When Google Gets Penalties Wrong
Dan Sharp
Posted 19 July, 2012 by Dan Sharp in SEO
When Google Gets Penalties Wrong
I wanted to share a very interesting Google penalty case that we ecountered recently.
An old client who owns an ecommerce website with a multi-million pound turnover and sells electronic goods called me out of the blue a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning, extremely concerned because their website had completely dropped out Google’s search results. Never the type of phone call you want to receive.
Overview
This is how the plummet in visibility looked in Search Metrics to help you visualise what happened –
A quick analysis showed they were no longer appearing for any search terms, even their own brand. But their website hadn’t changed, they didn’t have any problematic robots directives, their pages were still indexed (they showed under a site: command) and they had no obvious signs of hacking with embedded links or malware etc.
I immediately looked at their backlink profile which was quite clean. I couldn’t see anything immediately problematic at all. But there certainly appeared to be a penalty.
Our old client no longer had a Google WMT account, so I asked them to verify this immediately and see if there were any messages from Google. Sure enough a few hours after verifying the account, the following message arrived –
I had to double take at the above message. They were being accused of selling links that pass PageRank.
As I mentioned above, this is medium sized business with a multi-million pound business who sell electronics goods through their ecommerce website, why on earth would they ever sell links? Our old client assured us that this wasn’t the case at all.
Analysis
So we looked into the issue and performed a crawl of the website (yes using our SEO spider) and found a handful of external links. Of which, two product pages on the website appeared to be linking out to a direct competitor which was strange.
These two product pages had 4-5 embedded keyword rich links within the product description all to the competitor, linking to the brand overview of the product, the model number, product page and even a help guide.
As an example, I’ll use the well known Currys website. Please note, this did not happen to Currys, this is an example. Their product description is fairly standard as you can see below –
Now just imagine that 4-5 of the key phrases in the ‘product details’ area at the bottom such as ‘Samsung’, ‘SA1UTMG’ and ‘Fridge Freezer’ etc were all hyperlinks to a direct competitor.
This is what we discovered on two of the pages. Stupid yes, but selling links? Really? No, of course not. Why would they sell links on a product page to a direct competitor? Was this really the problem?
Anyone who works online will probably be able to guess quite easily what had happened for these links to appear. Quite simply a couple of new products had arrived and a member of the team wanted to upload them manually to the website. Instead of writing unique content, they just wanted to upload the standard manufacturer’s copy quickly. To do this they copied it from the said competitor and pasted it directly into their CMS. When you copy and paste in this manner, it can also copy the hyperlinks though! Hence, they also copied the embedded internal links from their competitor into their own product description.
Again, stupid yes. Very. Their team knows that they should write unique copy for each product, but from time to time they do use the standard manufacturer’s descriptions when in a rush. A much larger concern was copying content from elsewhere for obvious legal reasons, but without condoning this behaviour, the said team member knew it was just the standard manufacturer’s copy.
Recovery
Our old client removed the hyperlinks and submitted a reinclusion reconsideration request to Google. Exactly 18 days later, they received a message saying the manual action had been revoked –
3-4 days later, the website was nearly completely recovered, as can be seen in (now the standard) Search Metrics visualisation –
Summary
You might argue that being silly enough to copy someone else’s website that this was their own fault, and you would be right. But the really interesting part of this case is that –
- Google were convinced enough that they were selling links, that they even dropped them for brand related search queries. This was not just a penalty, but an extreme penalty. The website those links were pointing to (so the website which was therefore ‘buying links’) was not impacted at all.
- Google were wrong. They convicted the website for selling links without trial when most who work online (or perhaps my SEO mindset has too much bias), it was pretty evident that this was not the case. The fact that this was a manual action also shows this was a real person who reviewed the case, it was not an automatic penalty. So even Googlers make mistakes, they are just a little more costly.
- How did they discover these links when it was just two pages on a website with over 1.5K product pages? It’s my belief that they got flagged due to quantity (there were 4-5) within textual content which were extremely keyword heavy. So watch overdoing links in articles guys, it’s a clear signal. We also considered that conversely the website who our old client was linking to might have been accused of buying links. But this does not seem to be the case at all, their link profile is clean and they have remained in the search results.
On a final note, this is exactly why you should never put all your eggs into that one Google basket. Even when you try to stay by the rules, you can make silly mistakes, which end up causing much, much larger ramifications to your business.
I’d be happy to answer any queries regarding this case if anyone has any questions.
Excellent post Dan, thanks for sharing your story. We all know there are a lot of sites out there that simply copy content. It shows why it’s both important to create unique content and why it’s a good tactic to use internal linking on your own sites product descriptions in some instances (sparingly of course). Cheers
Thanks for your comments Andrew.
Completely agree, it’s a rather painful lesson that they have now learnt from (I hope!).
Do you think they would have got the penalty if they had been no followed?
It seems amazing so few links did this…millions of sites surely act this way with good reason. What is the real signal that invoked the penalty….surely subtle?
If they were ‘nofollow’ then presumably it would of been fine.
I agree, it is amazing that two pages with 4-5 external links on them would do this. Particulary when they didn’t even look like paid links, just a silly mistake that anyone with copyscape could identify.
In my opinion Google have a system in place that flags X number of keyword rich links in X amount of content.
Either that, or a competitor flagged them for selling links. But like I mentioned in the article, the website ‘buying the links’ was not impacted in the slightest.
The scariest thing is just how trivial this is in reality – Mistakes like this are easy to make. Why on earth are Google being so heavy handed?
Ahhhhh. This is just messed up.
In my opinion adding nofollow to links within content is just unrealistic. You can’t expect to the folks uploading content to know what nofollow is, what it does and when to implement it.
Thanks for sharing this story. It’s an excellent illustration of the dangers of relying on Google or trusting them to do the right thing with manual reviews.
Thanks Matt.
Completely unrealistic agreed, they didn’t know the links were there. They would never link to a competitor like that purposefully, they just made a simple mistake.
What worries me is the level of expertise on the manual review itself. It’s a big decision to kill a companies business in Google and shouldn’t be taken unless they are absolutely convinced by the evidence. I just don’t see how they can be in this case, it was trivial at best.
It’s actually sort of terrifying that such a minor thing can kill a site. We had a rather loud and swear laden discussion recently where we were arguing the fact that Google is forcing everyone that does any business on the internet to become an expert on the Google guidelines with no room for error.
It’s unrealistic to think that everyone that uses the internet for commerce also has the time to study and be fluent with the desires of Google. And to drop the hammer over such a small issue is insane.
Hit.Nail.Head. there Steve!
Just goes to show how unrealistic the big G’s expectations are.
Part of the problem could have been what you mentioned with the site being well known (possibly in the UK, not US) and having many more pages (99%?) which were clean – did the reviewer take these into account? Is there a general credibility check? Or are manual reviewers under time pressure for performance reasons and are forced to make quick decisions? I know they go through intense training to get this right but (costly) mistakes will happen, its human nature to not be 100% accurate, every time.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you got the WMT warning and had a few days to react before the penalty? Not that your client would have noticed since they weren’t using it but just putting it out there; I know you wouldn’t want to encourage spammers to black hat the hell out of their sites, await a penalty notice then change things quickly but perhaps if there was a doubt, the manual intervention team could use it
Thanks for your comments Depesh.
I’m presuming they take the whole site into consideration, but I don’t know a huge amount about the manual review process at Google. It was just two product pages out of 1.5K’ish with external links.
You’re right that the client might of been sent a message sometime before they received it because they didn’t have an account.
But again, you’d think Google might take this into consideration. The site isn’t verified in Google WMT’s, so if you’re going to give them a two week period to fix the issue before penalising, it’s fairly pointless.
Matt, I know you mentioned this was an old client of yours but did they have any kind of paid link issue in the past that would warrant such a harsh smack? I would understand the time-out if they were repeat offenders but if they weren’t what happened does seem excessive. Very excessive.
Good article :)
Hey Debra,
Agreed! They have never had a penalty of any kind in Google in the past at all (before or during working with us).
Which is why it is again rather puzzling.
Btw, it’s Dan :-)
Hi Matt,
Your ex-client is somewhat fortunate to have the resources and been able to get in touch with you and obtained your expertise.
I read this post earlier from SEObook: http://www.seobook.com/curious-case-small-business-and-seo and wondered how many SMBs had to shut down their businesses just because they didn’t have the same fortunes. It’s a bit grim to be honest and it shouldn’t be that way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Good work by the way :)
Oops, Sorry Dan!! :D
LOL, no worries :-)
I had a quick look into that issue yesterday during the buzz. It was definitely related to buying low value network links if you look at their historical link profile.
A grim story indeed and a shame help came a bit too late for them as there were plenty of SEO’s offering their time, which was inspiring.
Google get things wrong.
Far more often than people realise.
In this case, your client was fortunate that it was only a Manual Penalty,
rather than an Automated Algorythmic Filter.
When G screw up and do a Manual wrong – they can rectify it quickly.
When G stuffs you over with a misclassification via somethign like Panda or Penguin – you may well be screwed for Months with no recourse.
Google should be answerable in such instances, if not held as accountable in such cases.
Seems a rather slap dash approach to manual action.
Random scenario – but what would happen if you link to the original manufacturer (they may sell direct too) from one of your own product pages? And their business name happens to be keyword rich with an EMD? 4/5 times is unlikely I guess, but a couple? Potentially.
You can’t expose “when Google gets penalties wrong” without actually demonstrating the merits… you’re write fluff and pretending that’s research.
You’ve also posted some ridiculous assumptions… but ok here’s a fair rebuttal.
If I was Curry I would file a C&D with your host and file DMCA with all search engines to disable “MY LIKENESS” for copyright infringement.
If you don’t want to disclose the parties involved that’s your right, but intentionally disclosing a non-fictional competitor to represent your customer (for dramatization) is potentially harmful to that other firm.
Did you get their permission to do this?
Did you explain the risks?
Did you actually investigate this other’s firm mertis (or webspam)?
Writing to potentially expose flaws in Google system isn’t this… you are acting fraudulently by preserving your customers’ identity by exposing an innocent 3rd party (presumably without their permission) to unknown damages.
That’s fraud!
I think you’re confused with what fraud is Fathom.
You must of also missed this part –
“As an example, I’ll use the well known Currys website. Please note, this did not happen to Currys, this is an example. Their product description is fairly standard as you can see below”
I wanted to use a general product description that was similar, that’s what I did.
I can’t see how using a screenshot of someones product description is harmful. If Currys want it removed though, not a problem.
But thanks for the comments!
If you don’t monitor WMT then I’m afraid you’ve made yourself extremely vulnerable. Ultimately this company got what they deserved. Sounds harsh but WMT is there to provide warnings and monitor issues on your site. Google usually only take such drastic action once they have given you a warning and still no action is taken.
I totally disagree with the above comment that it’s “slap dash”. Yes, it would be slap dash to take action without warning people and giving them an opportunity to explain. But they don’t – they give you WMT and if you monitor that, you can take swift action before the penalty. This issue could have been so easily fixed.
Having said that, I would be surprised if they took this action unless there are a significant number of keyphrase rich links. Was this the case?
Thanks for sharing, very interesting case study. A lesson for website owners in just how important it is to a) have webmaster tools and b) monitor it frequently.
It was two pages out of 1.5K.
Both had 4-5 keyword links in the product description.
Just to put this in perspective, you’re saying it’s proportionate and fair for Google to slam a website out of its index for having 4-5 links – irrelevant of keyword makeup or destination URL – purely because they weren’t savvy enough to use GWT? In turn, depriving them of thousands/tens of thousands worth of revenue.
I’d call that abuse of power.
If this action was indeed on the back of a manual review of the website in question, I’m sure members of Google’s Search Quality team know how to use a contact form…
@Martin and @screamingfrog
No, I certainly don’t think it’s fair to take such action for 4-5 links on two pages out of 1.5k. Without having seen the pages and the site you’re referring to, it’s surprising that they would take such drastic action for such a small number of links. I expected that this would have been a much larger problem.
I can see your point, however I’m afraid Google provide GWT for precisely this reason – to help webmasters be more aware about how their site appears to Google, and alert them of any problems.
Putting this case aside – because we haven’t actually seen the site so it’s only anecdotal evidence – Google have to draw the line somewhere. Likewise, if you don’t know the green cross code, you might not stop, look and listen – then you get hit by the Google shuttle bus taking the webspam team to work. You might not deserve to be run over, but that’s life. So, if you’re going to avoid such penalties, unfortunately you do now have to be much more savvy and it’s important that you are made aware of and utilise the tools that they give you.
I might not be saying this if it was my business that lost 000s. However, the harsh truth is that you leave yourself more open to a penalty if you’re not vigilant. Google are not going to get it right all of the time, but you need to put yourself into a position to defend yourself if they get it wrong. Therefore, from a totally dispassionate perspective, whilst I sympathise with the site owners, ultimately they had inadvertently left themselves open to this. Important lesson learned and at least they’ve recovered.
Almost unbelievable… but very interesting stuff.
“I’m glad Google woke up, but they’re like a bear who hibernated for two years and then suddenly started mauling people to make up for lost time.” – Dr Pete, SEOMoz.
In regards to the statement:
“The fact that this was a manual action also shows this was a real person who reviewed the case, it was not an automatic penalty.”
I’ve been trying to figure out if this is true or not, and I’ve got a theory. I’ve come to believe that “manual action” may mean that an algorithm designed to look for specific Google-guideline infractions, such as unnatural links, created a list of websites. The websites in this list were then likely randomly sampled by people to ensure a certain statistical level of acceptability. Then a person flipped a switch to penalize the websites on the list. I believe this person flipping the switch is what constitutes a “manual action”.
This case makes me think my theory may be correct.
Hi Doug,
Exactly. I think manual reviewers are sent a bunch of sites that have been flagged for various reasons, via algorithmic detection and spam submissions.
So I can see why they might of been flagged algorithmically.
What worries me is that they were then reviewed manually and judged to of been selling links, when it clearly was not the case.
Dan,
We don’t know that those links you found (and removed) were the cause. Because you removed them and asked for re-inclusion, which was granted, does not mean they were the reason. Google may have imposed the penalty for ANY REASON (undisclosed), and re-included FOR ANY REASON (undisclosed).
I suspect the big story is not that this site with those links got penalized. The big story has to do with Google moving markets through cowardly, unaccountable actions (like these penalties) while reserving the right to undo them as desired, with no accountability.
I cannot walk away with any real value from the report that a few links in a product description may or may not have been responsible for a penalty. Rather, I marvel at the scammy way Google operates these days, and how little any of us can do about it.
So the big question for SEO is.. how to navigate a scammy world dominated by such a shifty player that people still trust?
Entirely agree John and I wish I had an answer.
I wrote this post pre to what happened last night as well.
Insane.
Hi dan, good read.
It took 3 days to get reincluded but 18 days for a reply? Am I missing something?
Hi Mike,
It took 18 days for Google to reply to the reconsideration request with a revoked manual action message.
Then around 3 days for their old rankings to start returning to where they were pre-ban.
This is too much power in the hands of a few, guided by algos, without the time to really analyze.
I think you’ve illustrated your point very well Dan, and that @fathom is just cranky. ;)
I also kinda disagree with @John Andrews (that doesn’t happen very often!) It seems to me that it’s a safe assumption but if all you did was remove those links, and a penalty was lifted after a reinclusion request, then those were the logical cause of the penalty.
Thanks for the comments Scott.
It’s certainly my belief that this was the cause. We didn’t change anything else at all and explained what had occured and what links were removed in our reconsideration request.
They then revoked the penalty.
That said, with the recent Google unnatural links e-mails, you can never be 100% sure exactly what Google have a problem with. ;-)
Great investigation work!
I would like to ask though, why did Google “revoke” the reconsideration, yet then start reindexing your client’s pages? Or did I read that wrong and they actually revoked the penalty that they were giving your client? Either way, great job finding and fixing the issue!
Thanks Sean.
Yeah they revoked the penalty from the reconsideration request we sent.
So after they did that, the site started to rank where they did pre penalty after 3-4 days.
Hey there,
I wrote a quick blog on this subject after reading this the other day – feel free to check it out. Unfortunately you’ll have to tweet @ampedsocial to get involved in a discussion as we have a temporary issue with commenting on the site! Or please do tweet me @markadoi84, as I’d be very interested to hear what other people think.
http://ampedsocial.com/has-google-found-the-answer-to-negative-seo/
Thx for the very interesting case on stupid things happening when doing seo. The bad thing however seems that it always takes quite a while to recover from such penalties. Easy mistake possibly huge impact.
THX
ALexander
I think the take away from this is how important links still are to Google. There does seem to be an all out war on the links front at the moment, esp anything that indicates anchor text.
BTW, love your SF tool.
Perhaps I should join the latest fashion and call you Matt as well?
Anyway, Dan, thanks for a good read. While I am happy that Google are doing things to try and improve search results, I can’t help but feel they are getting a little too big for their boots by playing judge, jury and executioner. I realized some months ago that Google is just too fickle to rely on for a source of income.
You guys ever see a site get banned and Google doesn’t notify them?
Depends what you mean by banned.
Not showing in the search results, even for their brand?
Or site deindexed from the results?
Generally, if you get a manual penalty you will get a notice. If you have seen a drop in visibility but no message, it could well be algorithmic for various reasons.
I really think if Google is going to penalize the hell out of your website they should send the email to your business email address.
I know so many Small Businesses that set up a Webmasters account and don’t check it for months on end.
Wow. Just wow. That’s unreal that Google would smash the site that badly, for a few links on 2 pages. What was that about “Do No Evil” again….looks like Google has a very short term memory.
woow this is a very interesting case study, I believe that the actions we took were very extreme google. This will help me to look good every step I take, and keep in mind that the big Google is watching you …
Another case of Google putting the cart before the horse? But I suppose too that you have to consider the sheer volume of issues they have to deal with on a daily basis. If they were to have trial by jury for each case, nothing would ever get done. Looks to me like the team will have to take better care next time. A lesson learned no doubt.
This is a good example of being to reliant on one source for your traffic. Google definitely has too much power to make and break businesess
I just stumbled onto this article and I can’t believe you wrote this in 2012. I’m actually dealing with something eerily similar. Although the site isn’t as big as the e-commerce.
I’m documenting everything on my blog as a case study. But I’m starting to have a feeling that they also misclassified my penalty. I only have 33 domains linking to the site in question, and I disavowed the majority of them, but I still have the penalty.
I’m thinking of just “nofollowing” every link on the site since I don’t know what google would think is a paid link or not. Which there are none.
Hi, thanks for thsi interesting insight. Yes, Google does makes it mistakes. Any info on the phantom update and the downgrade of reputable blogs?
Regards Enno
I just fall over this article by search for something.. lets say simmilar… and i wonder (even in 2012) that Google is taking notice about these few links.
I see a lot of ecommerce websites that has and still doing this for link distribution, even the large once….
Strange, that this webseite gots a penalty…