'Net Features : pagerank

5 Ways to Be Banned By Google Overnight

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Google’s algorithms may be a black box, but its Webmaster Guidelines are meant to leave little room for speculation, yet some gray area remains. While the guidelines are written in easy-to-use language and outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise impacted by an algorithmic or manual spam action, there are no real-word examples, albeit for good reason.

Here are past and present examples of how to get your website banned by Google overnight.

1. Participate in Link Schemes

Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered a link scheme, as was the case in 2011, when the New York Times uncovered a link-building scheme by J.C. Penney. The retailer ranked number one for bedding, dresses, area rugs, and other vague and specific keywords, with “uncanny regularity” for several months. After consulting with an industry expert, the New York Times found 2,015 pages with phrases like “casual dresses,” “evening dresses,” “little black dress” or “cocktail dress,” which all bounced directly to the main page for dresses on JCPenney.com.

NYT excerpt: There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on.

J.C. Penney said they did not authorize and were not involved or aware of the posting of links that the New York Times sent to them. J.C. Penney immediately fired their SEO agency, but not before Google took manual action against the brand for violating its guidelines. Overnight, J.C. Penney was vanished from search results for anything other than branded keywords (a.k.a. direct searches for J.C. Penney). It took about three months for J.C. Penney to move up the rankings and regain lost rankings.

Build links the right way with Website Magazine’s Big List of Link-Building Strategies

2. Include Doorway Pages

Google defines doorway pages as those that are large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. Google always frowns upon manipulating search engines and deceiving users. In 2006, BMW suffered Google’s wrath for setting up doorway pages to attract search engines and redirect traffic to its German website, BMW.de. BMW’s page rank was reduced to zero. While BMW stated it did not intend to deceive users, the company added, “However, if Google says all doorway pages are illegal we have to take this into consideration."

3. Sell Links that Pass PageRank

Selling links that pass PageRank violates Google’s quality guidelines; this includes advertorial pages with embedded links that pass PageRank. Google recently penalized Interflora, even removing it from branded search results, for using advertorials to solely influence search rankings. An example of this, is that Interflora reportedly sent bloggers floral arrangements in exchange for links. This was once considered a gray area, but is clearly black hat now.

Google’s Matt Cutts responded, indirectly, to this incident with this blog.

4. Scrape Content

In 2012, Google blacklisted a network of websites run by the family of U.K. Parliament member Grant Shapps after the search giant found the sites breached rules on copyright infringement and that they were based on scraped content. This latter black-hat tactic is typically when webmasters use content from other sites to try to increase credibility and the volume of pages.

According to Shapps’s spokesman (as reported by the Guardian UK), the Parliament member “is quite simply not involved in this business.” Certainly, it was avoidable bad press nonetheless.

5. Use a “Bad” Blog Network

If your site belongs to a blog network whose purpose is to create backlinks, Google will de-index them and penalize you. In 2012, this happened to Build My Rank, which ultimately closed down and relaunched as HP Backlinks. The relaunch, however, has many people wondering if (and when) Google will go after the network again.

Check out this guide to identifying bad links and disavowing them.

Bonus: Start Cloaking — If you want to get on Google’s bad side, present different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Google bans this practice, because it provides users with different results than they expected. Unfortunately, some sites unknowingly use cloaking. For example, if your site is compromised, hackers may use cloaking to make the hack harder for the site owner to detect. Use Website Magazine’s cloaking checker to avoid a penalty.

PageRank Update the Most Important Ever?

Administrator — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:00:00 GMT

After nearly six months of waiting, word is out that Google has just pushed out new PageRank values.

This is the first update since January 2011 and the first since the now infamous Panda update clawed through a long list of sites. While many have questioned the value of PageRank in the past (some even very recently), the update might just provide site owners/webmasters/SEO’s an indication of just how Google currently perceives their site’s authority and standing.

Because of the rapidly evolving search landscape, WM believes this might just be one of the most important (meaningful) PR updates in a very long time. It is also interesting to note that the recent PageRank update closely follows Google’s release of a new Google Toolbar a few weeks ago.

Toolbar PageRank Update from Google

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:31:00 GMT

The Web is abuzz with word that Google is pushing out a New Year's PageRank update that is in progress right now. There have been reports over the past two weeks that the update was occurring, but it finally looks like the rollout is officially here.

WM's advice related to PageRank is that it should not be an indicator or metric of your success. Only actual website traffic and conversions receive that distinction. If you follow your PageRank status closely, the best guidance on how to ensure it improves is to focus on appropriate internal linking structures and building authority links to secondary (inner) pages on your site - not just a canonicalized version of your home/index page. That's good advice if you believe in PageRank or not.

Did the PageRank of your site(s) go up, go down or stay the same? Comment below and let other WM readers know.

Google PageRank Sculpting For SEO Profit (Part 2)

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:53:00 GMT

Starting the Process or PR Sculpting

If you are starting a PageRank sculpting process for your website (read part one of PageRank Sculpting for SEO Profit), proceed with caution. SEO’s must first do an in depth analysis of the website being optimized and determine which pages you are trying to rank for on the search result pages, which pages you are not trying to get ranked (but would like to be indexed and found for) and finally which pages you don’t need to be indexed by the search engines at all.

Each website is going to be different depending upon its goals which is why information on how to sculpt PR (and for which pages it is important) is so sparse. It is important to focus on how potential visitors can find your site. For a local website where displaying the physical address is essential, I would highly recommend not adding the nofollow attribute to links pointing to your contact page. However, if you put your physical address on all your pages (which I highly recommend for all website promote a local product or services) you may be able to nofollow that specific page. Again, the point is to evaluate your website and develop a strategy before you start applying nofollow on individual links to web pages.

Before proceeding into the actual implementation of PR Sculpting, let’s first discuss when and why PR Sculpting should NOT be used.

A way to cut corners on your initial SEO. You still need to develop well thought out website with SEO in mind from day one. It would be best to include PR Sculpting in the beginning when putting together your SEO Checklist.
A poorly designed internal linking structure. PR Sculpting isn’t meant to be used as a way to compensate for poorly designed site architecture.
A substitute for link building. If you don’t have any incoming links to start with you really don’t have much to sculpt, now do you?

Now that we have outlined what PR Sculpting is and the potential pitfalls, we can get into how to use this strategy for your SEO benefit.

Track everything - Make sure you mark the date you started so you can go back and look at your analytics. Did the PR Sculpting make any difference in the amount of traffic my site was receiving? Google updates their PR every 3 months at best and the publicly listed Google PR may or may not be accurate. Your goal should not be to increase your Google PR number but rather the amount of traffic you’re receiving.
Do a complete search engine ranking report - Keep a record of how you were performing with your keywords on the SERP’s so after your do some PR Sculpting you can go back and check its effectiveness.
Check backlinks on all of your webpages - First, see what kind of incoming links you have to play with. You may discover that some of your internal pages have some incoming links and are worth sculpting.
Cover your bases - Again, I can’t state this enough, be absolutely sure if you want a page to show up in the Search Engine index’s make sure it can spidered and indexed via another means other than the link with the nofollow attribute. i.e. XML Sitemap.

Other than the obvious (About Us/Email Us, Login/My Account, Privacy Policy/Legal Notice, Customer Support/Help Center, Testimonials, View Shopping Cart) what are some other ways to use PR Sculpting?

The classic example for using PR Sculpting is if you have an ecommerce site with multiple products you are selling on each webpage. Say a webpage has over 50 products and each product has 3 different links pointing to the same webpage. One link is a text link with the product model name in the anchor text, one is an image link, and one is a “Click Here” text link. It would make sense to nofollow the image and “Click Here” link in order to just pass on link juice through the link which has a keyword in the anchor text. This method can be done through a number of different applications. Be creative.

Although most PR Sculpting starts with your index page because typically your index page has the most incoming links and thus the highest Google Page Rank, don’t limit yourself to your index page. For example let’s say you have created a great new magic widget that’s become a great new linkbaiting vehicle for your website. Why not direct all those incoming links to your index page or top converting product page. So PR Sculpting doesn’t always have to be top level down it can work in reverse as well.

While many argue the value of Google PR Sculpting I would generally recommend this technique if done correctly. In addition, don’t think you need a site with thousands of internal pages for this tactic to successful. The ratio is still the same. If you nofollow one link on a site with only ten internal webpages versus a site with thousands of internal pages you are actually make more of a difference with the smaller website. Also keep in mind Google PageRank is by no mean the end all be all to ranking well. I still see pages with lower PageRank ranking higher on the SERP’s than pages with higher PageRank. PageRank is just one of thousands of factors that go into a Search Engine Algorithm. I’m not advocating by any means that this is your silver bullet to crack into the top 10 for a search term you have been gunning for years now. Good SEO still take a lot of time and effort. But with all that effort you have spent on link building, PR Sculpting is a viable means to direct all of that effort in a more effective manner. Just another piece in an attempt at solving the SEO puzzle.

We’d like to hear from you… Are you implementing the nofollow tag to your internal links, have you seen any positive/negative results on your search engine rankings and/or SE traffic. Is PR Sculpting a useful SEO strategy? Let us know; register and comment now.

Follow PageRank? Follow This!

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:31:00 GMT

If you're one of the many Web professionals that follow the Google PageRank of your site, its competitors or your advertising partners, you should know that in the next few days new toolbar PageRank values will become visible according to Google's Matt Cutts. Google typically does a new push of toolbar PageRanks every three or four months, but the buzz with this update is that Google will be expiring some older penalties on websites - not that you have a penalty or anything.