NO Joke - SERP always 31st on Google?

[Arius187]

One of my sites www.printcountry.com always rank 31st on most of the major keyword search results on Google (including the keyword "printcountry") which I think is very odd. Some keywords you can try (and most are very competitive) "printer ink", "epson ink", "epson printer ink", "discount cartridge" and I can keep adding on this list.

It is no JOKE, I can not understand why. Did some thing at Google fixed our position, but can not understand it for the life of me. Or is it possible that this happens on my browser only.

Please help me shed some light on this. Am I going crazy?

[Logan]

well, you are officially not going crazy. printcountry is at #31 on by browser as well. Is this something new you've encountered, or 'always' that way. For example has 'printcountry' ever provided your site a #1 ranking?

[RichyP]

This quite interesting:

These are the positions I am getting for the following search terms:

epson ink cartridges - 31
canon ink cartridges - 31
printcountry - 31
print country - 31
"print country" - 31
Printer Cartridges & Epson Printer Ink from PrintCountry - 31


The last search is the first H1 tag I could find on your homepage. Judging that this term (which is long) is still result 31 i'm beginning to think something is strange.

if you search for the term in qoutes I only get 3 results shown from a possible 18. Of those 3 shown printcountry.com is not shown. Looking at the other results gives me some alarm bells with the following domains all directing into your printcountry branded site.

www.print-county.com/
www.printeink.com/
www.printecartridges.com/index.asp

As you have at least 4 domains serving the same content I think your SERP is being affected by some duplicate content filter. I haven't looked into it anymore but I would be interested to see if any of those above domains come above printcountry.

My suggestion would be to go with one domain and have all the other domains redirect to printcountry.com at the registrar level.

Hope this helps.
Rich.

[Arius187]

Thanks Rich & Logan

Logan, to answer your question. Yes we had been in the first page on Google for most of those keywords in the past (obviously for term 'printcountry' we were for a long time #1, but then the last few months got to our not so favorite sounding #31st position). Even for keywords like "printer ink" and "epson ink" type very competitive words we were on top page (which we still are at Yahoo & MSN).

Rich, very good point. I thik you are on to something there. Maybe Google has that duplicate content filter that lightly penalizes sites so that they can not rank better than 31st and thats why we are stuck there. Even for our own domain name we are stuck there. I am checking those other domains, I think they are ours and if so we will get 302s there to see what happens. Or what would you suggest, just changing the content there?

Has any one had similiar experience with duplicate content, and experience anything about that mysterious 31st position

[Arius187]

More I think about it, I think you are right about the duplicate content issue. I dont know why but we had those domains with the duplicate content (instead of 302 or point servers setting to the main domain), but it is fixed now. Lets see how that goes and if anything will change.

Maybe Google has that duplicate content filter and penalizes sites with max. positioning them 31st, and thats why we were stuck there.

How long do you think before Google will see those changes?

[mcanerin]

Maybe Google has that duplicate content filter and penalizes sites with max. positioning them 31st, and thats why we were stuck there.

Ordinarily, I'd say that sounded like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but 31 is potentially a significant number for search engineers - basically being the highest possible result that is not in the traditionally important first three pages.

I'm not excluding the possibility that it's a coincidence, but it would have to be one hell of a coincidence! Interesting.

Ian

[Arius187]

Ian, I am not usually into these simple deductions and throwing out numbers but I am convinced in this one. I have tested so many keywords (that has different nature like brand, cartridge, cartridges, ink, inkjet) and I kept coming with this mysterious #31st. I dont think it can be coincidence I think it is one significant number?

[mcanerin]

I suspect you are correct, which means an action on the part of the search engine is the cause, rather than random chance.

Therefore, the problem isn't the position, but what caused the action in the first place. I would look to links, duplication, etc.

Ian

[RichyP]

Originally Posted by Arius187

I am checking those other domains, I think they are ours and if so we will get 302s there to see what happens. Or what would you suggest, just changing the content there?

Hi,

I would redirect all traffic from those other domains to your main domain with a 301 redirect (Moved Permanently). You can normally do this straight from the registrar that the domains are registered with - just redirect web traffic to your main domain which should create a 301 redirect. check this with some of the online http response code checkers.

I have never heard of the magic number 31 in SERP's as a cutoff for duplicate content but this appears to be the case here. Very interesting find.

Hopefully over time you should start to see other domains go from the results and your main domain climb above 31st. Good luck and keep us updated.

Rich.

[Arius187]

Thanks a lot Richy, that was a very good catch. We changed the registrar info on the domain level so only thing I can do know is to wait. I hope I don't have to wait 4 months for another update.

[JohnW]

This exclusion-from-top-30 issue is not likely related to duplicate content or 302 problems. Sounds more like an example of an actual penalty to me.

[glengara]

I've come across the theory of the +30 penalty quite recently, back in the day quite a few people believed there was a +20 penalty in operation, can't remember what it was for though...

[pleeker]

Originally Posted by Arius187

Thanks a lot Richy, that was a very good catch. We changed the registrar info on the domain level so only thing I can do know is to wait. I hope I don't have to wait 4 months for another update.

I'm more familiar with doing 301s at the htaccess level, so make sure your registrar is handling this the correct way. I generally don't trust registrars to get this kind of thing right.

BTW, this is one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

[Arius187]

Thank you pleeker. I will take your advice.

Any ideas about what I should do next (since I fixed that duplicate content domains and did the adjustment). Should I just wait, or try to contact Google (probably many attempts and response at the end) support contact form that Matt Cutts talk about here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto

Anybody had any experience with Google for a similar issue?

[RichyP]

Just a case of waiting now as these things don't happen over night.

I'd be surprised if you do get a reply from Google and at the end of the day it’s not a problem with their algorithms it’s the fact that you had multiple domains all serving the same content.

No real point in doing a re-inclusion request as the site is included - just lower down that what you would want ;-)

Keep hanging on and waiting. You could always throw Adwords at it in the short term.

[Arius187]

Thanks will do (meaning wait and little Adwords)

Also on that Adwords note, another interesting thing I found out was those multiple domains that were serving the same content printeink.com etc... were actually not linked from anywhere (never, ever) but only used in Adwords once. So basically that explains why they were indexed (since there was no link to them from nowhere ever and had only adwords to be mean to the indexation).

[TheWizardofSeCA]

Originally Posted by JohnW

This exclusion-from-top-30 issue is not likely related to duplicate content or 302 problems. Sounds more like an example of an actual penalty to me.

I'd have to agree there JohnW, it seems like the pages of this website would normally rank higher for all these search phrases, but they are forcefully penalised to maximum rank #31. Having so many search terms ranking at exactly this position is just too much of a coiincidence.
Especially when a phrase such as Printer Cartridges & Epson Printer Ink from PrintCountry comes up as #31 as well.

One of the most interesting things I have seen lately!

[jehochman]

Any ideas about what I should do next (since I fixed that duplicate content domains and did the adjustment). Should I just wait, or try to contact Google (probably many attempts and response at the end) support contact form that Matt Cutts talk about here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto

1. A duplicate content filtering is not a penalty. You don't need to ask for reinclusion if you have been screwed up by duplicate content. That situation is fixed automatically by Googlebot once you clean up.

2. Have you checked with Google Webmaster Tools? I have seen an instance where Google reported a penalty with a (new) client's site. Apparently the site was hacked by black hats who installed thousands of pages of porn and pill links.

3. Upon cleaning up the client's site, we filed a reinclusion request and Google seems to have acted on it with a week or two. You can find the reinclusion request in Webmaster Tools, and Matt has stated that they give extra weight to requests from registered Webmaster Tool users. When filing the request, you need to specifically state what was wrong, how it was fixed and who did it. If you did something wrong, you must promise not to do it again.

4. If Google thinks the Quality Guidelines violation was intentional, they may not provide any warning. In this case, you know what you did so fix it. This kind of sucks if you you've made an ignorant mistake, but Google thinks you knowingly did something wrong. If you can't figure out the problem, you may need to get help from a third party who understands how to clean up black hat optimization.

5. Another possibility is that your site has Trust issues, and Google has chosen to semi-sandbox your site. I don't know if such a thing exists, but anything is possible. Trust can be low if your site is new, or if you link out to crappy sites.

[Arius187]

Great Recommendations here. Thanks..

I don't think there is that much trust issue since the site is old, and is not linking to any crappy sites.

Great tips for removing penalties though. Very informative...

[SEO23]

You obviously have a penalty that is something less than a total ban.

I can't say that the cause of the 31 penalty is that your page is over optimized, but Google has definitely been trending towards pages that have a natural writing style and much less optimization.

I recommend you post to the sitemap group and possible to Matt's blog. If you are enduring a penalty, Google may be willing to tell you why.