As the title says, if you have had a site penalized did it have Adsense or Google Analytic's on it? Also i'm especially interested if you have multiple sites that lost their rankings, were they running Adsense or Analytics? The reason i ask is after weeks of testing, i've seen pretty strong evidence that Google is targeting individuals sites via Adsense and knocking their rank. Someone came to me with this theory, i didn't believe it at first but every site they built and used Adsense and/or Analytics, their site sunk. I though it was their methods, but they have several sites without Adsense all "very" strong rankings and Pagerank. They showed me by putting Adsense on one of their established, high ranking sites and it dropped back in the 100's for most keywords. So i repeated it by putting their Adsense on one of my very stable sites, same deal rankings went to hell. That's the short version, there way many other tests done and it's pretty conclusive.. This person is on Google's "shit list" and whatever sites Google associates with them is promptly given the boot in the SERP's no matter what it is. Anyone else notice something like this?
Interesting post. I'm personally on Google's shit list too. A few years ago I made the mistake of asking some link partners to click on my AdSense. Now they block me from rejoining AdSense. If someone joins AdSense to put ads on my websites, that AdSense account ends up getting banned too. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that AdSense ban also had an effect on my rankings. Any Google account that links a website to a particular person has the potential to be targeted by Google. This gives them proof about your relation to the website.
Without disputing the results of your test, I can't understand why google would penalise you for using either adsense or analytics. With adsense it would be in Googles interest to rank your site higher than non adsense sites so that you would get more traffic and more clicks on adsense thereby increasing Googles revenue. Analytics is just a measuring tool and doesn't impact google either way. Now if you said Google would down rate your site because you use adwords then that is more plausible because you would become more reliant on google you get you visitors and that would increase their revenue.
I don't think he is saying that AdSense or AdWords is the reason the penalties occurred. I think he is saying that these programs help identify which sites should be penalized. So if those sites didn't have adsense or adwords, Google may not notice them or realize that they should be penalized.
Yes exactly, im saying google is using these services to "connect the dots" regarding what you own and basically profile your webmaster activities. They are then applying negative SERP scores aka penalties to sites the webmaster is connected to despite no reason for the site itself to be penalized simply because the webmaster is on Google "shit list". The testing we have done over the past few weeks used about 25 sites, and a number of Adsense accounts and provides very conclusive evidence to what i am saying.
It does make a lot of sense. Using AdSense is obviously an easy way for Google to identify site owners and tie them together. But what about ad revenue sharing sites like DP, which run tens of thousands of AdSense publisher ID's, some of which must be on the shit list? Wouldn't DP be penalised? Or perhaps DP is penalised? Also, if you look at in reverse, I suppose the black hat crowd would be able to start taking down a site that runs AdSense, by posting their Publisher ID on a rogue site that Google hates.
DP has Shawns Adsense ID on every page load, top right of the page so it's pretty easy to determine he owns the site. Not real sure how a blackhat would get access to a legitimate site, and switch out the publishers ID with theirs. Ok here's the traffic data for the latest test site, this site belonged to me and had thousands of front page rankings and has been completely stable for a very long time. On the 13th Adsense was placed on the site, and the Adsense account belonged to this person who seems to be on Google's "shit list". It's gone from thousands of visitors per day down to just 100's, and as a matter of fact it's domain is keyword1keyword2.com and now the site cannot be found in the top 100 for a search of keyword1keyword1 when it's held the #1 and #2 spots for it since the day it was indexed. Absolutely "nothing" was done to this site besides placing Adsense on it belonging to this person. Here is another, Adsense added on the 5th: There's a number of others, several sites have even been custom built for this testing, as well as using established sites. I'm not an idiot when it comes to search, been involved in it since 99 but i have tested this persons theory extensively and the results are always the same. Google IS penalizing legitimate, 100% compliant sites simply because of who owns it or are associated with it and they are doing it via Adsense and/or Analytics. So if your sites never do as well as expected regardless "what" you do or how compliant you make them, this is a likely explanation.
There's no need. The BH simply runs your Publisher ID on her evil, condemned site. Google assumes you own that evil site. Your Publisher ID is now tagged as a bad person's Publisher ID. All the sites that use your Publisher ID - including your innocent, angelic sites - will then be penalised.
Most people use the site authorization in Adsense, making running your Adsense on a Black Hat site impossible. What your saying is no difference to just copying someones ad code on to a porn site to get their Adsense account banned. If someone didn't like you, they would do that or click bomb you before doing what i'm suggesting. I'm not alone in what i'm seeing here, over on Aaron Walls blog he mentioned similar which i had not read before i made this post. link I am seeing "exactly" the same thing Aaron touches upon in his post, Google IS penalizing sites not because they breach webmaster guidelines but simply because of who owns them and they are doing this via Adsense and/or Analytics accounts. I have not tested the analytics extensively, but i've seen pretty damning evidence of otherwise stable sites being wiped off the map just by putting a certain Adsense account on them.
I'm curious, sweetfunny, did any of the sites you put his adsense on have public registration, or were they all private? Do rankings return after your remove his adsense (if you've done that)? Interesting, but I'm not really surprised. Nice find.
The Whois didn't seem to have any effect, a few were private and the others were public spanning 5 different owner details so the connection was strictly with the Pub-ID on the sites. This makes sense really, people can enter any old info in the Whois but a person can't really get numerous Adsense accounts so your Pub-ID makes it really simple to view your network. Although i have seen something "very" strange and unexplainable in the past regarding Whois and Google, i posted full info but i think it was over most peoples heads because it promptly fell off the page. Also no, rankings have not come back yet after removing Adsense. The persons sites with no Adsense are doing fine, getting thousands of visitors a day so Whois/IP/Nameservers don't seem to have any connection just Pub-ID.
Adsence is a source of click fraud and half of the traffic is junk. Google is now busting sites that are the "source" of this. If there is a common pattern, then we have found a PR drop happens. But... I am starting to see a major SERP drop or "gray bar" on the pages but it is to soon to say this as a fact. But this is a topic that needs to be addressed by everyone thru the next Google update. Aggressive Adsense users are going to get hit I bet.
Yes exactly, Google is an advertising company first and a search engine and everything else second. So the more converting traffic they send to Adwords advertisers, the happier they are and Google in turn makes more money. Although unethical, it makes perfect sense for Google to order the SERP's based on which sites convert best for publishers and penalize the ones that don't. Perhaps this particular publisher has been labeled "bad" in terms of converting traffic, so sites that sport his Pub-ID are de-ranked.. who knows. What i do know though, is it's quite apparent sites with his Adsense ID are having some sort of minus filter applied to them in the SERP's.