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My Google Penalty and My Response
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About two months ago this site was listed as a PR (Page Rank) 4 site and since then I have had many dozens of new incoming links, several of which came from blogs with very large profiles. I would normally have expected to be a PR 5 (or even 6) site by now but instead my PR actually took a penalty and fell to 2. Some of the individual articles I wrote that were extremely popular fell from a PR 3 and 4 all the way to 0.
Unfortunately Google doesn’t tell us exactly what causes the penalty, instead, as webmasters, we just see the end result. What’s worse is that I’m still a bit of a noob so I don’t know everything about what causes these things. For me, content and message come first, all the technical stuff comes second.
A couple of things are likely the culprit:
1) A CPM ad that was running through Adbrite was labeled as possibly being malicious when it was scanned by the Google bot (I did see a warning about this in Google’s Webmaster tools). Apparently an ad I was running tried to install malware on Google’s computer. Nice. Those ads are automatically approved through Adbrite so I didn’t have a lot of choice, but I was able to use the information from Google and after working with Adbrite we were able to eliminate the ad. They told me that it sometimes happens, even though they have safeguards. After running thousands of impression ads, I’d say having the occasional fluke is perfectly possible. Google will penalize sites that may contain malicious software.
2) The other possible culprit however is likely the vast amount of things I’ve added to the site over the last few months, the biggest possibility being the massive (and quite happy) blogroll where I can link to and show off the many friends I’ve made in the blogosphere. It might have gotten too big though. Because the blogroll was in a sidebar, it was being loaded with every single page, which apparently can have the effect of diluting a site’s Page Rank. In other words, between the blogroll and other links from the sidebars, I’ve had about 60-70 outgoing links from every page that Google crawls.
Ahem, apparently that’s a bit much. 
Why is this even important?
For starters, the percentage of traffic I receive from the search engines is only about 2-3% (which is really low, generally). The rest is from feed readers where you guys come here directly to comment (or to read comments), from people coming here directly from bookmarks, and the lion’s share comes from social media sites like the God we call StumbleUpon.
Ultimately, in order to find new readers and to continue to help grow this blog, I’ll need to continue to increase my PR so people who will want to read what I write can find me. Now while I don’t watch it like crazy, it’s been a couple of months since I took the penalty so I decided to get around to fixing it.
What I’ve decided to do:
I decreased the number of outbound links from my sidebars to a dozen or so from 60-70 by changing the blogroll and making other links (like the "friend me" tool) set to use the "no follow" rule that tells Google not to dilute my rank.
I didn’t want to remove the links to my friends’ blogs entirely, so I’ve done a couple of things:
1) I’ve made a separate Blogroll page that will contain a complete list of all the blogs I follow. I would like to add a sentence or two under each link so readers will know what they’re going to. If you are on my blogroll now, you can leave a comment below (or e-mail me) what you’d like me to write under your link. If I don’t hear from you, then I’ll either add your tagline (if you use one) or make something up eventually. If you aren’t on my blogroll and would like to be, send me a link to your site so I can check it out.
2) I installed Jon Dyer’s Better Blogroll Widget in place of the old blogroll. That way, there will still be some links from my main page. What it allows me to do is to show a random sample of the blogs from the full blogroll. Right now it’s set to 10. Every time any page is reloaded a different set of 10 will show up.
Hopefully, all of this will reduce the number of outbound links being loaded on every page that Google sees while still giving me an opportunity to express my gratitude to the bloggers I have met over these last months.
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Dereck :: Nov.12.2008 :: Site Related, Tips :: 17 Comments »
17 Responses to “My Google Penalty and My Response”
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Hi thank you for this info. I think I need to change my blogroll.
Have a great day!!!
Show Me Your Interest
Sam´s last blog post..Looking for Faith?
Dereck,
I’m so honored to be on your blogroll. Thanks!
By the way, I have another theory about PR drop — Content Link text ads. I’ve read that Google penalizes sites for them. That’s why they were once popular but not so much any more.
ari
Ari Koinuma´s last blog post..What Can I Achieve If I Blogged Full Time for a Year?
@ Sam – Quite welcome.
@ Ari – Honored to have you. Actually, you’ve been on my blogroll longer than just about anyone
I’m not sure about the content link ads. Do you mean the Kontera ones that pop up an ad when you hover over them?
These ads don’t link directly to the advertisers’ sites so I’m not sure why Google would penalize for it. I’ll look into it.
Hmm, although it may not raise my Google Ranking overnight (I’m a 2 as well), it certainly couldn’t hurt. Thanks for the tip!
Oh and could I be on your blogroll too? Thanks!
TheAndySan
http://www.theandysan.com
@ TheAndySan – You bet. Added
Hi Dereck,
To answer your first question I would like my tagline used. It is “Freshly Squeezed Insight for Better Living”.
Secondly, I have heard that dofollow links can hurt your ranking. All of your comments are do follow. I would switch this. Ive done a lot of research on it and I can point you in a few directions to find credible sources on the issue. Its one reason I changed things around on my site. Food for thought.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy Day´s last blog post..Quick & Dirty List of Personal Finance Blogs
Actually your comments are no follow, but I agree with Ari. Its the text link ads that are do follow. In Ari’s comment even is a link for “link text”. That is a do follow link. Anyhow, we should discuss it by email sometime.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy Day´s last blog post..Quick & Dirty List of Personal Finance Blogs
Hi, thank you for this post. I’m dying to have a rank on my page… I hope this can help.
Honestly Dereck, if you’re not noticing a drop in your traffic then I would not worry about the PR thing too much. It’s really more a gauge than anything else. I’ve seen plenty of sites that are way, way, way more popular than mine but have the same or lower PR.
Still, the blogroll thing probably was not helping so it’s good to clear that up, the new plugin seems interesting and an upgrade since it makes your home page blogroll fresh.
P.S. Check out my latest post for some dofollow action to help gain back some PR.
Adam Pieniazek´s last blog post..Find DoFollow, Be DoFollow, Do DoFollow
Hi Dereck .. as another in the masses of ‘Unranked’ or 0/10 PageRank I thank you for sharing this!
I’m also delighted to see I’m on your blogroll. The tagline I’d like included is
‘Building a nonviolent world, step by step’
Cheers
Ian
Ian Peatey´s last blog post..Remembrance day
Hello there,
I had the similar ‘problems’ as you, and some time now I am trying to get back my PR (PR5 once).
Thanks for the tips.
Greetings from Macedonia,
DeeJay
DJ – Music Blog´s last blog post..Code Nutrition: Your DNA Holds The Key To Optimal Health
@ Jeremy – On the tagline: Done.
Shoot me an e-mail with some articles. Love to read ‘em. I’ve quite a bit too, but haven’t read everything. I’m no expert on this stuff.
I’ve looked into the Kontera ads, but still can’t find how they might hurt. I’ll keep looking though.
@ Grace – I might be able to help with your PR. The best way is to get links from other sites to yours. Guest posts are a great way to get quality ones, blog carnivals are very easy. Keep in mind that Google only updates your PR every few months, so even if you have enough links to have a PR, it might show for a while.
@ Adam – Really though, that’s the big key. That’s why I haven’t messed around with it for two months even though it happened a while back. My traffic is stronger than ever so I’m not really concerned.
P.S. Love the article on do follows.
@ Ian – tagline: Done.
@ DJ – You bet.
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[...] presents My Google Penalty and My Response posted at I Will Not [...]
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