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Cause Marketing

Recovered post from the Consulate General of the United States website announcing Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world's largest and most progressive group of breast cancer survivors and activists, will speak on "The Power of One--How Every Individual Can Make a World of Difference," on Wednesday, March 28, at 10:00 a.m., at the Rocky Hotel in Ramallah. The event is being sponsored by the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Business Women Forum, in association with the Middle East Partnership Initiative.

The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism

As the financial crisis of 2008 was underway, Arthur C. Brooks wrote that a genuine cultural schism was developing in an America concerned over government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and financial sector immune from oversight and laws.

Restoring Ranks Post Panda

by Bob Sakayama
15 December 2014

Search Rank Malaise

There are a large number of websites that were at one time dominant players in the search, lost that dominance when penalized in Google, succeeded in getting the penalties revoked, but never recovered their former ranking stature. And although sales have been hurt, the business survives, even as multiple efforts to regain ranks fail. Repeated failures cause optimization resources to be withdrawn, as the enterprise focuses on what still appears viable, leading to a chronic malaise regarding search performance that is paralyzing and dangerous, benefiting only Google Adwords.

When Ranks Don't Recover After

+ manual action revoked
+ link profile periodically cleansed
+ link building restricted to compliant strategies
+ over-optimization of keywords/links removed
+ duplicate tags/content addressed
+ content made more robust & visible on page load
+ page load time optimized (under 5 seconds)
+ outbound links vetted, orphans made nodindex, etc.

The danger of doing nothing is that without informed intervention, the rank loss is going to worsen as Google ramps up the standards it demands of sites permitted to rank productively. There are already new compliance requirements in play for links, content, and user experience. So even with intervention, the healing process is unlikely to be fast, and efforts to advance rank will fail as long as those efforts are not addressing all the issues involved. It is very common for sites to be impacted for multiple problems.

Many of the sites in this position have had legacy link problems due to contractors hired to build links, and although this post is focused on the new challenges posed by Panda 4+, it is first essential that links are under control. Many businesses are unaware that once penalized for unnatural links, if the profile is left unmanaged, it's very common for those problems to return with time, requiring repeated monitoring of the link profile. This is especially true for all links that are intended to be copied and distributed, like those in infographics, articles, and press releases. What happens is that 3rd parties subscribe, scrape, or copy the content containing the links, so your numbers are always growing. Google holds you responsible for any text link that gets implemented do follow. The bigger the initial link numbers, the more likely that this cleansing process needs to continue. There is a real need to update your disavows, not only for the unwanted growth of legacy links, but to preempt a negative seo attack. Sites that once held very high ranks & paid for link building are the most likely to have legacy link issues as well as 3rd party attackers.

Worst Case Scenario: All Your Links Are Bad

Sites recovering from link penalties fall into 2 categories. Those whose ranks were entirely supported by unnatural links, and those that once had high ranks supported by healthy link profiles. Restoring the ranks of the former could be impossible, or very expensive. A site penalized in this situation is going to have to devote resources just to get to the point where they can start over. When large numbers are involved, because of the knock-on effects of automated link building and other hidden liabilities, abandoning a domain and starting over can sometimes be the smart move, but it's clearly a last resort. (The number of previously owned domains that have been 'nuked' by a former owner, yet available for purchase through the registrars, has been increasing, so don't assume an available domain is 'clean' when purchased!)

Factors Observed To Improve Performance

But if a site once had a healthy link profile that supported productive ranks, the chances of further rank recovery are excellent. The problem facing every site owner has been the lack of knowledge regarding specifics. It takes time to discover exactly what Panda updates are targeting, since the only evidence we have is the result of experiments conducted on sites harmed by the last update. One thing that most of the sites had in common was seo. Once again, like what we saw with the link penalties, seos played a major role in creating environments that Google does not like. Some sites responded well when we simply removed over-optimized internal linking. Others responded when content was made more robust and in-depth, or when automated content was replaced with original. But ALL sites performed better when there were dramatic changes to the overall presentation and even page layout. In the case of Panda 4+, the specifics that lead to rank improvement point to an underlying philosophy and a major change in emphasis for Google.

The Panda Imperative

After Panda 4, websites are being held to new standards. And these standards, although they have been in place for some time, are only now being discovered by the mainstream seo community. That's the good news. The bad news is that they can require significant changes to the way content on websites is presented. Since content/layout changes can be time consuming, restoring ranks hit by Panda (or just trying to rank well) is a long term project that should already be underway. This update impacts ALL sites, so it is imperative that its goals are understood and acted upon.

Panda's Real Intention: Evaluations That Reward Engagement

We've discovered that the factors that improve the ranks of sites hit by Panda in 2014 are surprising, particularly because they have less to do with the content itself, and more with the presentation of it. More specifically, Google is rewarding implementations that improve readability, source citation, media usage, image usage, relevant contextual linking, page specific navigation to related information, links to authority sites, formal document structure (h1, h2...), and anything that clarifies, engages, or creates opportunities for further discovery.

The Misunderstood Panda

For some time, the seo community has assigned the wrong motive for some of the targets of the update - like thin, copied, or spammy content - assuming Panda's actions were enforcing compliance issues. But it looks pretty obvious now that Panda's true mission, in addition to all the previous, is to evaluate sites based on factors contributing to user experience or engagement. We suspect thin, copied, or spammy content is being demoted by this update, not for compliance or even semantic reasons, but because it makes for bad engagement, and it harms Google's reputation to serve up such pages. The same for page-load speed - a long wait creates a negative user experience.

From my post on Google-Penalty.com

"Unlike the old penalties, where the problem was obvious to find and fix - bad links, keyword stuffing, duplicate/non-original content - the new standards require an examination of the overall presentation, including layout, images, media, page specific navigation, reviews, references, citation, etc. Other than seeing your ranks improve, how can you measure success?

Many seos believe that the metric to watch is bounce rate, since that measures the failure of a page to engage. While bounce rate is an unlikely ranking factor by itself, the idea that it's related inversely to engagement is spot on and useful, since we have seen that improving engagement is one of the solutions. Lowering the bounce rate clearly demonstrates better engagement. In addition, Google has already developed the technology to evaluate and measure engagement potential and uses it to rank Adwords ads. Panda may already be tapping into this technology and applying it to the natural search. In Adwords, your ads are rated 1-10, based on bid and quality score (engagement factors) applied to the ad text, the landing page, etc. High rated ads are cheaper and display higher than low rated ads - basically the organic rank for ads.

The penalty recovery evidence supports this view. Pandalized sites recover by focusing improvements on content presentation and on providing more appropriate opportunities for the user to engage. Exactly the ingredients that drive successful ads."

No More Tabs & Read Mores

Among the major changes already impacting sites is Google's claimed ability to be able to evaluate pages as visitors see them, and as a result, content that is not visible may be discounted as not important. That includes content within javascript & jquery hides (read more), tabs - which are very common implementations. In this video, John Mueller claims that content hidden behind a 'read more' link may not be credited to the site. Likewise content hidden in tabs.

What Google is messaging loud and clear is that if a reader doesn't see the content without first taking an action, that's a bad user experience. Given the emphasis on user experience, popups, popouts, especially persistent ones, will likely lower your rating, especially if you have to clear them to read. Anything that interrupts the read, disturbs the experience.

I prepared a short list of points for webmasters to address when building or remediating sites going forward. But the needs and culture of every business are different. When considering what changes to make to a site, think about the specific kinds of engagement that would genuinely benefit the visitors. The list below can keep you on track, but to beat the competition you need to be adding new ideas and doing a better job of implementing them.

Guessing Our Way Forward

If Google follows its previous strategy of gradually ramping up the standards with each update, Panda is soon going to be expecting more from websites in terms of content, functionality, readability, credibility, on top of the core user experience and engagement standards of Panda 4. Because the changes that recover Pandalized sites seem to involve page layout factors, I anticipate more standardization of acceptable page layouts and even design elements. The trend via search is toward websites that are addressing a mass media audience, so the standards that attract that audience are beginning to apply. I would then advantage sites with high quality production values, large images, serialized content, responsive design, engaged user base, media, etc. Google benefits by showing search results that are above all rewarding, deeply engaging, compelling, entertaining, and as their ability to identify attributes that contribute to a better experience improves, that knowledge will be translated into the standards high ranking sites must abide.

Dig Deeper

Download a leaked copy of Google's Quality Rating Guidelines - March 2014

Panda 4.1 : SearchEngineLand.com

Panda Do's & Dont's : TheMoralConcept.net

Standards For Link Builders

All links will need to meet clearly defined standards to ensure that only high quality links are posted to our website. These standards will also prevent links from being flagged as spam or evaluated as unnatural, which would harm the ranks of our site. This document lays out the specific requirements all links will be expected to meet. To be most effective, the links will need to be on predetermined anchors representing important keywords, provided by us. This means that every link will have to be supported by enough content to make them relevant and appropriate, in addition to contributing to a good read.

All links will be carefully vetted after posting to ensure that these standards are met.

Links must not be posted:

- to the homepage
- using automation
- in any paid link environment
- as a reciprocal exchange of links, link wheel, 3 way, or any other known link scheme
- in spun content or jibberish
- using duplicated or pasted content
- sitewide (blogrolls, lists, footers, etc.)
- on article sites or content aggregators
- in infographics
- in profiles, signatures
- in directories
- in blog comments unless relevant and supported with content
- anywhere without supporting content
- on penalized sites
- on grey market sites (porn, gaming, pharma, payday loan, etc.)
- on any site that already links to us
- on pages where the canonical is different from the url where the link is posted
- on pages with a meta robots instruction of noindex
- on any url listed as a disallow in the domain's robots.txt file
- on any url that is not indexable
- on framesets
- in popups
- on pages that redirect
- on any url that already has a massive number of links
- using the nofollow attribute, or in any manner that prevents the passing of PR

Links must be:

- pointed only to approved landing pages
- supported by enough unique content so that the relevance of the link is obvious.
- permanent
- posted on html documents only
- easily removed if necessary
- reported weekly showing source & target urls, anchor text, & the PageRank of the url hosting the link
- accessible - if the link is posted using credentials, include those credentials in the weekly report

If you any questions about the acceptability of a link, please ask before posting.

When Google Destroys Your Business

8 May 2014
by Bob Sakayama

Google's Critical Need To Repair The Integrity Of Their Search Results

While not obvious to the casual user, for the past several years, many of the businesses showing at the top of Google's search results were not ranking because of superior relevancy. Instead, they had paid seos to build large numbers of unearned links to their sites, gaining an advantage that had nothing to do with the quality of their content. This effectively corrupted the search - ironically using a strategy that until recently Google rewarded. Clearly, Google's algorithm needed a reset. So for the past couple of years, Google has been making a desperate attempt to regain the integrity of their search results. This after, for more than a decade, permitting sites using huge numbers of meaningless links, posted using automation and/or offshore labor, to advance their ranks, polluting Google's primary search results with sites successfully gaming the system. Unfortunately, Google's attempt to fix this huge problem has itself become a nightmare for the businesses who have become collateral damage in the war against spam.

Eyeglasses.com

Motivated by a personal injury that changed his life, Mark Agnew conceived, planned and then launched the business represented by his e-commerce site: Eyeglasses.com. This is a case study concerning a health care related, highly respected, 14 year old business that was thriving until the website was penalized multiple times by Google starting in February 2012.

Google Penalties

As Google amps up it's enforcement policies to address the rampant gaming of their search results, some very unseemly consequences are being realized. In order to preserve the integrity of their search results, Google penalizes the ranks of websites that are caught using off-guideline techniques to advance their search ranks. A site penalized in Google will experience huge drops in traffic and revenue - a Google penalty is an existential threat to a business.

What Could Trigger A Google Penalty?

Links to your site from other sites strongly influence Google's ranking algorithm, and this fact has created an incentive for seos to seek advantages using link schemes. As of this writing, the most common penalty is one imposed for "unnatural" links - where Google considers the links to be spammy, not supported with content, posted using tools/automation, and/or otherwise not "earned" naturally. Google wants to ensure that links are only the result of voluntary inclusion into editorial content. Too many "unnatural" links pointing to your site may result in a devastating Google penalty.

Eyeglasses.com Penalized - Google demands link removals

Eyeglasses.com was first penalized in February of 2012 for "unnatural" links. Prior to this time, the site was in the top 3 most of the time for searches including "eyeglasses" and many other valuable terms. But those ranks were gone, devastating internet sales. Although Mark never intentionally engaged in off-guideline tactics to game the search results, he had paid seos to build links, not aware of the negative consequences of that decision. By the time Google brought the hammer down, some of the links were many years old.

Although the consequences of a rank penalty are horrific, the actual remediation work is straightforward but time consuming. Since there were no records of the link building sources, we worked through the arduous process identifying the links, contacting webmasters and requesting removal. After each large batch of removal successes, we filed a request for reconsideration. Because of the large link numbers, we ran many batches. And all during this time, there are no sales from searches.

Penalty Revoked - But Ranks Do Not Return

After months of painstaking work, much higher sales losses and 6 requests for reconsideration, Google finally sent a notice of penalty revocation on 27 March 2013. There was a traffic spike on that day, but the celebration was short lived.

Google Penalties Enable The Growth Of The Negative SEO Industry

From the perspective of all who use and rely on search, actions taken by Google to prevent cheating are welcome. We all want a fair playing field. But there is an unseen consequence to harming sites for their links. As soon as it became general knowledge that links could trigger penalties, unethical seos started exploiting this fact to disadvantage their competitors by posting bad links to their sites. And a new industry, negative seo, was underway, piggybacked on Google's own enforcement protocols. It turns out that assuming website owners are responsible for their links could be a huge mistake. And ruining businesses based on false assumptions brings with it ethical implications that are a long ways from resolution. Especially for those in control of this environment, whose systems are able to reward or destroy businesses.

Eyeglasses.com Penalized Again - By Negative SEO Attack

The spike in the traffic of Eyeglasses.com after the penalty was revoked lasted only one day. Ranks remained suppressed. A month later, there was no evidence that the penalty was revoked. We continued remediation assuming that, although the manual action was revoked, the site was still under automated suppression.

Then, on 9 September 2013, Eyeglasses.com received another notice of an unnatural links penalty, this time focused on links pointed to the blog. When those links and the corresponding sites were examined closely, most were posted using the same, templated page layouts. The large numbers and the shady nature of the sites involved (most appeared to be hacked Wordpress sites) are symptomatic of a negative seo attack. Attackers use automated systems to post their links and as a result, most of their links look very similar in the way they are styled, positioned on the page, and even the layout of the pages used.

Realizing that Eyeglasses.com was the victim of a third party attack that successfully tricked Google into unjustly penalizing their site, we immediately prepared a very detailed description of the commonalities of the attacking links so that Google employees could more easily identify them. We also included many specific examples of these links when we filed for reconsideration on 14 September 2013. We also requested that Google discount all links that met the profile we provided rather than harming us for them.

Should Google Be Held Accountable When It Mistakenly Devastates A Business?

When a website comes under a negative seo attack that succeeds in triggering a penalty, Google is complicit with the attackers in harming the business, especially if there are no protocols in place to prevent or quickly reverse such a penalty. And because of the damage that penalties can cause, enabling constructive communication managed by responsible parties is key to preventing or limiting the harm to innocent parties caused by mistaken penalties.

Google's First Reaction When We Report Negative SEO: YOU ARE GUILTY

Google's first response to our evidence of a negative seo attack on Eyeglasses.com was a boilerplate message claiming they could still see "unnatural links" pointing to the site, basically ignoring the evidence and continuing to blame the owners. In our experience, this is always the first reaction from Google, strongly suggesting that our reports, no matter how detailed are not even read.

But within Google's message was some additional information - examples of our problem links. Usually, this is welcome because it points us to the types of links that have triggered the penalty. But in this instance, the example links met exactly the profile of an attack link that we so carefully included in our request. Now we know our report was not read, or if read, not understood. But by presenting these attack links as their examples of problem links, Google is confirming that the attack was successful.

And instead of acknowledging the very obvious negative seo attack Google attempts to whitewash the problem with this: "Regardless of who created the links, in order to protect the quality of our search results, we have taken action to reduce the trust of inorganic links to your site."

Nothing here to see folks, doesn't matter who posted the links, we got it covered, we have taken action.

Google Responds To Evidence Of Successful Negative SEO Attacks

For many years Google denied the significance of negative seo. When Google was recently confronted with proof that 3rd parties were succeeding in getting competitors penalized, they claimed that one way webmasters could address these attacks was by using the new disavow tool. This is a submission form where webmasters can declare links they want to be ignored. If you could identify the attacking links, just submit them.

While the disavow tool is certainly welcome in principle, if you're attacked, it's up to you to make sure the attack is not successful by detecting and then reporting the links before Google penalizes you. And the reality of being vulnerable to negative seo attacks has forced many businesses into the expense of monitoring and vetting their links monthly.

Wasn't The Disavow Tool Created To Help Sites Deal With Negative SEO?

When Eyeglasses.com attempted to report a successful negative seo attack not only was that effort ignored, but the response from Google continued to blame us for the links, and included this offensive statement: "We know that perhaps not every link can be cleaned up, but in order to deem a reconsideration request as successful, we need to see a substantial good-faith effort to remove the links, and this effort should result in a decrease in the number of bad links that we see."

Does this seem right? A third party attacks your site with links, triggering a Google penalty that destroys your business, yet Google still holds you responsible for detecting and removing enough of those bad links before they will honor your right to disavow them.

Google's Incomplete Link Data

Google claims that the link data available in their Webmaster Tools area can help you find your problem links, and they encourage you to download it if you need to run discovery on your link profile. One issue we have with their data is that you are only able to download a tiny sample of those links. So for example, Google may report that you have 50,000 links, but you may only be able to download 500. We think that is only ok if we can be assured that the problems are in the downloadable sample.

Google Search Quality Staffers Are Not Technically Robust Enough To Recognize An Attack

Not only is the G team unable to recognize a negative seo attack, even when the analysis is provided, but they are also providing suggestions that cannot be acted upon. We reported a negative seo attack, provided detailed analysis of the attacking links, including examples, and received a response that not only ignored our report, but also proved that Google was tricked by the attacker. The sample links they wanted us to address were actually part of the attack!

Even more disturbing, is that their example links were not available for download until the day we received Google's response. So they were not discoverable until we are told they are a problem. We've had other experiences where the links were not in the data even when they were given as examples. Think about this - you're being penalized while the data regarding your offense is hidden from you. In Eyeglasses.com's case the link data suddenly appeared on the day we were informed that we failed the review.

This strongly suggests that there may not be a way to preemptively address a negative seo attack using Google's data. There actually may be no way of addressing an attack successfully, period.

Because we were seeing ineptitude on a grand scale, we requested that our case be escalated to management, or at least upstream to someone at Google who was knowledgeable about negative seo.

Google Is Becoming More Insular As They Penalize More Businesses

Contrary to their claims of greater transparency, for a penalized site, and especially a site penalized by a negative seo attack, the avenues for communication or recourse have gradually been removed at a time when more and more sites are being harmed. A webmaster used to be able to file a reconsideration request by simply filling out & submitting the form. But recently Google changed the reconsideration process so that only sites that have received a manual action notice can access the form. If you come under attack and are able to detect it before being penalized for it, there's no longer a way to even communicate this problem to Google.

Eyeglasses.com's Escalation Request Ignored. Instead, Eyeglasses.com Is Given Contradictory & Bogus Information

Read our disturbing conversation with Google

By late October 2013, as we continued to remove links, we discovered that the manual action flag for the blog disappeared. This should be good news. But our effort to escalate our request into the hands of a more knowledgeable party at Google failed, and instead we received a cut and pasted email once again informing us that we still have a manual action: "As mentioned, we take action on inorganic links to your site regardless of who created the links..." Once again reminding us that they're on it, dealt with it, no matter who posted.

"The manual action is on the subdirectory http://www.eyeglasses.com/blog/. You can verify the subdirectory to see links pointing to the site."

This is referring to the process by which you create an account to access Google's data on your site. Because we detected the attack on the blog urls, we already had these accounts in place and we knew there had been no data there in the past. But now we were being instructed by Google so we looked again. There was no link data available. And none a week later.

Equally disturbing was the fact that within Webmaster Tools accounts there was no manual action flag, even though the message from Google was telling us otherwise. We politely reviewed the numerous problems and requested help on 4 December 2013:

"We verified our blog url in WMT as suggested. However there is no available link data, and no manual action indicated in that account. In a previous request, we mentioned this. So we have no data and the only indication of a manual action is from your last email message.

Also, we are aware of the problem links to the blog - we mentioned these in an earlier request - these are attack links, none were posted by us and the anchors are mostly terms that are not valuable to us, including the links you sent as examples in a previous email. The fact that your example links are attack links is a huge problem for us, since it suggests you are not able to recognize the attack links, and instead are holding us responsible for them...

In summary, we have no link data in the WMT account for eyeglasses.com/blog as you referenced, and no indication of a manual action in that account. There is something terribly wrong with the information in WMT and the messaging we are receiving as a result of our requests for review. Please advise."

Google's Last Response (also 4 December 2013)

Hello,

Thank you for your email.

This thread is now closed. We have offered all the guidance we can provide at this time. We encourage you to post in the forum (http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters) where the webmaster community may be able to provide some additional input.

If you believe your site no longer violates Google's Webmaster Guidelines, please submit a new reconsideration request here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration.

Sincerely,

The Google Search Quality Team.

Read our disturbing conversation with GoogleFailure To The Very End

Consistent with their previous advice, we are once again given bogus information directly from Google. Although they provided a link to submit a new reconsideration request, that link no longer takes you to the form. You can only file for reconsideration if you have a manual action notice in your WMT account. Eyeglasses.com does not have that notice.

Holding Google Accountable

When Google destroys your business by mistake, are they accountable?

What happened to Eyeglasses.com could happen to any web based business. Negative seo is real. Although Google enabled it through their harsh enforcement actions, they are not acknowledging or addressing the harm caused to innocents when they get things wrong.

When Eyeglasses.com submitted requests for review, it was clear very quickly that the Google employees handling those requests were not capable of recognizing their own errors, and had no protocol to escalate issues to managers when overwhelmed.

The individual players, who deny your requests and communicate with you when you are penalized, are protected by anonymity during the reconsideration process. If you worked at Google you would probably want the same protection. But while that is useful to the workers, it completely masks responsibility for the kind of horrendous customer service Eyeglasses.com received.

Google, if you're reading this you can act right now by contacting the members of the Search Quality Team that handled case # 3-8862000000352.

Comments by Bob Sakayama

I run an enterprise search performance team out of NYC that has been accruing expertise in penalty remediation since 2001. Unwinding a Google penalty requires knowledge about penalties as well as communication with Google. I am very familiar with Google's protocols and have had hundreds of interactions with the search quality team, many of them informative and helpful, and the vast majority leading to penalty revocation.

But when the ranks of a site are attacked successfully with negative seo, Google may not be capable of recognizing the attack. And although most businesses would consider the loss of their search ranks to be an emergency, Google does not provide a pathway to quickly resolve the error and may unilaterally shut down your ability to communicate with them. They did it to us.

Hide Your Assets From Google

This article is focused on preventing the detection of the common ownership of your Google accounts. For example, if you have an Adwords account that has been suspended, you will not be able to open others until the suspended account is cleared, or unless you are able to prevent Google from detecting that the same party is behind the new accounts.

We're going to discuss using a proxy service, HMA! Pro VPN, to mask your ip. We strongly recommend using the pro version so you can reliably choose your location. If you use the free version, your ip may be different each time you connect, which will create an issue all by itself.

If you're attempting to open another Adwords account, after having one suspended, using a different credit card & another name is not enough. Using a proxy VPN is not enough. Any effort to hide your identity requires multiple steps that must be repeated accurately and completely each time you log into a different Google account.

The technique below can be used for all Google products, including WMT, Analytics, Adwords, and all social environments on other platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

We will discuss using a proxy VPN, but before doing so, you need to make sure that nothing else is revealing your identity to Google.

When you visit your Google accounts (and this includes all of Google's properties, including YouTube, etc.) a special cookie, called a flash cookie (or LSO - local shared object) is sometimes added to your browser. This technique permits Google to know when you visit multiple accounts and to assume that these accounts are all connected through you. This cookie is not normally deleted when you clear your cookies from most browsers.

You can see the flash cookies you have accumulated by going here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

Or by using a Firefox extension called Better Privacy, which permits direct deletion of LSOs.

Google's flash cookie is (acquired when they purchased of YouTube, hence the name)

s.ytimg

You can use the functionality at the above link to clear these cookies.

We also recommend that you clear all other traditional cookies using a free utility called CCleaner. The default configuration is probably ok, but on the 'Applications' tab, make sure that under 'Multimedia' that 'Adobe Flash Player' is checked. This should clear the flash cookies you see at the link above. Before using the VPN, and before relying on CCleaner, make certain that it is removing the flash cookie by checking the above url after running CCleaner.

If CCleaner is configured properly, you can use it instead of having to visit the macromedia link above. Once all cookies have been cleared, use the VPN to log in. We recommend that you always choose the same location from the VPN for each account, since this info is stored by Google. If you don't do this you may get flags saying that it appears you are trying to log in from a location different than normal and you'll have to provide additional verification before Google grants you access.

You'll need to clear your flash cookies BEFORE logging into each Google account using the VPN.

One of the quirks of HMA! Pro VPN is that once loaded, it remains active in the background. The only way to turn it off is to use Windows Task Manager (accessible using Control, Alt, Delete). Use the 'Processes' tab, select HMA! Pro VPN, and click 'End Process'.

Here is the short form for the tasks required to address multiple accounts:

-1- clear the flash and other cookies
-2- start the vpn and choose a consistent location
-3- log in, do your work
-4- log out
-5- close the vpn
-6- start at #1 for the next account

New Due Diligence Standards For Internet Investments

11 November 2013
by Bob Sakayama

When considering an acquisition or a stake in an internet property whose revenue relies on website traffic, a responsible investment decision can only be made with an understanding of the nature of that traffic. Because of some very significant changes Google is making in the way they determine a website's search ranks, we especially want information about the new risks evident in these changes. The search footprint is much larger than the keyword ranks that drive sales, because in addition to the stature of high ranks, search performance directly impacts the effectiveness of internet advertising, press announcements, affiliate relationships, social media visibility - pretty much everything important to a business online, especially reputation and trust. So it's critical to understand how productive ranks are achieved, and what risks accompany those successes.

Massive Disruption In The Search

You may be wondering why so many businesses that used to rank at the top of the search results have suddenly disappeared. For some searches, the sites on page 1 in Google are completely different from a year ago. Radical change is underway within the search, making risk assessment much more important and much more complex. This post addresses the new reality for investors, venture teams, and businesses that grow via acquisition.

What are the discoverable risks
unique to web assets?

- Gamed search ranks *
- Non-compliant link profile *
- Thin content *
- Use of contracted link building *
- Ranks supported by intentional black hat *
- Ranks supported by an undiscovered non-compliance *
- Search ranks in downtrend *
- Post acquisition loss of search ranks *
- Legacy domain issues *
- Automation magnifying small compliance issues *
- Non-compliant use of remote assets *
- Non-compliant code base *
- Non-compliant DNS handling *
- Non-compliant server management *
- Non-compliant use of subdomains *
- Negative seo *
- Excessive redundancies on tags, content, filenames *
- Loss of content authority *
- Competitors succeeding with black hat strategies
- Negatively trending online reputation
- Niche saturation
- Weak Security

*penalty risk

Yesterday's Asset Became Today's Liability

There once was a time when an important selling point for a web enterprise was a large number of links, touted as proof of stature and usually correlated with high ranks and traffic. Web businesses invested heavily in link building activities, often managed by seo agencies using automation to post vast quantities of links in an effort to improve search ranks. And since Google's launch in 1998 this strategy worked - like a charm. As far as links were concerned, the more the merrier. Pretty much any kind of link would improve search positions, and as a result, link building with questionable quality links became a kind of holy grail for seo, and an entirely new industry was born. And because it worked so well, massive link building efforts using tools and offshore workers displaced a more important focus on relevancy for many businesses. Because Google permitted these strategies to be effective for so long, they became common practice - main stream services offered by seo agencies. Businesses liked these strategies because they were cheap and could scale, so the money flowed into them. The pollution of the search with garbage links was underway, big time.

Why Past Search Success May Not Be A Reliable Measure Of Value

For an investor, valuation estimates usually look to revenue generated by conversions, that is, sales. But if those revenues are dependent on search success, and those successes are achieved by exploiting Google's frailties rather than by providing actual relevance, the trust in search ranks as a measure of value is lost and the search results themselves perceived to be corrupted. This is what actually happened in internet markets across the board. So it was clear early on that Google was going to have to address their frailties - close the loopholes - and act strongly to protect the integrity of the search. We observed the early warning signs first in Europe, which enabled us to accurately predict a new link-based Google penalty in 2010. The "unnatural links" penalties (Penguin) began raining down in 2011 and have continued to impact more sites with each successive algorithm update.

Now that Google no longer rewards those strategies and instead is penalizing the ranks of sites that used these link schemes, business owners and investors face a changing and more harsh reality. The widespread nature of this problem was amplified by the fact that it was the 'pros' - the seos - that were creating the mess in concert with Google. So there was lots of buy in. The consequence is that thousands of businesses are being destroyed in the shakeout. Google continues to make more strict its enforcement activity, and by the numbers of requests we receive for help with penalized sites, the destruction is definitely ongoing.

And the destruction in ranks is not just related to problem links. Google's recent "updates" include stricter enforcement of content standards in addition to constant tweaks to their algorithm. Each tweak has winners and losers, but really mostly losers. Recently sites relying too strongly on search terms in their domain names were hit. Sites using too simple 'search and replace' content, or copied content, or thin content were hit by several updates this past year named Panda. Investing in the cyber realm carries new risks, and the ability to gauge exposure is the new challenge. And that expertise requires in depth experience with the dark side of the search.

What Is Search Due Diligence?

Search due diligence is our term for the forensic process that reveals how the ranks of a target enterprise are achieved, and provides some insight into the risk involved in maintaining its search performance going forward. In our case, this insight stems from significant experience in penalty remediation, which provides us with a ring-side seat to observe the imposition of rank penalties, the consequences of those penalties, and the efforts required to unwind them. We also gain valuable insights by intentionally triggering penalties on our own sites. These experiments provide us with information as to where the red lines are, and to enable us to observe how Google responds to remediation efforts.

The Rise And Fall Of SEO

Search engine optimization is the term describing the industry, the skill set and the process for achieving search ranks on specific keywords. Because Google's ranking algorithm is complex, proprietary and therefore a secret, seo professionals cannot be licensed and held to an industry standard. One result is the "wild west" nature of the seo world - no real barriers to entry and lots of players with questionable skills.

Combine this with a real need by businesses to succeed in the search, business owners with little internet proficiency, and aggressive selling, and a picture emerges that explains why so many websites were hiring contractors that got them kicked out of the search. When Google began its link enforcement activities, the majority of seo agencies were using strategies that ultimately harmed their clients. Any site that hired an seo agency in the last couple of years is probably penalized, or at least vulnerable to one. The consequences of this will be felt for years, not just by the owners of penalized businesses. As the standards for search compliance are raised, currently successful sites will need to meet those new standards, possibly compromised by legacy optimization efforts. And keep in mind that those new standards will not published.

Gaming The Search Results

We already have confirmation that Google can be gamed, as reported in several posts on this site (Google's Cloaking Problem, Gaming Google In The Gaming Industry). This means the ranks of the target site could have been achieved using black hat strategies. The fact is, there are a huge number of successful businesses running on websites that have successfully gamed Google. Most investors & venture firms will not take stakes in a business if we inform them that the ranks have been gamed. But interestingly, many owners have no idea how their ranks were obtained - they typically have little understanding of what they paid an seo agency to do. So it is very rare for clarity to surface on its own.

One reason for the extensive gaming, other than that it's possible, is that businesses will always seek quickly achievable solutions that can scale. When Google launched Penguin, it shut down the last widely available scalable strategy to push rank fast - ie. using automation to quickly post vast quantities of links. So it's now a fact: rank boosting strategies involving automation are black hat, and link building in general is something to be wary of. There are proven quick rank strategies that work, but none are within Google's guidelines, and all are valuable trade secrets.

What's The Risk Of Gamed Ranks?

The obvious risk is that a site's search ranks will not hold up over time. Ranks gamed just prior to the sale of a business, and ranks that disappear under penalty within a few months can be addressed with better contracts, including claw backs or nullification clauses. But a better solution is to have knowledge of the risk in advance and avoid those deals, or use the information to motivate a price reduction.

You can assume that any optimization technique that successfully games the search results is being targeted for discovery by Google. Though Google's technology is nowhere near what it needs to be to successfully enforce search compliance to their stated guidelines, they do invite reports from competitors that can often detail the black hat activity of the site receiving an unfair advantage. So there is some peer enforcement going on. But it's shocking to know that there are sites in every market that are succeeding in the search with easily detectable black hat strategies. It turns out that one of the risks to a business is a more successful competitor using off guideline tactics.

Other Than Gamed Ranks, What Are Some Other Major Risks?

Even when there is no intentional effort to beat the system, risks are present. Probably the biggest risk is the inadvertent non-compliance that has not yet been discovered by the owners of the business or by Google. Basically a time bomb. This is usually the consequence of ignorance, or mistakes made attempting to navigate the numerous and sometimes complex nature of server environments and web implementations. There are very strict compliance rules associated with the ownership of multiple websites that often get overlooked. Simple code errors & oversights are legion. We often find a small automation error magnifying a very simple problem. Many sites fly under the radar, supporting high ranks while also encumbered with very large issues. Google does not penalize sites with consistency - a non-compliant site can go for years without being penalized.

Another huge change in the search world impacting risk is the presence of negative seo - businesses paid to destroy the ranks of competitors. Usually a site at the top of the search is the target, but sometimes it's done for spite. There are some gray market areas (gaming, porn, pharma) where a new site on page 1 in the search will immediately be attacked. There are bad players defending their turf with negative seo, and there is no enforcement authority to act on your behalf if your business falls victim. Because Google only grudgingly acknowledges negative seo, and often fails to act appropriately even when it's brought to their attention, business owners have little recourse. A major enforcement problem is a result of the fact that Google does not know the intent behind the links, or who posted them. This means that a former seo whose clients have abandoned him as he harmed their ranks, can now use the same automation to destroy ranks of competitors by posting the same bad links.

In addition to negative seo, there are also risks stemming from attacks on business reputations involving review sites and social media. Some of these are consumer driven - a single angry customer can do much more damage than ever before simply by taking the complaint public on sites like ripoffreport.com or yelp.com or by spreading rumors across facebook or other social platforms.

Conclusion

Businesses that grow through acquisition, venture firms, and savvy investors rely on robust due diligence reporting on the viability of their target investments. Typically these reports focus on background checks and detailed audits of traditional business records. But when the target business is an internet property, there are some brand new, existential risks that need to be examined carefully. In this new paradigm, if a target enterprise is only required to clear the background checks and financial due diligence hurdles, some potentially devastating risks that now accompany internet holdings will not have been accounted for.

If you are a reader of our posts, you already know about the reality of Google penalties - the loss of valuable ranks - and existential risks they pose to web businesses. You can read about Google penalties on this site and at our specialized site: google-penalty.com

The Motives Behind The Link Disavow Tool & The New Transparency Of Google

20 October 2012
by Bob Sakayama

Several years ago, Google's Webmaster Tools used to be THE place to go for information on links to your site. If you had a million links to your site, then you could download all of them from WMT. Then in late June 2010, all that changed when Google withdrew the complete set of links and replaced it with a 'sample' of your links. In some cases that 'sample' was a little as 5% of the total link number previously available. If you're trying to discover the links that are triggering a Google penalty, this change basically made you blind. I complained about this in forums, directly to Matt Cutts and tried to get traction with the most visible seo agencies, only to be completely ignored.

http://www.re1y.com/google-sample-links.html

So for discovery and forensic work, we were forced to use outside tools. Fortunately, alternatives to WMT do exist, and we were able to use these tools to help discover and remove links on penalized sites. This became the standard procedure for us until August 2012, when we started seeing responses to reconsideration requests for sites that had already taken down large numbers of unnatural links, but still had enough to penalize their ranks. In an effort to help these sites, Google started messaging not only how to find your problem links by using data in WMT, but also started including 'example bad links' in their responses to reconsideration requests. We noticed two changes here. One was to the data in WMT - although still using only a sample of your total links, the link data was much more inclusive. The second was that the example links were sometimes not in the data from external tools, but were present in the WMT data. These 2 changes forced us back to WMT for link data.

The new 'transparency' of Google began much earlier - in 2009, we started seeing warnings of doorway pages and unnatural links coming into WMT. These warnings were ALWAYS followed by a Google penalty, usually within 3 weeks of the warning, if not before. As the enforcement update Penguin was implemented, we observed a new evil unleashed as a consequence of harming sites with garbage in their link profiles. Because Google could not tell who posted those large numbers of garbage links, they opened the door to negative seo, and we started seeing sites with high ranks being attacked by the same strategy formally used to push rank - automated posting of thousands of links, but now aimed at competitor sites to harm their ranks. Visit negativeseo.me for an example of the business model.

http://www.re1y.com/negative-seo.html

Note that the above post is dated 21 April 2012, just as Penguin was getting underway, and as more and more seos and site owners started to recognize the reality of negative seo. Still Google and its mouthpieces continued to downplay the reality of negative seo. As this story gained traction, Google ramped up its efforts to force sites to clean their link profiles, and on 21 July, they sent a whopping number of unnatural link warnings to sites that had previously escaped harm. This freaked everyone out, and forced Cutts to come out and downplay the warnings:

https://plus.google.com/+MattCutts/posts/gik49G9c5LU

Then an amazing thing happened. Many of the experiments attempting to trigger rank loss using negative seo were confirmed. Rand Fishkin's challenge to negative seo his site, seomoz.com, resulted in an unnatural links warning. And Google hinted that a link disavow tool, for which we have been advocating for years, was in the works.

http://www.re1y.com/blog/google-may-be-quietly-acknowledging-negative-seo-blog.html

But I think the most important takeaway from all this is that the sites that were sent the latest warning were never harmed. I suspected that this was because the seo experiments proved that negative seo was possible, and that harming the recipients of the latest warning would mean that Google would be harming innocent sites, and they knew it.

That brings us to the events late this summer when we observed link data in WMT becoming more robust, and when Google started messaging us in how to find our bad links there. While these more positive events were playing out, Matt Cutts abruptly went from 'don't panic' at the unnatural links warning, to saying publically that the coming Penguin updates would be "jaring and jolting" (search it), suggesting "You don't want the next Penguin update..." These are warnings suggesting that the hammer, which seemed to have been suspended for a while, was now about to come down hard on sites that have not cleaned up their link profiles.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-warning-15577.html

Remember, all this occurred AFTER many sites got a warning that was never followed up with rank loss.

When Google started making their link data in WMT more robust, I predicted it was to prepare

-1- for the launch of the disavow tool

and/or

-2- to rationalize a strategy to more harshly penalize sites with unnatural links that were warned
Â Â Â on or after 21 July 2012

The disavow tool was finally released last week. It is very simple and only requires us to submit a text file of links. So the tool is not directly related to the new data, although that data is helpful to find the links that might trigger rank loss.

But the fact that Google has still not acted on the warnings of 21 July and later should be of concern to anyone who received that warning, especially given the latest comments concerning future Penguin updates.

One reason for concern is that there is ALWAYS an agenda behind Google's actions. To some extent, Google was humiliated by the seo community for sending out warnings that were never acted upon, and not acting on those warnings flies in the face of their enforcement agenda. I'm certain that Google does not really want us to ignore those warnings and I suspect that future updates of Penguin will set the record straight.

I'm aware that I'm likely to be accused of fear mongering here. Paranoia is actually warranted sometimes, and if your business relies on the search, then perhaps it's in your interest to consider Google's real agenda regarding those original warnings, considered by many to be empty threats. But now there's more link data available, along with a long overdue disavow tool. And now that there are ways to cleanse our link profiles, the rationale is in place for a much harsher response to sites that ignored the unnatural link warning.

I seriously doubt that the warning, even if not acted on, was a mistake. It is very likely that sites that received that notice really do have issues with their link profile. We're recommending that any site that received the unnatural links warning take advantage of the new disavow tool and link data to clean up their profile pre-emptively. This is probably a good idea no matter what Google does. I see risk in sitting on your hands.

Google Has Just Enabled Negative SEO - The Birth Of An Unethical Industry That Corrupts The Search

21 April 2012
Bob Sakayama

Google's recent crackdown on inorganic links has enabled an unexpected and very unwelcome reaction - blowback, in the form of negative seo, which has just introduced a huge new risk for web businesses, as well as corrupting the search for everyone.

Because of our penalty work, we have a unique view into the changes, as they happen, on the enforcement side of Google. Beginning in March 2012, we started seeing a change in the way that Google was penalizing sites. Up until that time, the primary penalty was a trademark suppression (harming your brand searches) which usually saw most of your ranks disappear past page 3-5.

But recently, the most common penalty has been one that granularly impacts very specific ranks. And very recently some sites are getting a warning in advance of of the penalty. It's very likely that this is the main off-site focus of the plan announced recently to address "over-optimization" in a big way. In every case, the penalized sites had suppression only on the terms they were slamming with links. And the links are usually all automated garbage.

This penalty has nailed a lot of sites, and many of them learned about the link problems after filing for reconsideration. A message mentioning the detection of "inorganic links" appeared in the response in WMT. So far, so good - we like getting info on the penalty, especially if it's accurate and permits us to clear it, which involves removing the offending garbage links. The problem stems from the numbers - garbage links posted via automation tend to be very numerous. Have not yet seen a site nuked by garbage, but automation can do amazing things.

Here's where it gets both crazy and dangerous. So the crazy part is that the marketing of these garbage links has itself become a fairly big industry encompassing SEOs who sell & specialize in the services, the workers here & abroad who do the work, the software makers who sell the tools to automate the posting process, and of course, the webmasters, copywriters & hosting companies. There are many businesses that perform ONLY this service. And this industry has been rocking because garbage links in large numbers typically do work, coupled with the fact that Google has permitted this to go on for a very long time. It's now common practice to have lots of garbage links (unless you read this 2010 post: A New Google Penalty).

As predicted, Google has brought the hammer down on something that is now already pervasive, and while we feel that some kind of action really is overdue, we're concerned at what we're witnessing. The real and formidable task for Google is doing the right thing for everyone. Here is where it gets dangerous.

As soon as it became obvious to us why Google was harming sites, it became clear that negative SEO was possible, because there is no accountability on links pointed at you. In other words, Google can't tell who is responsible for the garbage links. The reason that Google lost the war on paid links is that they can't really tell the paid links from the naturally occurring links.

But knowing who posted garbage links is the same problem, and because you can't prove a negative (I didn't post those links), this problem is much worse. As usual, Google is putting the burden of proof on the site owner and this time it could really be a huge burden, even if you are innocent.

Just as the banning of paid links led to the corruption of link environments as the link sellers saw their businesses under attack and opened their doors to porn and gaming links to make money while they still could, the SEOs whose livelihoods get taken away as their garbage links no longer work still have the tools at hand to enter a darker business model: taking down sites for pay. In other words, the SEOs who's clients have walked because of penalties and notices are turning to a new use for their skills - negative SEO. It's so easy to do that it's inevitable that this will become a major problem for everyone.

We're watching it happen right now. Very successful SEO agencies are being dismantled as the work they do is perceived to be toxic. At the same time businesses who never used these garbage link building services are starting to receive notices and penalties for links they did not post. The scare is on, and companies are now being forced to put resources into finding the links in order to communicate to Google that they didn't post them. What a waste of time and resources, not to mention the bad taste in your mouth left by being punished for doing nothing and then having to prove your innocence.

Please, Google, do the right thing.

Stop trying to convince us that it can't happen, because we have the proof in the form of victims left in your wake. We're going to seek publicity in the mainstream media with some of the victim's stories because the public needs to know how unfairly sites are being treated and as a consequence how badly the search has been corrupted.

The ethical move would be to permit webmasters to disavow links from within WMT. Many of us have been clamoring for this improvement for years, and we don't understand why you would instead choose an enforcement path that will so certainly lead to innocents being harmed. You've made a huge mistake this time - it needs to be walked back and a better solution put in its place.

Link Velocity : Bogus Sales Argument

Link Velocity: (noun) The speed at which a link seller runs away once you discover that your site is penalized because of his links

The Claim

Link velocity refers to the rate at which links are posted to your site. Proponents claim that altering this "link velocity" is harmful because Google can perceive the change as unnatural. If you think about this, you would only be concerned if your link building activity was genuinely unnatural and you needed a strategy to hide that fact.

To deal with this obvious problem the link velocity proponents attempt to obfuscate the issue with some misdirection and mumbo jumbo - pointing to other considerations like "link direction" or "intention" or "vectors" - nothing that real metrics can even begin to address.

Think Like Google

If you were Google, would you see the rate at which a site acquires links to be important to the relevance of the content? Of course not! Links to fantastic link bait appear randomly, in spurts and stops, ceasing entirely, then coming back in large numbers. And those links come from all kinds of sites, some trustworthy and others not so, with no way to formulate an overall evaluation. There is no logical reason for a search engine to connect this activity to relevance, trust, or any rank creating protocol.

The Believers

The parties who worship the false god of link velocity are very likely to be link sellers, typically offering garbage links that actually harm your link profile with automated blog comments, profiles, signatures, forum posts, reviews, etc. In 2010, we observed a new Google penalty related to this practice.

The sellers gain traction by pointing you to articles ranking for the term "link velocity" that exist solely for the purpose of creating credibility for the pitch. They always include explanations that seem to cover all the arguments without really doing so. eg "Link velocity isn't just speed, there are more factors that go into assessing link velocity besides how many and how soon." But when you ask the right questions, the answers are not rewarding or really even understandable.

But note that the real intent behind the perpetrators of link velocity claims always relates to some claim of expertise on how to build links that appear natural. And that the solutions all derive from paying some "expert" to build your links.

Like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, the advocates of link velocity untruths depend on naivete.

The Observable Truth

We have the ability to point very large numbers of links at will, and have posted links to hundreds of sites over the years. There has never been an observable correlation with any changes to the rate at which links are posted, only to the amount of PR passed. We encourage moderation in all things, but even in the instances where large numbers were posted quickly we have never seen an issue, even in our experiments where we purposely post links from non-relevant sites.

The most drastic change to a link build would be a full stop - all link work suddenly halted, something the link sellers need to argue against. But this happens all the time in the real world for various reasons, including resource availability, development requirements, or management changes. There is no negative rank consequence (and certainly no penalty) for stopping a link building campaign.

News aggregator websites see huge changes in the rates that links get posted based on the interest in the news. For example, we observed over 80,000 links posted to the story of Bin Laden's death within 24 hours. What do you think that did to link velocity, and how could you ever keep that rate up?

Conclusion

While there is something to be said for attempting to understand the natural state of a website, creating technical sounding terms that create a false reality, or worse, serve up fear of change using bogus arguments, is nothing but a sleazy marketing technique that exploits legitimate concerns as a sales technique. We're calling this one bogus. The moment a potential vendor gives you a "link velocity" argument for buying a link building service, walk away.

The Risks Of Relying On Search Results

by Bob Sakayama

14 April 2011

(This is the longer version of the presentation made at the London seminar. Ray Snoddy's article on the topic is posted here)

Example Of Widespread, Unrecognized Risk:

I realize that risks of a search engine penalty, or a Google penalty, is something that is not very well understood, even by the community of website businesses. So I'd like to start by demonstrating how this risk may be present for your enterprise very early in the process, long before any commerce even takes place on the new website.

Imagine this scenario:

Your enterprise has acquired the worldwide rights to market a hugely successful new product called Super Magic Widgets. This product has such incredible potential that the decision is made to create a separate internet business to directly market it, rather than distributing it through existing venues.

Of course, the very first action is to search for a suitable domain to launch the internet commerce platform for the marketing effort. The selection of the domain is very important, because if it carries the correct semantics, it can make a huge difference in the rank performance of the website. Search engines respond to the relevancy of the domain semantic, so if you're selling widgets, it's a very smart move to make sure that the domain name includes the term "widgets." To your amazement, marketing team finds that SuperMagicWidgets.com is available and buys it (with the blessing of your seo team).

Right at this point, if you do not vet this domain for search viability before pouring resources into the implementation, you could create an existential risk to this new business. Because if this domain had a previous owner who nuked it with a toxic optimization strategy, it will never perform in the natural search. This happened to me in 2007, and I since then I have prevented many clients from wasting resources on a dead domain.

Domains have existed long enough now so that many that are in the pool of available domains have had previous lives. Their previous owners were either unsuccessful at building businesses on them, lost interest, or created such a mess that the domain was 'nuked' so it could never rank. So prior to purchase, the enterprise must be able to know if the domain is viable in the search. It is obvious that as more and more domains are abandoned, that this problem is growing with time. Also, when looking at available domains, the more generic and desirable the name, the more likely it was pre-owned.

Dig Deeper

The Dangers of Relying on Google for Business

Schism In America

In order to protect the enterprise, the domain name vet must proceed no matter where the domain is purchased - whether from the publicly available pool, or from an individual or business selling the domain. I am aware of one case where a domain that sold for $20,000 by the previous owner was penalized and not recoverable.

One interesting side note: Non-dot com domains may have a lower risk of previous ownership and provide the same semantic edge. For example, the .co domains became universal only in the past year, so there should be a low probability of a previous owner triggering penalties on them.

Most of the penalties that we work on are not related to domain purchases, but rather are applied to once thriving websites. While there may be many variations on exactly how these sites are penalized, the one thing they all have in common is that they are all financial emergencies - where at least one major revenue stream is lost. In some cases the penalty is across a network of sites. These are existential threats to the businesses involved - I have seen businesses forced to shut down as a result of the revenue loss. Given this fact, it is critical to begin to understand the risks taken on when businesses choose strategies that depend upon performance in the natural search.

A Devastating, Yet Largely Unknown & Misunderstood Risk:

The enterprise thrives by making smart decisions, especially in the area of risk management. Internet businesses must contend with a special set of risks that accompany their heavy reliance on technology. The reliability of the website's functionality and the security of these systems are 2 obvious examples of well known risks that have solutions in place.

But for internet businesses that rely on the natural search to provide sales and leads, there are significant risks that remain very poorly understood. These risks are present because the search ranks of your business are not within your control - you rely on a third party, the search engine, to provide the ranking mechanism. This dependency inserts a huge unknown into the pool of risks. One such risk is the possibility of devastating rank loss due to a search engine penalty.

According to a survey mentioned here, only 11% of the website owners who responded were aware of the possibility of a search engine penalty impacting their business. Given what we already know from our client work about the devastating consequences of Google penalties, this is shocking. We have seen $100 million businesses watch their revenue streams shut down overnight because all their previously productive sites could no longer be found in the search.

One of the explanations for the lack of knowledge on search penalties is that it would only impact an organization whose websites have already achieved productive, organic search ranks - in reality, that's #1-5 on page one of a Google search - but let's count any site on page 1. The businesses that hold those positions represent a small club compared to all others. Most businesses BUY their search engine traffic, via ads that appear along with the organic results. So the number of sites being harmed by search penalties is relatively small.

Another reason we don't know more: Most of our clients who have been penalized expect confidentiality, so the damage is essentially kept secret, and that just serves to insulate the larger community from awareness of the risks.

The small number of victims, and the privacy concerns of those compromised businesses keep us ignorant. This ignorance creates an environment in which most successful search dependent businesses do not have an understanding of the potential for catastrophic rank loss.

Now imagine the impact on a longstanding, search dependent business of a severe penalty that degrades all their productive ranks back to page 5 or worse. In many instances, that would be an existential threat to the enterprise. And it happens more often than most realize.

Why Websites Get Penalized

A large part of our work has been an attempt to understand why sites get penalized, and to gain insight into the restoration process. We have intentionally penalized sites, then unwound those penalties in order to discover where the red lines are. We also keep many domains in penalties as platforms for other experiments. This is really the only way to observe how penalties are handled by Google, and to gain an understanding of the impact on related sites. So, for example, we know that, for most compliance based penalties, links from penalized sites do not cause harm - we can see that from many perspectives on our own sites.

Google would like us to believe that sites get penalized for falling outside their published "guidelines" - their rule set for search behavior. And for the most part this is probably true - we see many penalties that get imposed for obvious breaches of the guidelines. And their ranks return when the breach is remedied - ie. when search compliance is restored.

Many retail SEOs believe that all rank issues can be remedied with optimization. We view the process of obtaining productive high ranks to be broken into 2 distinct parts: compliance & optimization. Search compliance means making sure the site is implemented within the guidelines and is indexable or viable for the bots. Optimization is the strategy or technique used to manipulate ranks higher. Attempting to optimize a non-compliant website will either fail (no rank improvement), or trigger an event (penalty). Maintaining search compliance is critical to avoiding penalties, and is something that automation can be applied to.

The world would be a much less risky place if the "published rules" compliance model were the only explanation for penalties. But it turns out that the published guidelines are only that - guidelines. The actual rules are secret. And constantly changing.

We know from first-hand experience that optimization strategies that performed fabulously in 2001 can now get you penalized. In fact, if you look at the list of "don'ts" from the guidelines (examples below) all of them were once effective strategies.

- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don't send automated queries to Google.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Google updates their algorithm very frequently - evidence of reordering sometimes occurs daily. This constantly changing rules set, combined with zero transparency from the search engines, creates an environment where the seo strategies used by many seo agencies lag behind the current best practices. So much so that uninformed seos are one of the main causes of search penalties.

We also know that Google's infrastructure is vulnerable to attack. And that 3rd parties are able to take advantage of these vulnerabilities to hack their index, inserting information that leads to high ranks being hijacked. Sometimes the frailties of the algorithm create rank issues by themselves. Google is usually very quick to address these issues when they are pointed out, but the fact that the frailties exist at all creates a risk.

Another consideration is that most large sites are complex structures, and their complexity often explains how they might fall outside compliance inadvertently, and how that might escape detection until a penalty is imposed. Automation can be your best friend when it's working for you, and your worst nightmare when it triggers an unintended non-compliance. Most penalties are triggered by human error or oversight. And at the enterprise level, this includes compliance breaches caused by everything from poorly coded automation to mistakes made by a copywriter. Ignorance is almost always behind most penalties triggered by non-compliance.

Because businesses are harmed/destroyed by penalties and because of how these penalties are imposed, ethics enters the conversation about search. As the dominant player, we would hope that Google would be sensitive to the ethical quandaries they create as a matter of course, and in some way act to mitigate these perceived risks. But this is not happening - in fact, the ethical issues seem to grow larger with time. Consider the ethical appropriateness of:

-1- imposing harsh punishments based on secret rules
-2- an unwillingness to even acknowledge when a site is penalized
-3- being the sole arbiter of justice with a stake in the decision
-4- permitting no recourse
-5- creating victims through Google's own frailty
-6- penalizing sites in Google for the actions of 3rd parties
-7- rules that change during the game
-8- the absence of an effective warning mechanism

Managing the risks

So the risks of relying the search are very real, but how are they being addressed? This is the question that we all need to seriously address because the current solutions are not viable. For example, a check of your errors and omissions policies probably rules out an insurance claim. A Google penalty is more like an act of God, than an understood market risk.

Even our law enforcement agencies are unclear as to how sites harmed in the search can seek justice. I once was asked by a client to report an attack on their ranks to the FBI. This was an instance in which my client was losing half a million dollars in sales per day as a result of a Google penalty triggered by the actions of a third party. My clients sites were not hacked, Google's index was, so the attack on my client's revenue was indirect, but the impact was severe and instantaneous. After explaining several times what had taken place, and the losses caused by it, the FBI agent asked me, "What's the crime?" There was no way for them to take any kind of enforcement action because there was no obvious violation of law.

Even though our work is focused on performance in the search, we strongly recommend to clients that they move away from complete dependence on search ranks. This is the only way to mitigate this risk. Many companies create numerous websites and feel that this diversifies their exposure to a penalty, or any kind of rank loss. But we often find penalized environments in which all the websites are penalized simultaneously. Other online techniques that can act independently of the search include a robust social media presence, targeted email campaigns, other advertising, promotion.

Finally, there is one solution that is not within the grasp of us as individual businesses, but may be available if we act in concert. And that is to work to force the search engines to act more responsibly when it comes to their enforcement actions. Some form of regulation is clearly warranted, but exactly how this will come about is unclear. There are some tiny first steps in this direction that I would advocate. For example, simply notifying sites that they are penalized.

Every major industry that developed in the US, including railroads, telephone, petroleum, steel, etc. all evolved in such a way that eventually a monopoly was created. And regulation was required to force ethical standards and fair play into those markets. We are at such a point now with search, without the regulation.

Related notes - short term solutions for penalized sites:

AdWords
Affiliates
Email marketing
Social media
other search engines