Seven Over-Optimization Penalty What-If?s

[djbaxter]

Seven Over-Optimization Penalty What-If?s. Are You Ready for These?
by Stoney G. deGeyter, Search Engine Journal
April 10, 2012

Both Google and Bing told an audience at South by South West (SXSW) that they are actively working on an over-optimization penalty in order to make their ranking algorithms better. Obviously, this raised some eyebrows with many people who wondered if this might translate into penalties for their websites that are being ?optimized? by SEOs.

While no official details have been provided outside of the few comments made during the SXSW session, there is a lot of speculation as to just what this might mean and how it would effect sites that are being optimized. We can glean some answers from the comments themselves, but I wouldn?t expect too much more clarification that isn?t specifically designed to frighten SEOs and Web marketers into greater compliance with their webmaster guidelines.

Then again, following such guidelines is generally good practice for building a user-friendly website. Search engines, after all, just want to be like any other users (other than they don?t place orders for your products or services). Just for fun, let?s look at some ?what if?? scenarios. These are all possibilities, and, even if there is little chance of them being worked into the algorithm, they might give you some good ideas about what you can do to better your online marketing efforts.

Read more...

 

[DonnieSEO]

What if I wanted to destroy my competition?

Im actually almost done putting together a case study on this. Im building a site {site name removed} once I get this site to the top of the SERP for the term destroy the competition, I will hire black hat companies and do as much external unnatural link building as possible. I hope I will be able to protect this site. Because at the end of the day if I can really destroy the competition that means they can destroy me.

 

[djbaxter]

What if I wanted to destroy my competition?

Im actually almost done putting together a case study on this. Im building a site {site name removed} once I get this site to the top of the SERP for the term destroy the competition, I will hire black hat companies and do as much external unnatural link building as possible. I hope I will be able to protect this site. Because at the end of the day if I can really destroy the competition that means they can destroy me.

1. You go ahead and try but announcing your intentions here is drawing attention you may not want... and in any case your plan is pretty much doomed. You don't think you're the first person to think of this, do you?

2. What does this have to do with the article in the first post?

 

[jcorkern]

DonnieSEO, that is a dangerous game even with a case study. I can assure you that messing with the wrong site owner will likely do the exact opposite of what you would want.

I would have my attorneys on you forever if i caught you doing that to one of my sites and i am sure that I am not the only one. That is a way to make sure you never have anything for your entire life. Ruined reputation, the financial cost long term, legal fees, garnishment of wages, and probably bad credit down the road.

Not good to even think about doing that to others. Other people murder and rob banks, and there is no doubt that is wrong, This is no different because wrong is wrong on any level.

Always do what is right and you will eventually win, no need to play dirty, it will end up costing only you and your family in the long run.

 

[Seleyna]

compete in a healthy manner and you will appreciate your results with a peace of heart...if you really want to track your competition, then check what their backlinks are and see what's working for their sites...then benchmark

no need to use the word "destroy"

 

[Linda Buquet]

2. What does this have to do with the article in the first post?

DonnieSEO, that is a dangerous game even with a case study. I can assure you that messing with the wrong site owner will likely do the exact opposite of what you would want.

I would have my attorneys on you forever if i caught you doing that to one of my sites and i am sure that I am not the only one.

I don't believe Donnie is sabotaging anyone else's site. I think he's building 2 sites himself and then trying to see if he can tank one by over-optimizing and using black hat techniques.

I think he's testing on his own site whether it's possible to hurt a competitor's ranking to prove whether or not it's possible therefore whether or not we need to worry if someone could possibly do it to hurt OUR sites.

You know how Cutts has said in the past you could not hurt someone's ranking by sending a bunch of bad links. BUT now that Google is openly penalizing for bad links I think he wants to test the competitive sabotage theory with the current algo.

I don't believe he has any malicious intent and I may not have explained it quite right, but he's talked to me about it and it's something like that. Not sure it's a good use of his time or anything, but he's not hurting anyone but himself. And who the heck knows maybe something interesting will come out of it.

 

[djbaxter]

I understand what you're saying, Linda. However, I still don't understand how Donnie's post is on topic for this thread, and I still think it's almost certainly a wasted effort. Even if there were something that could be revealed in such a "test", there are so many variables that he cannot possibly control that in the end he will not be able to conclude anything of any real significance.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Ya I agree with you, David.

 

[DonnieSEO]

This is why I wrote that: "Both Google and Bing told an audience at South by South West (SXSW) that they are actively working on an over-optimization penalty in order to make their ranking algorithms better. "

My thoughts were... Are they really making them better? if back linking is open source what's to stop someone from sabotaging my efforts? thats all I was implying.

 

[djbaxter]

This is why I wrote that: "Both Google and Bing told an audience at South by South West (SXSW) that they are actively working on an over-optimization penalty in order to make their ranking algorithms better. "

My thoughts were... Are they really making them better? if back linking is open source what's to stop someone from sabotaging my efforts? thats all I was implying.

1. I think they were referring more to onsite optimization than backlinks.

2. The other factor that probably is being targeted is the importance of anchor text in back links (which has been a target for some time now since the advent of Google bombs - which have largely been defused) but that won't be a penalty... it will just involve some sort of algorithmic filter to devalue the impact of certain kinds of links.

 

[TopicBay]

Nice piece. There is lots of talk about on-site SEO and the changes that are coming down the line... The changes keep ringing. Not a bad thing!

 

[satrap65]

2. What does this have to do with the article in the first post?

I think what he meant is that if over optimization penalties would actually become a reality, you could simply build lots of optimized backilnks to your competitor's site and cause them a penalty.

I just hope that this doesn't go through and I certainly hope that all this "negative seo" nonsense will go away. Its just not right and ethical. Hopefully Google will solve this problem somehow.

 

[jcorkern]

I have just read on a a couple of forums that some of them started scrapebox blast on their comp when they heard about the coming (now here) over optimization penalty. They are reporting that they have taken down their comps sites.

Not sayin it is true, just sayin it is being reported.

Here is a link to the Google blog announcing the algo update. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well there is a big crackdown going on right now and possibly not the over-opt penalty we've been hearing about but the new spam algo that was formally announced yesterday.

Bunch of reports of major drops. Just reading and trying to take a pulse now. Sounds like many are saying exact match domains got hit, but some I checked are OK.

 

[jcorkern]

I am seeing a lot more hubpages, tumbler and other 2.0 type of sites back up top strong.

I have already noticed a huge difference in the link profiles ( less keyword anchors ) of the sites that fared well so far, but this may not be over with just yet as i am still seeing movement across a lot of different datacenters.

I could never find the link to the interview, but a couple of months back Matt stated publicly that they could now identify spun content, so what we warned about spinners being a bad idea has just come to fruition from what I am seeing. I have also tracked a hundred or so of sites so far that did not have spins or links from spins drop, but it looked to me like they were putting a lot of general articles and linking with anchors to the homepages and category pages with high level keywords, and mostly more than one on the page.

But it is still way too early to nail anything down to a usable model.

I actually believe it is the one Matt spoke of because of this.

Google is calling the update the "webspam algorithm update" according to Danny Sullivan Google told Danny:

I think 'over-optimization' wasn't the best description, because it blurred the distinction between white hat SEO and webspam. This change is targeted at webspam, not SEO, and we tried to make that fact more clear in the blog post.

Google Over Optimization Launched, Google Names It Webspam Algorithm

 

[djbaxter]

I could never find the link to the interview, but a couple of months back Matt stated publicly that they could now identify spun content, so what we warned about spinners being a bad idea has just come to fruition from what I am seeing. I have also tracked a hundred or so of sites so far that did not have spins or links from spins drop, but it looked to me like they were putting a lot of general articles and linking with anchors to the homepages and category pages with high level keywords, and mostly more than one on the page.

I do think this is a key point - it's been an evolution of Google's attempts to crack down on crap sites that started long before Panda and now is evolving beyond Panda.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I have just read on a a couple of forums that some of them started scrapebox blast on their comp when they heard about the coming (now here) over optimization penalty. They are reporting that they have taken down their comps sites.[/url]

Major thread with major SEO heavyweights like Fathom, discussing negative SEO and competitor sabotage issues over at the Google forum.

https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/webmasters/Azfly-iRtLs/discussion