. I do one instance of this on every page of my site...and other sites I have developed, so, whether this is causing me a penalty or not, I don't want to be accused of stuffing, so i will work harder to make practical use of keywords within alt tags that are appropriate.

Overall, this update has confused me since i just tripped on one of my keywords in the #6 position, yet my overall Google traffic is down by 80% or more.

I will take a closer look at the datacenter you referenced and see if things are moving along. Thanks for the advice.

[LinkMaster]

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

In your case, though, you might be getting peanlized for having so much text inside of a heading tag (in your case the H2 tag). A heading is something that's about 5-10 words tops; it's not an opening sentence or paragraph.

You also appear to be keyword-stuffing your alt tags, and you may be getting busted for that too.

Those are just things I saw on the surface, in case you are getting penalized (which I don't know, since I don't know your keywords.)

If you have a PR6, you have not been penalized. You simply lost some ranking. It wouldn't have anything to do with H2 or image alt tags. Look at the #1 ranking sites - they all use them. I am still ranking well on many of my sites, and I stuff image alt tags. There is nothing wrong with that.

I would look at the following:

1. How many backlinks do you have? The more, the merrier.

2. Do you have your keywords in the anchor text of your backlinks? If not, that's a big problem.

3. How long has your site been around? With Jagger 3, most of the top rankings are sites that have been around for 5+ years.

4. Do you have plenty of content? Is the content linked-to from your home page with the appropriate anchor text that emphasizes your preferred keywords?

5. Have you looked at the top-ranking sites to see what they are doing? There's no reason to re-invent the wheel. Find out what is working for the top-ranking sites and DO IT!

Hope this helps.

[ADAM Web Design]

Originally Posted by LinkMaster

If you have a PR6, you have not been penalized. You simply lost some ranking. It wouldn't have anything to do with H2 or image alt tags. Look at the #1 ranking sites - they all use them. I am still ranking well on many of my sites, and I stuff image alt tags. There is nothing wrong with that.

I think that the vast majority of us would agree that the loss of ranking, no matter what the circumstance, is a penalty of sorts. Whether it's for lack of continual link building, lack up updating content, spammy reasons, whatever...a loss of ranking hurts.

[MtraX]

I'm just still sour that the competitive sites are all still top 10 and our one site is also down the ranks after being top 10 for 2 years. Just doesn't make sense. Allthough I must admit that the top sites are now all portals, it still doesn't account for our site being on page 10+ for the main keywords.

MtraX

[LinkMaster]

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I think that the vast majority of us would agree that the loss of ranking, no matter what the circumstance, is a penalty of sorts.

That seems to be the popular theory Adam, but I don't believe that is the case with Jagger. Unfortunately, countless webmasters are re-vamping their sites based on myths and rumors due to the way Jagger shuffled the Google deck.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I think that the vast majority of us would agree that the loss of ranking, no matter what the circumstance, is a penalty of sorts. Whether it's for lack of continual link building, lack up updating content, spammy reasons, whatever...a loss of ranking hurts.

Ok, I am not the vast majority ;-)

I do not see how a shift in ranking algorithm can be seen as "penalising": IMO this is an anthropomorphic point of view. I agree that it "hurts" and therefore is *felt* as a sort of "penalty", but taking a dive in the SERPs because an change in the algo is just natural (an algo change simply has to have some change in the SERPs).

I also do not think that the Goog sees it this way. The basic idea is "to improve SERPs" and not "to penalise certain sites". This is a different paradigm, so to speak.

I operate a regional directory based on the HYPERSEEK software. There you can tweak the search algo with some very basic parameters, but this can have huge differences for the SERPs. It looks simple, but the results ... just like Jagger: All at once you get SERPs which seem absolutely inexplainable.

To make it short: I don't think there is a deliberate penalising going on. A shift in the algo, and therefore different SERPs.

faglork

[MtraX]

It's just figuring out what the major reason for one's drop was that is the million dollar question.

MtraX

[greeneagle]

LinkMaster:

That seems to be the popular theory Adam, but I don't believe that is the case with Jagger. Unfortunately, countless webmasters are re-vamping their sites based on myths and rumors due to the way Jagger shuffled the Google deck.

Knee jerk reactions usually include multiple changes at once. That is purely a non-scientific approach that will not and cannot yield real answers.

I hope everyone understands the importance of making one change at a time and measuring results, so that we get real emperical data, which is what is required in an unknown set of changes!

Ken

[DMC_34]

All throughout Jagger 1 until now, nothing has changed on my site in my signature. The results?


Google:
From nowhere, 100's, to Top 10 on most of my targeted keywords.

MSN:
Rankings have always been excellent.

Yahoo:
A week after appearing in the in top 10 on Google for most of markets keywords. Yahoo has listed my very well which includes:
#1 - Christmas gift baskets
#1 - Holiday gift baskets
#6 - Gift baskets
etc


One additional thought. We stopped aggresively pursuing links and just review the links which come to us. Occasionally we go after a few but nothing like before jagger. Probably just coincidence.

DMC

[ADAM Web Design]

Originally Posted by faglork

To make it short: I don't think there is a deliberate penalising going on. A shift in the algo, and therefore different SERPs.

faglork

That's why I never used the word "deliberate" and used the phrase "of sorts." Google wouldn't go about deliberately penalizing legitimate sites; they were after the spammers. The problem is that there was a crossfire effect, and legitimate sites suffered and lost ranking (which is a penalty "of sorts".) It's nothing Google intended. It's just an indirect effect.

[MtraX]

Exactly Adam, collateral damage...

[Ellio]

That's why I never used the word "deliberate" and used the phrase "of sorts." Google wouldn't go about deliberately penalizing legitimate sites; they were after the spammers. The problem is that there was a crossfire effect, and legitimate sites suffered and lost ranking (which is a penalty "of sorts".) It's nothing Google intended. It's just an indirect effect.

Agreed, if the new Algo includes new dampening penalties for new interpretations of breaking specific guidelines then surely large drops in ranking can be seen as a "penalty" for rule breaking that was not included in the previous Algo.

In other words sites that were previously breaking a few rules and still ranking high have now been caught and "penalised" by the new ranking Algo for the same previously unflagged reasons.

I hope you get what I mean!

[glengara]

*How do you tell the difference between Jagger and Penalties?*

Interesting question as I'm pretty convinced G implements large numbers of "normal" penalties to coincide with an up-date, a simple but effective way to muddy the waters ;-)

With Jagger in mind, I noticed you're quite dependent on reciprocals, and there's been much speculation on their possible fall from grace....

On the other hand, you've an interlinked network with at least two sites that appear to have a common links directory that is also AS heavy and linking to a banned pharma site, and I'd see possible trouble ahead on that front as well....

[ADAM Web Design]

Originally Posted by MtraX

Exactly Adam, collateral damage...

I stand corrected. This is a better phrase. I should have used it first.

[sysop9999]

well ... ever since jagger started I haven't been able to find any backlinks to my site on G. Not sure if that's a kind of penalty or what.

Further more I'm not even in the top 1000 for one (out of two) main keyword, but can see all kinds of websites listed which have no business there - they just need to mention the keyword once in a sentence like "when you are working with web design, you need some solid food and our special guaranteed delivery makes sure it's hot"

Now .... how can one compete with targeted SEO like that?

Anyways, what's annoying is that it's impossible to determine wether it's a penalty or just lame google programming.

[ADAM Web Design]

Kim, if the site you're referring to is the incomm.dk , it is in the Google database with at least some links to it:

http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&lr=...w.incomm.dk%22

Sometimes you have to try a few different things to find backlinks.

Link:www.domain.com
Link:domain.com

(no thanks to Google's canonical name issues)

"domain.com"
"www.domain.com"

And you'll still only get part of your answer.

[sysop9999]

Adam,

Thanks :-)

I hoped that DC could show me some results when using the link: feature (now I get this thing in my head that Bill Gates once said: it's not an error, it's a feature)

I'm aware that G only show a few results, and it used to before jagger, but not now.

I probably shouldn't complain - at least I'm still in their database :-)