The Don’t-Push-It Penalty
When I was playing around with my (referer) statistics a bit, I noticed that something strange was going on. After a little bit of digging, I noticed some new sort of penalty or filter. It’s not a minus 950 penalty or something like that, but more like a Till-Here-And-No-Further penalty.
Earlier this year, Wiep.net received a PageRank penalty because of a few sponsored links (not sponsoring me, though) in the footer. In that post, I said that
Some have suggested to nofollow or remove the links in the footer and to do a reinclusion request, but I’ve decided not to. In stead, I’ll do exactly what I said I will do my footer; I’ll leave the links up (which is mandatory when you use the template) until I have a new design.
Apparently, Google didn’t like this. All posts that were published before this date (including the PR penalty post) show up in Google without a problem. Every post that got published after I said that I won’t live by all rules that Google sets, however, don’t. Pages still get cached and indexed, but they just don’t show up anymore. No signal in the Google Webmaster console, btw.
So, Matt, after the #6 penalty, the -950 penalty, and other penalties, is this the Silence! penalty?
RSS ?
6 comments on this post
I just don’t get why you are using a template that requires sponsored links. It looks extremely unprofessional. There are 1000s of free templates without ads.
Frederik, I know. When I set up this blog (and theme) about a year ago, I thought it was pretty nice and different and all. I’ve been looking for a new design for a few months now, but until then, the links will remain where they are. That’s what I signed up for when I selected this theme.
I’ve got to admit, I’m also wondering why on earth you retain something which detracts value from your site, actively damages, and does nothing positive for it??
It’s almost kind of like eating a hamburger even though there’s a dead mouse in it, on the grounds that you paid for the burger.
Just my 2c, though.
Brian, it’s not about my website. My point is that there are lots of other people eating the same hamburger without knowing that there’s a dead mouse in it, and that they -in theory- can get penalized for doing so.
Oh, and btw, the links will be gone in a few weeks, as I’m planning on launching a new design pretty soon
Designers always put their links in the footer.
If G wants this process stopped, perhaps they could digg into their billions deep pockets and sponsor some of the OS designers creating OS templates for OS products containing free content which Google subsequently makes money from.
Jez, Why should google have to pay to support OS designers? That really makes no sense at all. Google can penalize however they want in their search results. The problem is that us customers have let google become too big and hold too big a portion of the search market share. Now google can completely crush a company with the click of a mouse.