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Google PageRank & Penalties.
The Infamous Sandbox.
YaHoo or YaPOO!
You have heard the phrase "Rumors run rampant." This page is just a shining example of the rampant amount of work that I have completed and still have left to complete. Rampant amount of work™ was coined here first at Web Your Name®. There are no rumors running rampant here, just factual information backed with quotes and numbers.
Google Site Penalty.
Were You Penalized?
On February 18, 2009 Matt Cutt's blog posted an entry noting that Google Japan received a site penalty. Google does not have any mercy for buying links. Matt announced: "To the extent that I can speak on behalf of Google, I apologize that this happened. One of the messages I heard was that people wanted Google to take action in this instance, and we did. The toolbar PageRank for google.co.jp dropped from 9 to 5, and I expect that to stay for a while." Google Japan was caught paying bloggers to blog about and link to the Google Japan site. It's clear that breaking their rules of the web, would not be tolerated.
But what about the average webmaster or marketing agency? There are so many blogs and websites out there. If you have a Google penalty, you probably don't know about it. Others believe that they are being unfairly penalized by Google. By tortuously not letting webmasters know they've broken a rule, it makes it impossible for them to correct whatever wrongs they have done. Google keeps everything top secret, which is good for business and good for keeping the competition at bay but difficult for webmasters working with Google.
PageRank is a good gauge or indication of whether you may have an automated Google penalty. But many factors go into your PageRank, so you likely will not know if your PageRank is low because you have received an algorithmic penalty or because of other factors. I did plenty of research on the web as to why Google does not share that information, but I find nothing of value.
I believe Google should let webmasters know that they have a penalty so they can correct it. Google could post a (P) or (-P) in the PageRank toolbar in RED instead of the actual PageRank number. This would keep the knowledge of how severe a penalty secret is while notifying the webmaster that there are underlying issues. This seems like a better idea than allowing the website or blog to know exactly what their numerical PageRank value or penalty is.
It also may be potentially beneficial to webmasters and end users to know which sites to steer away from, for example a site that has been selling paid links. Paid links are not the only way to receive a Google penalty. Any violation of Google's webmasters guidelines can result in one. If you have a sound belief that you have received a penalty, you can submit a site reconsideration request to Google.
An example of one of the most recent Google scandal's was Overstock.com, JCPenny's, and Forbes not playing by the rules set forth by the most powerful economic tool. Cheating Google's algorithm and using black-hat or shady SEO techniques could bankrupt your business, if you get caught.
I was surfing the Internet as usual when somehow I ended up in Google Webmaster Central. I don't ever read the forums, it is mostly a bunch of ignorant wannabe webmasters looking for answers to dumb questions that they could probably find the answers to by strategically searching on Google. Usually wannabe search engine optimizers give them dumb answers because they think that they know what they are talking about. I came across a question by Joshua Unseth, who runs an SEO consulting company in Minnesota called SpiderMarket.
Joshua Unseth is a new colleague who I plan to work with him on sharing the wisdom of what we know about Google. Hopefully, we both can learn from each other. He is really smart but everyone has a lot to learn. I gave him a dofollow link, because unlike Wayne Sutton, I will throw people a bone every now and then.
His SpiderMarket.com website recently had its PageRank drop to a zero, and he believed that many of his pages were performing poorly and/or no longer in the Google results index. It was late at night and out of curiosity, I went to check out his website. I laughed when I reached it, he was an SEO Consultant. I replied to his forum question telling him that his PageRank had dropped because his website SUCKED, and if he was an SEO expert, he should know the answer to his question. I also pointed out that his pages had not been removed from the Google index. Joshua Unseth replied noting my sarcasm and adding some more information to the conversation.
Joshua Unseth has a confirmed case of Google PageRank Penalty Paranoia. He has not developed a case of Google PR Greed. As I explained to Joshua later, I believe that his traffic is suffering because of the holidays. Marketing, in particular, takes a traffic hit towards the end of every year. Because everyone is traveling and spending time with their families, it means less people are searching. If Joshua Unseth used Google Trends, he would also know that this time of year is the worst time of year for marketing and advertising searches.
Cross-Linking Penalty?
Word of Advice...
Don't submit a site reconsideration on a site unless you are 99% sure that you have been penalized AND have corrected your wrongs. If you submit a site reconsideration request for a site that has not been penalized, it seems like a good way to let Google know that your website may deserve a penalty. Google dropped PageRank on one of our client sites from a PR3 to a PR0. The last PageRank update was 2 weeks ago, and no other site's PageRank seemed to be updated today.
Excessive reciprocal links, link schemes, or excessive link exchanging is one thing that Google specifically states will hurt your PageRank thus impeding your progress in achieving TOP 10 Google rankings. Google's algorithm is likely able to detect this. The problem is, what is "excessive?" This marketing agency recently had a number of sites that we own and manage take a significant PageRank loss. Many sites took a drop in PageRank, and there is no other explanation other than excessive cross linking. We did not expect based on the number of clients and variety of topics and industries for whom we provide Internet advertising services for, that we would be caught up in excessive cross linking. All of the sites in our network that we exchanged links with were to relevant quality content. The interesting problem is that excessive internal cross linking is not at all a problem. It is also encouraged. Our advertising agency in committed to following the Google guidelines for SEO.
We think we have corrected the issue and hope Google's algorithm will pick up on it, but only the next PageRank update will provide that answer for sure, since Google does not respond to reconsideration requests or notify people that a problem exists. The next PageRank update shouldn't be for at least two more months, but we are going to keep an eye on this interesting phenomenon. I thought everything seemed to be going well after the last PageRank update. I apparently was wrong. WAY WRONG.
This penalty phenomenon has even resulted in a new psychiatric condition called Google Penalty Paranoia. Penalty Paranoia cases are caused when a webmaster or website owner believes that they are being sand boxed intentionally by The Web Spam Team or other internal agency within Google. Their website was not penalized, but they truly believe that it was.
The Sandbox Penalty.
Does It Exist?
Like many other search engine optimizers, in my endless research I have come across the infamous topic of the Google sandbox. The Google Sandbox is the theory that Google delays a site from ranking well for a period of time, until the site establishes credibility/longevity. Webmaster World reports, "In reply to a question from Brett Tabke, Matt said that there wasn't a sandbox, but the algorithm might affect some sites, under some circumstances, in a way that a webmaster would perceive as being sandboxed."
The sandbox is just the notion that a new website has to establish some credibility to rank well. This can be achieved through receiving relevant quality links and having good content. How valuable would Google be as a search engine if people could just throw together a website over night and in the morning become #1 for whatever topic they chose? From the standpoint of providing the best user experience, this wouldn't make any sense. Further, creating a high quality and informational website takes a long time. This website is a perfect example of a site that is constantly striving to improve the content and user experience.
The sandbox, essentially is that the algorithm determines the ranking value of the website. For a new website to immediately reach the Google TOP 10, it would require a lot of work. For example, sites that have gone viral overnight and received lots of Internet publicity have been able to skyrocket to the top of the rankings, thus debunking the sandbox theory. The problem is that most websites are not able to achieve such quality and quick attention.
So as a new webmaster, you are not in the sandbox, and more than likely do not have a Google PageRank Penalty, you just have not been able to get the "cyber word" out that your website is of significant value to other webmasters and web surfers.
Yahoo! or YaPoo!?
One CRAPPY search engine!
I was surfing the Internet as usual today. I still have a couple of Yahoo email accounts that I occasionally use, mainly for commenting on blogs or filling out forms so I don't get junk email to my real email address. I notice the the little green toolbar said that Yahoo only had a PageRank of 9. This was interesting since Yahoo has 60,619,862 backlinks to their website. Bing has a PageRank of 9 and its site has only 1,564,630 backlinks to it. That is a 38.7 to 1 ratio.
It is unlikely that Yahoo received a penalty, and likely Yahoo has the ultimate crappy quality links. I believe Yahoo is a search engine on its way to extinction. Their search market is only those holding onto Yahoo email addresses and who are too lazy or incompetent to create a Gmail account and setup a forwarder. The other portion of their market is Yahoo gamers, something that Google could effectively get more market share by adding games. However, Google is smart enough to realize that people know the QUALITY of their search results, and they don't want people too ignorant to understand the difference.
I think Google needs to give Yahoo a penalty for the fact that they allow people to pay to reach the top of their search results, effectively rendering their index, unnatural. That seems like a great idea. If I were Google, I would penalize Yahoo for that. As of today, for this month, the ratio for people getting to this website through Google, compared to Yahoo was 82 to 1. Another site we operate and manage had a ratio of 152 to 1. Yahoo is just crappy, it has been called YaPoo, the CRAPPIEST search engine on the Internet!