Huge Google Delisting Of Major European SEO Companies

[inlogicalbearer]

Netbooster, Absolute Référencement, CVFM, Ability Référencement and 1ere Position have see their sites ban from the Google index. Thoses players, like the number one in Europe with a thousand customers, Netbooster also been out of Yahoo. Some of the customers of thoses agencies also get penalized.
French article here at Zdnet France
English on my blog

[cariboo]

Since last spring, the sites of five of the biggest companies have been blacklisted by Google... At least, the owners of these sites think they have been blacklisted.

Until this week, these companies didn't "trumpet" these news forth. But the most read french newsletter about web economy ("Le Journal du Net") dit it for them last thursday, by revealing that the biggest of them, "Netbooster", have been banned officially by Google. The reason alleged by Google is the use of "spam techniques" to improve the rankings of their clients.

The members of a french professional organisation, SEMA7, saw the site of their association disappear from google's index a few weeks ago. And they wonder if this site is not blacklisted too... This would be even more disturbing for french SEO companies, because this site didn't use any forbidden techniques... As a matter of fact, they didn't bother to optimize it !

French SEOs are wondering now why Google took actions against so many of them... They aren't aware of another country where it took such proportion.

I'm not in this business. In fact I'm a french webmaster interested in search engines and positioning. So I'm not involved at all. But I consider these news to be very disturbing...

This issue has been relayed by the media in France now. I think there will be somme "revivals" very soon.

[dannysullivan]

FYI, I merged Cariboo's post in a different thread over here, as the two topics are related.

[Stephane]

Hi all,

a quote from your blog Eric :

The reasons I suspect for thoses penalities is huge quantity of doorway keywords overstuff pages generated dynamically by script to reproduce the uncrawlable database of theirs clients and huge cross-linking strategies!

Maybe...

But how to explain that Google seems to target mainly french SEOs websites, instead of their clients ?
More strange, the possible blacklisting of a french non-profit organization whose web site has never been optimized for search engines...
http://www.google.com/search?q=www.sema7.com

Why have french SEOs been so hardly hit when US SEOs have not ?

Could there be a relashionship with particular trade relations between SEO and Google subsidiary on the french market ?


Here are a few reactions from webmasters and SEO in France :
http://www.webmaster-hub.com/index.php?showtopic=5848

[inlogicalbearer]

But how to explain that Google seems to target mainly french SEOs websites, instead of their clients ?

Maybe Google judge the client doesn't know those techniques were against the politics at Google.

More strange, the possible blacklisting of a french non-profit organization whose web site has never been optimized for search engines

The people involved in that organization are the same who were banned and use doorway page.

The problem with doorway page is :
You have to create a page to mimic a page who can not been seen by a SE. Here, I got no problem with that. The problem is how you create the mimic page.
Did you gonna put the appering text of the page at line 93 in the code of that doorway page ?
Why not enhanced the text and put a little bit more keyword ?
Why not put more links ?
Why not remove some text who is not appeling to a topic SE query ?
Why not overuse strong and H1 tag to be place the page in the top position ?

The fact is : It is to easy to cheat with a doorway page.

[Stephane]

The huge part of the people involved in this association have not seen their site deleted, and a lot of them are not even SEO themselves. There are search engines representatives in the association, and direct competitors of Google on rhe sponsored links market.
At least one of the companies you mentionned is member of SEMPO, several among them are members of IAB. Neither SEMPO nor IAB have been blacklisted as far as I know.
Among the different activities and goals of our french association, one is to promote ethics and regulation in the SEO and Sponsored Links industry.
Nothing that could explain or legitimate a deletion of this site (if this site is really blacklisted, it's not sure at this time)

Your comments about doorway pages are interesting, but I don't see how any SEO technique could be related to what has happened in France.

If the problem was technical, a particular type of page no more welcome in Google's index for example, it would be logical to see Google remove these pages from his index, Right ?
So, Google would have deleted the clients of these SEOs. That's not what we see here.

(Sorry for my bad english...)

[Anthony Parsons]

Not being in France makes it a bit hard, but I will take an estimated stab at the issue. Google haven't been backwards in coming forwards reference their disliking of SEO's and techniques to manipulate their algorithms. Sure, why France? But realistically, how do we know they just aren't sorting through one Country at a time, France being first to remove anything out of the ordinary?

Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/guidelines.html

People keep saying, "those are just a joke, Google never does anything." Well, now they are, thus nobody can complain about it. The best piece of advice I ever took was from Jill Whalen, being make pages for the user, not the search engines. Funny, that Google also say that. Doorway, cloaking, over optimized, heavy keyword densities and so forth are generally not made for the user, thus they do not comply to the Google guidelines.

Yes, why did they ban SEO's and not the clients? Well, it was the SEO's that performed the work, not the clients. Take out the source to fix the problem.

[NFFC]

There does seem to be differences in how Google rolls out the bans, it may be just perception, it may just be that it has a bigger impact on what is, with respect, smaller market places.

>make pages for the user, not the search engines

The trick is to make them for both imho.

>Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

Is the worst piece of advice I have ever seen, it borders on the surreal.

Anyhow, and just throwing something into the pot, it seems there is a new "seo contest" in the works. Looks like the our French brothers and sisters are very much into that, any connection?

[inlogicalbearer]

Olivier Andrieu (the Danny Sullivan of the european market) have a interesting article today on that story.
Here is a little translation of his conclusions :

- Probably agree with the these of the delisting by Google by eliminating the delisting by competitor and the bug at Google
- 95% of the Web agencies don't bother to make site crawlable and a lot of time the company who hired SEO agencies don't even let them touch the code in the site
- Google by not writing clear rules of what wrong, thoses agencies go to far with unethical tactics
- The situation will be hard for SEO agencies in a near future
- The SE should provide better communication in regard to what is a SE spam and what is not
- The optimization process should began before creation of a site (finally he write this;-)

PS: The IPEA, a another SEM/SEO european association like IFEA, gonna have a special meeting at the end of this week to discuss about a new ethical chart ;-)

PSS: I personally meet 2 guys from thoses SEO agencies 18 months ago, I discuss in forums on french yahoo groups, and it was always like that and was predictable.
For my part, when a client come to see me with a uncrawlablwe site nor can use URI rewriting or can't generate clean static pages from your database, to correct that fact, I just tell him, call me back just before your next makeover, and will do business together. Meantime go on PPC and don't try to cheat.

[cariboo]

Not being in France makes it a bit hard, but I will take an estimated stab at the issue. Google haven't been backwards in coming forwards reference their disliking of SEO's and techniques to manipulate their algorithms. Sure, why France? But realistically, how do we know they just aren't sorting through one Country at a time, France being first to remove anything out of the ordinary?

This was my exact thought at the start, Anthony Parsons.

When it comes down to it, Google may set some rules up, and ban pages which don't follow these rules...

Then there are several ways to "ban" people, and Google seems to have chosen a very disturbing method to do it...

Google didn't just remove tricky pages from their index : if it was only this kind of penalties, there haven't been such a fuss in France. They banned the sites of SEO's companies. I asked some of them "did you receive any special warning from Google". And their answer was "No... Only the same general warnings they have repeated again for years without taking any actions".

Did the banned SEO's broke Google's rules ? Yes I think they did... As a webmaster, I think some of them really seriously crossed the limit.

But I should say some of these rules are crystal clear, some are very, very fuzzy, and it's very difficult to know where the border line really is...

So french (and non french) SEO's have worked for years in a very blurred environment, where some forbidden techniques are widely used, without serious penalties, and where other techniques are known to be on the "borderline"...

In this context, the abrupt change of policy at Google's logically arouse SEO's anger. And the total lack of dialog between french SEO's and Google becomes now a real issue. That's why I think the two french associations quickly asked for a meeting, and are trying to adopt a position about this new situation.

In fact, I think this anger is all the more serious because at this moment the situation seems unfair to these SEO's. Are there other SEO's who used the same techniques. Yes ! Did they get banned ? No. Are there webmasters who used the same techniques. Yes ! Plenty of them. Did their sites get banned ? No, and their pages are polluting the SERPS, and frustrating webmasters that play by the (fuzzy) rules of the search engines.

These events raise many questions... Was this a random penalty ? Or a deliberate plan to ban the biggest french SEO's ? Did Google really made an abrupt change of policy, or just gave penalties because at one point these SEO's crossed a limit fixed by Google... Does Google want to paralyse annoying competitors, or is all this fuss only a big, big misunderstanding between an immature and bad organized profession, and a company with very special ways of communicating ...

[Webby]

Well, with a bit of luck, Google will focus on Germany next (my market) :-)

Seriously though, I have absolutely no sympathy for those French SEO companies hit. They know exactly what they are doing and knew that there was a slight risk. They dont just do this for their own sites dont forget but for literally thousands of clients sites when you add them all together. Google knows that and don't want their index clogged up with dynamically generated doorway pages etc. hence they hit the mass producers of them. I sincerely hope the next stop is Germany where they have their fair share of doorway domain/page merchants as well.
However, apart from a short spell of bad publicity, these bannings / pr0s arent going to affect any of them. They get their business mainly from call centers and have had few good rankings in the SEs anyway. They may get more potential clients now asking why their site has a gray bar now mind.
alan

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Webby

However, apart from a short spell of bad publicity, these bannings / pr0s arent going to affect any of them. They get their business mainly from call centers and have had few good rankings in the SEs anyway. They may get more potential clients now asking why their site has a gray bar now mind.
alan

That's a very good point - there's a few aggressively marketed companies in the UK that are basically automsubmission dressed up as guaranteed top rankings. They prey on the businesses who have little clue about SEO and the internet, but who can't resist promises of getting good sales from an internet presence. You could drop the offenders out of Google and co. and their marketing model would continue. Which is precisely why higher public awareness of SEO issues really needs addressing - here in the UK at the very least.

[raphaelric]

Hi,

I am founder of one of the companies that were told to be banned from Google.

I can bring you more info about this story.

Part 1 Articles about AAA banned from Google.
One SEO agency (call it AAA) has been blacklisted by Google (source: french Google RP responsible) and an article was published in France main internet news source (www.journaldunet.com)

Part 2 AAA uses IPEA to protect itself
=======================
This SEO agency decided to use IPEA to spread the world he was not the only SEO to have a site out of Google. The news from the banning therefore stems from a press release sent by IPEA, in emergency, to draw attention to other SEOs. This news was not verified and automatically published by ezines based on press releases +zdnet.fr. Each of them even reproduced the spelling mistake IPEA has made in its own name (IFEA) inside the press releases and mentionned a company that does not exist....

Part 3 Explanation
=======================
The reasons why some of the different companies websites are no more in Google are, as usually unclear but not in the same wave as AAA blacklisting.
A site was out of Google for years. Another site had been put out of the index for months for very agressive and forbidden reasons.
As for one of our sites, CVFM.COM, Google told a Journaldunet.com journalist it was not blacklisted. For the time being, the most likely theory we have is that cvfm.com was replaced by cvfm.fr (which had been pointing to the same site for years) very much like some french site who saw their .com disappear and .fr rise within the past months (I obtained this information from a big domain name company in France two weeks ago).

Part 4: Visit to Google offices
=======================
There maybe another explanation for our dotcom. My company, of course, always recommends its customers to optimize HTML code of its website and simplify URL, should it be static or dynamic. This is our historical technique. My 8 year experience clearly proves that this is the safest and most profitable way of getting visibility in search engines.
But we also does use doorway pages and create static product pages out of our customers databases in order to enable complex dynamic websites to appear in organic results. We know it is against Google written recommandations but Google provides absolutely no solutions for travel industry websites that cannot change their entire reservations engines just to comply with Google technical choices. I don't think it is cheating: we help Google see databases that are to complex for Googlebot to crawl them. Of course, we do that to give visibility to our customers but we actually do help Google go beyond its limits.

I went to Google's french offices in Paris, yesterday to have a clear explanation about what happened. The Google team in Paris is friendly and helpful. The newly appointed France manager accepted to talked to me and confirmed there was no action against IPEA, he did not even know about.

He could not help us without refering to the US and get some info from them.
He commited to come back to us and confirm CVFM was using relevant SEO techniques or to help us adapt ourselves, should CVFM had made any mistake, in order to comply with Google needs (I made clear for him we used doorway pages and static product pages).

Part 5: whitelisting.info
To get full transparency about official ways to stay in the Google index, we have created a site dedicated to safe SEO practices: http://www.whitelisting.info where we will publish the information we get from Google for cases that are not treated in its online recommandations.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

information we get from Google for cases that are not treated in its online recommandations.

This would be one reson for me NOT to visit the site

Google have proven again, and again that they do not give recomandations that helps us - the webmasters and SEOs. I do not want to listen to Googles "good recomandations" before they give some commitment. They can tell me to do A and then the next day ban me for exactly doing that. And they have in fact done that before (remember the no-archive case some years ago?).

So my best advice is: Do not listen to Google. Do what your experience tell you is right. If Google ever grow up and decides to do business with us (on the organic side) then I will start to listen but untill that I believe I am in a much better position following my own experience and the experience of my good colleagues and friends among SEOs.

The only time I would trust Google is if you are a VERY big AdWords spender (we are talking +$1 mill a month). Money tend to help on their honesty () - "tell us the truth or we pull a million dollar budget" seems to do the job. Off course, this dosen't fit the "do no evil" mission statement, so don't say this out loud

[inlogicalbearer]

But we also does use doorway pages and create static product pages out of our customers databases in order to enable complex dynamic websites to appear in organic results. We know it is against Google written recommandations but Google provides absolutely no solutions for travel industry websites that cannot change their entire reservations engines just to comply with Google technical choices. I don't think it is cheating: we help Google see databases that are to complex for Googlebot to crawl them. Of course, we do that to give visibility to our customers but we actually do help Google go beyond its limits.

That why I published and spread this news.

I may be a dreamer but I loved to see a Web more semantic. I discuss about doorway pages with David C, one of your partner about that 2 years ago. If we always find ways to accomodate the big company to still use stuff who was clearly not been made to be use on the web, we will never see semantic coming in. When I saw WebSphere or Broadvision still been use to produce Web site, that's make me sick. By producing doorway pages for thoses, you endorse those companies to still go in the wrong way. If everybody don't tell them to think Web communication we will never see things change.

I presently evaluate CMS, and since a same study two years ago, I finally start to see a few of thoses taking in consideration SEO. We have to EDUCATE. We have to promote thing like RSS. How many press releases section of corporate site were you can find RSS ? Less than 1% !

[creativecraig]

I just done a few searches on Uk seo/ppc companies and was not able to find webgravity.co.uk in Google. They also have a grey bar with nothing in the index.

Of course toppile are not listed.

[raphaelric]

Originally Posted by inlogicalbearer

That why I published and spread this news.

I may be a dreamer but I loved to see a Web more semantic. I discuss about doorway pages with David C, one of your partner about that 2 years ago. If we always find ways to accomodate the big company to still use stuff who was clearly not been made to be use on the web, we will never see semantic coming in. When I saw WebSphere or Broadvision still been use to produce Web site, that's make me sick. By producing doorway pages for thoses, you endorse those companies to still go in the wrong way. If everybody don't tell them to think Web communication we will never see things change.

You do the same error I did a few years ago: between 1996 and 1999, I tried to convince my customers to produce static webpages, because search engines could not see dynamic web sites. Altavista, Excite were saying: we cannot crawl dynamic websites because they trap our spiders. This is the reason why the dynamic web was the invisible web. At that time, 98% of the available information was invisible to SE because of the limits of search engines like AV or Excite. Then, in 2000 and 2001, Fast and Google began crawling the invisible increasing a ten fold factor the information one could search throught their engines. Believe me that it did not took me long to teach my customers to optimize dynamic websites, should the technology they use be recognised by Google.

But Google is still not perfect enough to crawl any dynamic web site. Sometimes, it is also impossible to optimize dynamic websites or to simplify URLs. Sometimes, it is possible from a technical point of view and impossible for a human factor (developpers that dont care at all about search engine trafic and prefer pure technology).

If we put those developpers in front of you, you will never agree: you will say, "semantic web is king" and they will answer "technology is king"
We prefer to build bridges between their technology and your semantic web.

Doorway bridges.

[Wail]

I took one of the agencies named above (which I won't name) and checked their backlinks in Yahoo. Hundreds. The vast majority of which all come from a certain site with hundreds of keyword sub-domains.

I know Yahoo explicitly states their dislike of this.

Checking the source code I couldn't find any URL matching the SEO's - they seem to have been removed. Coincidence or clean-up? Surely its easy enough to rummage around and decide for yourself if named parties appear to have being doing something dodgy?

Hi all,

Do, not to believe all you can read on this story and 1ère Position Agency ;-)

20 pages of our site indexed by Google: http://www.google.fr/search?sourceid...Dposition%2Efr
45 backlinks found by Google: http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&ie...sition.fr&meta=

Or: http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=webmarketing+ethique&btnG=Rechercher& meta=

All journalists as well as the IPEA himself, modified their articles and deleted this false information about 1ère Position few days after.

For us as for many other people in the profession the solution to avoid SPAMDEXING is simple and exists since many years… : Think SEO BEFORE creating a web site, and complying with the rules of the netiquette before complying with the rules of Google.

How ? By following our rules since 1999 at 1ère Position : http://www.1ere-position.fr/referencement/ethique.php (that’s in french sorry about that.)

About our domain name www.1ere-position.com that does not appear in Google:

1 - This domain have not vocation today to be indexed by Google. This domain does not have true content, get only 1 page which his a automatic (bad) translation using Google Translation tool. In this case, we are NOT surprised that Google don’t index it until we don’t offer releavant content for International custumer.

2 - More than 6 months ago we decided to use VOLUNTARILY our .com domain to take part in the contest “mangeur de cigogne” (with the risks we know by participing to a SEO Contest!). This is at this time, we also decided to put our French-speaking activities on our www.1ere-position.FR, strategy that appears better for us to reach better ranking on Google.FR and get closer FR needs.

Best,
David Degrelle
Founder and CEO 1ère Position

P.S : It will the only post on this forum about this story and 1ère Position. New clients are waiting to know how to be ethical and win much more on the net !

[cariboo]

Google's warning to french SEO's produced some very spectacular effects...

Two of them now are willing to lead a new crusade for ethics in SEO, and are claiming very loudly (and on this thread too) that they are the champions of organic optimization and ethical methods...

Well, I don't know if Google really banned them or not. CVFM explained here that they believed first their site was banned, but learned then it wasn't. I can believe them...

We know, because Google confirmed the information, that the biggest SEO company in France is really banned.

But the other ones saw how bad such a penalty could be for their public image... And are now trying to build a brand new reputation. I notice they address special messages in english on their sites, and are posting here... Well, if people working on a hill at Mountain View have a glance at these sites, they will read it easily. Thanks for them.

I respect these SEO's. I understand they are in real trouble, and I don't blame them for trying to protect their image. But I regret they don't really assume the use of some borderline methods in the past... And I hope they won't prevent by their way of acting a real debate with search engines to take place in France.