Jeff Finally Writes How Aviva Directory Came out Of Penalization

Very well explained.
Thanks.

Lets hope Jeff himself comes here and explain da situation

 

Thanks a lot for pointing out the post.

Glad to see he's back, and really glad he shared what he did. It may have been a 'shotgun approach' to fixing the penalty, but you probably have to overcompensate somewhat to get out from under that type of rock. So, methinks he did everything he could to address the situation, which was probably the right thing to do.

Now, will PR ever increase?

 

Is it really out of penalization? I saw in another thread that avivadirectory becomes PR0 [It shows PR0 in my toolbar too.]

If aviva directory is not penalized anymore then why it is PR0 now? I'm lost...

 

Yes. When you search for "Aviva Directory" it's number one, with sitelinks. That means there's no manual penalty on it.

 

But it has 3,820 backlinks, then why it is PR0?

 

This is probably because toolbar PR is out of date, and when the PR data was exported to the toolbar the manual penalty was still in force. What you see in the toolbar is only a snapshot of how PR looked at some point in time, and typically these snapshots are taken 3 or 4 times a year. It's never current.

 

It also depends on what DC your calling your results up from, I get a Toolbar PR4 for it. Good luck to the owner of avivadirectory but as he readily admits was his fault so we shouldn't all be patting him on the back for anything other than learning that you shouldn't try and manipulate the system. Sets a bad example.

 

Thanks for sharing. Nice reading as usual.

 

Most funny is you nick: iKid
Suits your posts
you're not even able to check for real pr value.

And another myth. How do you know it?
There are dozens of directories that never disappeared on brand name - but no doubt - it was penalized.
Eg. If site is established PR4-5 - but all sub pages of PR0 - how can you explain it if not a penalty?
And often it doesn't concern categories pages but also any other - also those rich an unique content pages.

 

All directories did get penalized, it's no myth. I would have said it did not matter but some directories do have some good unique content pages as you said. I think Obelia was simply saying that it no longer faced as much penalty as it did have althouhg she can put you straight on that.

 

Thank you John for posting this and to Aviva for the great article. Good news, keep it up!!

 

Actually, I don't know for sure, because no-one knows Google's secret sauce. I can only guess, based on the evidence that many of the penalised directories disappeared from the SERPs for their proper names at around the same time. This is Aaron Wall's take on the issue:

http://www.seobook.com/how-know-difference-between-automated-penalty-hand-edit

 

The things Jeff said were rather basic SEO. I always eliminated unnecessary pages or used nofollw tags on them.

About us or contact pages usually get PR for being rather important than other inner pages often, an old SEO factor, rather a weak one, but it's always good to have them.

The thing that got us in trouble is the paid links. Like he admitted, we probably did too much, getting links from irrelevant sites, doing for pushing PR bar...

 

Rephrase, HE probably did too much of it, and it was because of people like him and the greed he showed that everyone else got punished. Let's open our eyes here everyone, this guy is coming back trying to eat humble pie yet he hasn't once said something like...'Hey everyone, I'm really really sorry for setting such a bad example and starting this whole link buying Google penalization thing...'

Actually he hasn't said a thing, he's expecting others to do this for him.

 

Jeff is trying to learn from his past experience and improve his business. Its great that he shared his methods and results with us. He put considerable effort into it with no guarantee of success.

As individuals, we can decide which path to take.

Resistance is futile. ​

 

I realize that CE and my view is he's done his time for the crime so let him get on, but this patting on the back nonsense is madness, he and others like him are the reason that so many directories are now a PR0 and losing any investment they made.

The problem is with choosing paths though is that many are so vulnerable on here and they follow the leader, it's that which leaves a bitter taste in people's mouths.

 

I think he was very lucky to get the chance to have his penalty addressed directly
many of us are and will not be so lucky so we will just have to blindy grope around in the dark for a way out of it
theres plenty of "experts" giving advice on what or not to do but its gonna be a matter of trying what you think is best
as was said before there are a lot of factors which may relate to one directory and not the other

I dont think I or anyone could blame Aviva or any of the other directories for how things now are
people saw the chance of making a killing at that time and they did
a lot of people got swept up in it and it would happen again if another method was found

 

I did not see how long he was unindexed for. Does anyone know how much time he spent in jail?

 

September 2007 I think