Google "Same site" penalty

I have mentioned it several times, but Dominic has just asked me to explain what I call the "Google Same Site" penalty.

When you have too many links from one site to another and reciprocated, when the websites are targeting the same search term, Google can show only one website for the search term = Google same site penalty.

It is then very hard to get both sites pages showing for that same search term.

It is very easy to happen.

• You get a new client, they need Google PR and a link from an authoritive site, and your sites have both of these. You then want credit from that website that you have done the SEO/web design. Your business happens to have web pages SEO'ed for the same industry/area and so you have pages that target the same term - say on your reciprocal links directory.
• You have a friendly business in the same area, or same industry. You want to help each other out and so have whole of site links reciprocated. You target the same search terms - industry or area, and find only one of the two sites is showing high on Google for that search term.
• You trade site maps for your sites, so that you only have one link on your site per your friends pages, but you have all or the main pages of your friends website.
• You use the co-op for all your websites, and you just happen to get many links between those websites via the co-op. I use a hack on the Co-op php file to not show my own sites.
• Now the controversial one (I havn't decisively proved this one) - If you have too many sig links from a forum, merely the actual link on your sig, or a thread entitled with your search term could be enough to trigger the same Google same site penalty. The PR and authority status of the forum is so high, it can be enough that the forum is shown for the search term, and your site is not shown.
• If you have a multi language website, and you have multiple links to the same site because you have pages duplicated one for each language. If the other sites then has a number of links back to you... (Again, I have not proved this one, but it seems possible for there to be an issue with this scenario)

Proof of the Google same site penalty

I have proved it many times - when you optimize one page a little more than the other websites page, or have a little more anchor text or PR to that page, there will be a see saw effect - one site will be 1st/high for the term, and the other site will be 100th. Then you add some more PR/anchor text to your site and the see saw will again happen (I have not done this analysis on forum sigs).

You then realise the problem, and want to remove links. Only problem is that both of you need each others PR etc for your other search terms that you are not competing against each other for.

This is a great one for the co-op. Use weight on one that is ranking low, and see it pop up to 1st while the one that was first that also links to you, goes to say 100th.

If the penalty did not exist, you would get the sites fighting for the top two positions, rather than 1st and 100th.

How to correct the Google same site penalty

The only safe way to try and get out of Googles bad books is to delete all links between the sites (or use the rel=nofollow), and wait till Google fully updates all the pages of both sites - especially the link: details. Some internal pages can take Google a while to spider again, and these links can be enough to continue the association between the websites for long after the links have been removed.


I have seen Google caches of pages that don't contain the reciprocal links, but those links are still showing on the Google Link: search. And Google still has the same site issue for those websites pages.


Hack for Digitalpoint Co-op


I also highly recommend using a hack for the co-op php file that excludes your own websites from showing on the co-op. Shawn supplied it to me - he will have to be the one that supplies it, or he give the permission for is to be made available.


rel=nofollow

The new rel=nofollow is another great way. Have all the links between the sites as rel=nofollow so you can keep the links and not have the same site issue with Google. Then once Google is showing both sites again for the same search terms, you can experiment with having one link between the sites that is a normal link.

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.website.com">keyword phrase</a>

Code (markup):

Triangular links

If you really want to trade many links between sites, do it via a third site

a links to c
b links to a
c links to b



But you have got to be careful that Google has not determined the same site penalty on any of the sites concerned.

I dont like triangular links in general, as you can end up giving a link to a person and get a link of little value in return - since that site can receive so little PR etc into it, that links from it are of little value.



Bad triangular links - a is your site,
a links to b
c links to a


c has very low PR since few link to it given the arrangement.


Same IP range

The problem can be heightened when the websites are from the same IP address range, but I believe that the situation can happen between any two sites that have too many reciprocal links. This is why you see many link requests mentioning that they are from different IP address ranges.

The situation can certainly still happen when you move say your clients website from your main hosting to a totally different host to try and remove the problem. The problem still stays until you have removed the links and Google has updated ALL those pages.

Sig links on Forums

I personally have decided that I don't want to risk my website and have too many links from the Digitalpoint forum to my website. I have therefore had an introduction page on Digitalpoint, that I have entitled with my main "Auckland Restaurant" search term, and my sig link points to this thread.

Therefore, I get the max PR and anchor text value to this thread, the thread is ranking in the to 20 for the search term "Auckland Restaurants", and I get in my opinion the best quality link back to my site. The best quality link is in my opinion a link that is ranking high in its own right for that term.

I have not done this for every link in my sig. Sometimes you know what you ought to do and don't get around to it...

The value of sig links on forums

Unfortunately, links on Digitalpoint dont have as much value as they could have. The same is true of many other forums.

I have a very comprehensive hack for how to "Search Engine Optimize VBulletin" that addresses many SEO issues within VBulletin - 302 redirects, more than one url per page, no proper site map, proper onpage SEO'ing of each page on the site ...

How many is too many

Lesson learnt:

• Have a maximum 1 link between websites, maybe two, but don't push your luck as it can take months to get both websites showing for those search terms.
• If you have multiple links from one website, make sure you don't have even one link back to that website.

I don't know how many is too many, but best to keep it low.

How do you know its the "same site penalty"

This is definately the million dollar question. You need to be keeping a close eye on the digitalpoint keyword tracker for both sites. Then can be easy to see the see saw.

There are so many penalties that can wreck your listings that it can be very hard to know what is happening.

One big issue seems to be that when you try too hard to get lots of links, and try too hard to SEO, that its easy to go overboard in any one area, or get a link that wrecks you - ie a 302 link.


With the new Google Patent application highlighting areas that Google either uses or would like to use, SEO is becoming that much more complicated - especially for competitive phrases where the fine points of the algorithm make so much difference.


I look forward to some feedback.

 

Nice post T2DMAN.

I can confirm the 'problem' which is both understandable from G's perspective (voting for yourself to skew the stats) but at the same time very annoying (why shouldn't you be able to link from say your corporate site to all your other sites without being penalized?).

The rel='nofollow' tag and toned down site wide footers is how I prevented further 'host affiliation'. Host Affiliation is how Google called this in one of their white papers.

The two sites that did get labelled as 'the same' still are though. They won't rank for the same word but actually swap the same #20ish position almost daily.

 

very informative post. i have a page that i mirrored from the official page about the music band, maybe it is a bad idea to keep it ;x

 

Hi

Mirrored pages are a different issue. THe issue I am talking about relates to interlinking between sites.

Mirrored pages are all about duplicate text. And Google will only return one result for any text is sees as duplicate.

Google looks at the snippet, being 149 or so characters around the search phrase that someone has entered. If that snippet is the same for multiple webpages, in general it will only show the page with the most PR/link text/oldest etc.

So as long as you create some unique text around the most common search phrase for that page, then you should be fine for that search phrase.

 

A very interesting idea. Could this be why my main site (which has links from all other sites) has suddenly dropped from Google ? It has existed for years and had a pretty good page ranking until just last month.

 

I have just got a new client that has a number of domains transferring to a main domain. Each of those redirects are 302 redirects. He recently transferred from a country domain to a dot com and 302 redirected from the established site to the dot com - now the dot com is no-where, and the original site shows for the dot com content due to the 302's.

The sad thing is that the standard redirects that many webhosts make available are 302's. And one we came across denied that 302's were a problem and refused to change the way they did redirects.

I have another client that received a 302 link from a directory - now his site no where to be found.

So there are lots of ways of destroying your website, not just too many links between sites.

You have to be very careful.

 

How does this effect presell pages (where another site points sitewide links to one of their internal pages, profiling my website with an optimised page for my theme and several links to various parts of my site)?

Will a presell page bump my site down in the listing?
What restrictions would a presell page need to avoid bumping my site down?

 

I like the concept of presell pages. Means that you get a nice high powered page linking through to you. One page linking through to you rather than 1000 links from the same site. I have done this with the DP intro page and my sig link - have a look for "Auckland Restaurants" and see the DP page 11th.

Just make sure that you dont choose too high powered a page otherwise you may end up being second and destroying the integrity of the top ten search results.

I dont see any possibility of your page being directly harmed, apart from your page being bumped to second by the site itself. I mean if you put your site map on the page, there might be an issue, but a few of your top pages, no worries. Its got to be a heap safer than 1000 sig links from a site into your site.

 

Quote from Original Post:
"When you have too many links from one site to another and reciprocated, when the websites are targeting the same search term, Google can show only one website for the search term = Google same site penalty.

It is then very hard to get both sites pages showing for that same search term."


Forgive me for asking, I'm relatively new to SEO. Is what your describing essentially the penalty for sitewide linking?

Thanks,
Noah

 

That is exactly what I am/was experiencing.

Heavy interlinking = all one site = only one SE position.

 

So this would be a sitewide linking penalty? Like if you have two websites with the same theme, with pages that you'd want to opitmize for the same keywords. If you interlink all the pages together from the two sites, only one of the sites will rank well, due to your sitewide linking?

 

Yes. Though not necessarily sitewide I guess. The more you knit them together the higher that risk.

But why would one have two pages on different domains ranking fro the same phrase anyway? I just stumbled upon one but it's effort dilution really.

 

Hi - exactly, I agree with Tops30, if the two sites are so similar then could it be that G is looking to eradicate clones or duplicate sites which dont have a great deal of function by defenition if they are from the same publisher with the same keywords.

 

Hi

While you mention two sites possibly being the same, remember that google is basing duplicate content on duplicate snippets - so if a 149 character snippet is the same for a certain search phrase on two sites, and that could be an rss feed, or some content that you have copied from somewhere, you can be caught.

Or potentially you could use it to copy the text of a competitors page, add heaps of links to that page to make it higher ranked, then that competitors page will disappear - not that I would try this - but it has happened to me!

So if you are copying something, just make sure that you have unique text around the words likely to be specifically searched for.

And if someone copies your snippet, be even quicker to change the content so you are unique again.

 

Thanks, this information was just what i was looking for.
I am setting up a new network of sites and your post has cleared up severla issues.

 

Pleased to be of help. SEO has so many snags, and you have to checklist that you have covered them. That much harder when there are networks of sites.