Is Using Webmaster Central Dangerous?

[freshdevelopment]

I have recently suffered with a number of my sites receiving penalties. I am not sure exactly why this is, but it has lead me to think that Google may have manually investigated all of my sites that are listed in Webmaster Central.

Do you think this is possible?

Another thing that concerns me is Google Analytics - this is another way they could link all the sites together.

Any opinions or experience with this would be much appreciated.

[danger9918]

I highly doubt it that Google investigates sites listed in their webmaster tools any different than sites that are not; Do the sites that got penalized link to each other ? because if they do they have been looked at it as excessive link exchanges or something in that criteria.

[freshdevelopment]

No, the sites weren't linked together. But they received the penalty on the same day.

It is probably down to the link building I paid for which turned out to be dodgy (links on 100s of spammy blogger blogs).

I still might split up my Webmaster Central to different accounts, just to be safe..

[alex_d1]

Originally Posted by freshdevelopment

It is probably down to the link building I paid for which turned out to be dodgy (links on 100s of spammy blogger blogs).

I think this is most likely the reason, and nothing to do with Google's Webmaster section.

Alex

[coated]

I agree, it probably was the spammy links that generated the penalty, google tends to prefer automation where possible.

[Niche]

Webmaster tools or analytics has nothing to do with it
If you buy links google tends to find you aout more often than not

Analytics is actually a pretty useful tool

[Czzarre]

Yea, Id be careful of those dodgy 'link services' ..they eventually turn out to hurt ya

[sweetfunny]

Originally Posted by freshdevelopment

I have recently suffered with a number of my sites receiving penalties. I am not sure exactly why this is, but it has lead me to think that Google may have manually investigated all of my sites that are listed in Webmaster Central.

Do you think this is possible?

Another thing that concerns me is Google Analytics - this is another way they could link all the sites together.

Any opinions or experience with this would be much appreciated.

Your fears are not baseless at all, i know someone who gets sites penalized every time he puts Adsense on them. I've tested it, and the proof is quite definitive.

It would be trivial for Google to punch in a Domain, Pub-ID, Analytics ID or a Webmaster Central account and see all other sites, statistics, earnings etc associated with the webmaster. Google is the worlds leader in information gathering, sorting and retrieval and you are pretty naive to think this isn't available to them in the back end.

[Freewebspace]

Originally Posted by freshdevelopment

I have recently suffered with a number of my sites receiving penalties. I am not sure exactly why this is, but it has lead me to think that Google may have manually investigated all of my sites that are listed in Webmaster Central.

Do you think this is possible?

Another thing that concerns me is Google Analytics - this is another way they could link all the sites together.

Any opinions or experience with this would be much appreciated.

No it's not possible we have even seen other sites that are not in Webmaster central have been penalized..

[freshdevelopment]

I think sweetfunny has a good point, it would be naive to think they don't use all this information they have on us.

But the lesson learned, and the golden rule, is not to take shortcuts.

Anyone have any tips for lifting this penalty? I am appearing top for my domain name only, and even for the "easy" keywords (e.g. my domain name keywords) I am listed at least position 50.

This is on all my pages and all keywords. My traffic from google has literally gone to 0.

[bille]

Get out your tin foil hats I've not heard that Google would penalize the "target" of a spammy link, but they do penalize the site that is the "source" of the link to a "bad neighborhood". That makes sense, as you control your site's content, but anybody could link to your site.

[sweetfunny]

Originally Posted by bille

Get out your tin foil hats I've not heard that Google would penalize the "target" of a spammy link

Well you don't hear much then, for example have a read of the Shyboy incident on Google Groups. Matt Cutts pretty much said, you have been dinged for spammy links.

One of hundreds of cases out in the wild coming from the horses mouth.