Experiment test how your site could be penalized by Google

Here is a test from my own experiences on 1 domain on Dec 1, 2007

Beginning with
- Wordpress 2.2 (plugins - all in one seo, xml sitemap, )
- Dreamhost

Started by
- Gained link by submitted to general/free/low quality 2,000 directories
- Put some link from same niche site in different class A (2 years old)
- Put 10 original contents in 10 days. One each day.

First week results
- Got indexed in 1 day
- Ranked #60 in 5 days later
- Ranked #9 for "allinanchor:keyword" and #5 for "allintitle:keyword"

Second Week results
- Ranking seems steady and climbed up slowly from #60 to #50 in first 3 days
- Then ranking suddenly downed to #120 in 4th day
- and then ranking downed again to #450 in 5th day

Third Week results
- No results appeared for main keyword in 1st day
- Ranking for "allinanchor:keyword" downed to #320 and "allintitle:keyword" downed to #280

Fouth Week results
- almost same as third week. +-5 on moving but slowly sunk

Today results (2 months 8 days passed)
- not come back yet and may won't come back forever.

Note
- All pages still got indexed and never been de indexed until now
- When search my domain in Google, my main page got in the first results
- This may not be a sandbox. Most of site which got sandboxed should still ranked good (at least top 20 from my experienced) in allinanchor and allintitle but this site is not.

Conclusions

- You have to gained quality backlink before gained some links from general/free directory. This is only one site which got penalized and the different between this site and other is 2,000 directory submissions at first before gained any quality link.

- Push link from some site in your control couldn't help if you gained links from low trusted site first. That is showing a sign of manipulate in ranking.

- Building link as slowly pace but steady in the beginning is the key, otherwise your site ranking may be sunk like me.

 

Wow,
I like this stuff, and that you're sharing it with us. Makes me think...
I'm wondering how you got the ranking numbers? I am sure you didn't count manually hundreds of SERP results.
Thanks again for the insight.
--
RMH

 

Very interesting! Could you please do the same experiment without free dir submission? Just to prove that fact...

 

An awesome post, thanks for sharing the experiment.

 

very intresting

 

it is a new domain ? this could be the sandbox effect.
I know that directory submission don't give good backlinks, and if google find out that you have many low links and no good links, will probably ban you, but i want to know if it was a new or old domain.

 

I did search manually and found my site ranking by chance Then keep looking on ranking till they down.

As I stated in my post that only different thing between this site and others is 2,000 directory submissions. If you get link more slowly (1,000 directory submission at the beginning may be) you may not got kicked like this. Other sites use different promotion method (blog post network, 1,000 directory submission, signature link, etc.) but this test tell me that get too many low quality link will got your site kicked down and unique content couldn't help you in this case.

I hope it so but I don't think it sandboxed, because other sites in similar niche which began in the same time with this test site still in good ranking. Some of them got sandboxed but ranking still good for allinanchor and allintitle search operators, which give some clue on how site is going, plus not by ranking #3xx for allinanchor like this one.

 

Nice information to share, but in my experience building too many low quality links to quickly wont directly affect your SERP's, in fact it should do the opposite that's IF you are using anchor text backlinks.

Again from my own experience you are more than likely to get your sites PR dropped and banned for good rather than dropping your whole site from SERP's

You say you tested this on a wordpress blog, what content did you put up? was it original content or duplicate content?

Im guessing you are probably sandboxed, 2,000 directory links would not appear in google straight away anyway, if they are low quality links the would not get indexed straight away and therefore it would not look like to google that 2,000 link were placed all together, in fact i doubt if the site would actually show 2000 backlinks on any online backlink checker

Please share the URL with us to help validate your findings.

 

- Yes, It's PR0 while other sites which began at the same time are PR 2-3 in January PR update.
- 100% original content as stated in the first post
- Only 17 link be shown in Google. Seems 2,000 directory submission down like a drain and most of them are not counted as backlink by Google.
- Sorry but I would like to keep my url as personally.

 

Thanks for sharing, another valuable DP post.

 

I this this happen to me as well, I submitted my domain to all the free directory (automatic submitter) i got index and it was as good as getting #4 - #8 for the high paid keywords, that was only for a day or 2 and since then i have never seen my site untill 10 pages.

 

Sound like classic symptoms of Google sandbox, continue to build backlinks steadily and you will be out of the sandbox and getting good results again.

 

I've seen exactly the same with 3 sites now.

From now on, I'm not gonna use any directories or similar to promote my domains.

Seems like google has started to penalize sites using directories and other quick link building methods.

 

same here, same isue

Can you test how to get out of your penalty, and let us know?

 

Did you use the same anchor text for all the links?

 

dont you think that,s puzzling you.

 

I couldn't find solution yet. It seems that whatever done on this site as trying to resolve do nothing positive. The best way is do not let this thing happen first or say goodbye for many months before ranking come back.

No, I did vary anchor text for 5 related anchors.

 

this is almost certainly correct, i know of 2 sites that have suffered in the December kicking that G gave out - free, low quality directories (like the ones posted here on DP by the bucketload) with the same keyword anchor text will get you a penalty for sure - take that from the horses mouth!!

 

i think i am also facing a similar dilemma , but i hope i don't get penalized

 

I was penalized for about a year for getting too many links about 3 years ago. The main thing I have learned - never submit to free directories! They have absolutely no value whatsoever.