Your Competition CAN Hurt Your Rankings In Google

[shazbot]

This is an ALERT to anyone who hasn't experienced this...I was creeping up to over 600+ visitors a day, then WHAM! about a week after I bought a very expensive high traffic, high PR sitewide link, I disappeared from the higher echelons I started to achieve in Google. now I am about 380 daily unique visitors. big difference.

Incoming links CAN hurt you in Google. This is a hole in their heavily flawed algorithm as far as I am concerned. Any spammer can now destroy their competition with a few well placed site wide links. It was thought that since you cannot "control" what someone does on an external site that it won't affect you. In my experience this is dead wrong (at least with Google)

With the arbitrary and downright unjust way Google runs their search, the hope for many of us is to hope Yahoo and MSN kick their a**. I am fed up with them. You could spend a year working to improve Google rankings and one arbitrary slip up and you're gone.

I am boycotting Google, which is the only way they will lose marketshare. Google is pure, unadulterated evil. I will only search with Yahoo and MSN now. I hope millions join me.

[Jill Whalen]

First, how do you even know that this link was the cause of your traffic loss?

Any spammer can now destroy their competition with a few well placed site wide links.

You say that, but you actually purchased or obtained the link yourself.

Do you or anyone else have any proof of sites that were sabotaged in this way?

[GBR&D]

Fluctuations are the nature of the beast...

[GBR&D]

I wholeheartedly agree with Jill here (not necessarily the norm). Too many unknowns to jump to that kind of conclusion.

[mystikmedia]

Originally Posted by Jill Whalen

First, how do you even know that this link was the cause of your traffic loss?



You say that, but you actually purchased or obtained the link yourself.

Do you or anyone else have any proof of sites that were sabotaged in this way?

I was going to say the same. It may have been just a normal Google change, and not even related to any link. Positions change on Google constantly. I am frequently going from page 1 to page 2 for the search video capture, for example. When on page 1, I get a lot of traffic from this keyphrase, but when on page 2, I only get about half. Just an example. I am sure there are tons of other keywords that are the same. This could be totally normal. Unfortunate for you, but normal nonetheless...

[PhilC]

I wouldn't hold your breath for millions joining you just yet.

Inbound links always could hurt you. Google never said that they couldn't. All they said is that they can't usually hurt you. What you've experienced may be coincidence, but it may not be.

A Google engineer recently said that they are able to spot unusual events, such as a site suddenly increasing the number of IBLs, and when an event happens they check it against other similar events on other sites in the past. If most of other sites are spammy, then the site being checked is considered to be spammy, and vice versa.

I'm not saying that that happened to your site, but it's a possibility.

[shazbot]

Originally Posted by Jill Whalen

First, how do you even know that this link was the cause of your traffic loss?



You say that, but you actually purchased or obtained the link yourself.

Do you or anyone else have any proof of sites that were sabotaged in this way?

Because I had done nothing to the site in a month and then got this PR8 sitewide link which appears to be the most powerful link for all of the leaders in my category. Some of these competitive sites are a PR7, and #1 in Google for key phrases with 3 million searches a month.

A few days to a week after I got that link, my Urchin traffic stats took a nosedive. Google had no updates that I am aware of in that timeframe. I can't think of anything else that would've triggered it. My site is not spammy at all and I stay away from anything questionable. The only thing I do do is buy links, simply because it is very difficult and time consuming to get really good free inbounds.

Now if I am correct about the cause, and I basically hurt myself, it makes sense that a competitor can hurt me as well by using the same external site wide link tactic. This is very dangerous.

As with much of the knowledge we all have in SEO, it is difficult to prove. We can only look at cause and effect and learn from our experience.

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by shazbot

Now if I am correct about the cause, and I basically hurt myself, it makes sense that a competitor can hurt me as well by using the same external site wide link tactic. This is very dangerous.

While I tend to agree that certain inbound linking patterns can hurt you in Google, I think it's unlikely that what you've described would be used as a competitive tactic. Provide "a very expensive high traffic, high PR sitewide link" to a competitor??

Originally Posted by shazbot

As with much of the knowledge we all have in SEO, it is difficult to prove.

And therefore it would be a very risky tactic, perhaps even riskier to the linking party.

I also don't think it's likely that a sitewide link would get you nuked in a week. You didn't say where you had been and where you'd dropped to, or how long you'd been there. Could be that if you were playing with buying PR8 sitewide links, you might have been playing with other tactics too that caused Google to downgrade you. It seems ridiculous to call Google "arbritary and unjust" based on your loss of rank. You'd be wiser to try to learn from your experience.

[PhilC]

Also, you didn't say when it happened, but my guess is that it happened quite recently. Google had an update going on recently. It started in May, and may not be completely finished yet. Many websites suffered in it, including sites that had been at the top for years.

The best thing you can do is accept the current situation, and continue from where you are now. It's not uncommon.

[Marcia]

shazbot, it isn't just one lot of sidewides from one site. In another thread you posted this:

Anyway, here is what I did. I studied the backlinks of the leaders of some highly competive keywords and bought their most important links. One of these is a PR8 (their site is a solid PR7). I have about 6 seperate incoming links from PR7+ pages---ONE of them should have bumped me to a PR5 or 6.

I have also focused on some really simple keywords (with a keyword text link on PR7+ sites) that I should dominate in this update, but I am nowhere to be found. I got into 100+ seperate paid and free directories.

That's several different things done, all at one time, that's a very unnatural pattern.

[cline]

I have a corroborating experience. A client created a Spanish-language website, using an appropriate Spanish word as the domain name. The client wanted a sitewide link on their PR7 English-language website to the new site's homepage. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the new site's homepage to rank. For the first 6 months it wouldn't get indexed. I wrote multiple times to Google and they said there was nothing wrong. Meanwhile the site quickly moved to #1 for its target term in MSN and Yahoo. The next six months the homepage was in the index, but it wouldn't rank in the top 100 listings. Then, one day I convinced the client to let me remove the sitewide link. Three days later the site was on the first page of the Google SERPs.

OTOH, I don't think there is a penalty for a sitewide link. I just think that when G sees one they give no PR to that or any link from that site.

[sootledir]

I've felt for a long time that Google has some sort of "exact anchor text" match that comes into play very quickly when you get into sitewides.

I've seen several examples of keywords bomb with the addition of sitewides. Honestly, why would Google count a link from every page of a website as "vote" to your website?

[Mel]

If this is indeed the case it would seem to apply to internal navigation links within a site, many of which are sitewide, would it not? If so that would sure nuke a lot of sites.

[sootledir]

Originally Posted by Mel

If this is indeed the case it would seem to apply to internal navigation links within a site, many of which are sitewide, would it not? If so that would sure nuke a lot of sites.

Maybe they make the distinction between internal sitewides being okay and external ones being dodgy. Of course I have no way of knowing since I don't work for Google.

[glengara]

IMO internals ARE treated differently, I've seen them get a site pinged, but invariably the site had been artificially inflated to "improve PR or rankings".

[St0n3y]

Internal links most definitely are treated different than external links. Most internal navigation links are site wide and they use the exact same text. Google or any search wont' penalize for that. However, it is highly unnatural for a link to suddenly appear on a high PR site--on ever page no less--all using the exact same text.

I think it is also possible for Google to determine if a link is paid or free. Most competitors will not willingly pay a large fee to give a competitor a site-wide link. How many competitors would you have to do that for to clear the way for a top position?

Your site simply may have been flagged and a temporary drop put in place just to see what you do next.

[Mel]

Why is it unnatural for a link to suddenly appear on a High PR page??? They appear when they appear and there is nothing unnatural about that.

[PhilC]

That is written like theoretical thinking but what makes you say that "Internal links most definitely are treated different than external links"? It may make good sense, but have you seen some consistent evidence of it?

I don't see that there's anything unnatural about sitewides from other sites, or about the appearance of links from high PR pages.

I think it is also possible for Google to determine if a link is paid or free

There is no way for a search engine to determine whether or not a link is paid for.

Your site simply may have been flagged and a temporary drop put in place just to see what you do next.

I can't buy that. I can't see that any engine would waste time monitoring what a person does next. They don't care what a person does next. If they programmatically find something that they don't like on a page or in a site, they will programmatically take some action. They aren't fussed about whether or not the page or site merited the judgement or action. They don't concern themselves with things like that, as one of Google's engineers recently made clear.

[mcanerin]

Why is it unnatural for a link to suddenly appear on a High PR page???

I would assume (this is just me talking) that is was natural unless there was reason to believe otherwise.

However, a sitewide is a different animal - I would assume it's NOT natural if it's to an external site and identical on every page. I would assume that either this is the web host placing a link, or a link buy, or something like that. Why would a web designer link to an external (reputable or not) on every single page of the site if there was no relationship? My favorite is when these sitewide links show up on things like the contact us page and privacy policy not terribly natural, I think.

That's just me, but if *I* were programming a filter, that's how I'd look at it - easy to measure (a lot easier than attempting to mind read/gather historical data/predict the future/etc) and probably accurate most of the time.

Sure, there would be some "collateral damage" on occasion, but Google has no obligation to give anyone the benifit of the doubt in exchange for letting other people buy their way to the top - that's what AdWords is for

My opinion,

Ian

[St0n3y]

Why is it unnatural for a link to suddenly appear on a High PR page??? They appear when they appear and there is nothing unnatural about that.

What I meant that it is pretty unnatural for a link to suddenly appear on every page of a high PR site. Not unnatural if one is buying links, be pretty unnatural for such a site to suddenly decide that a site was valuable enough to link on every page. Of course, where the link resides on every page (if its in an obvious ad block, etc.) can play a role in whether it appears natural or not.

There is no way for a search engine to determine whether or not a link is paid for.

Not every link, no, but many paid links are quite obvious from a paid link block. Not hard to figure out, in fact I think Danny Sullivan mentioned something to this fact in another thread not long ago.

I can't see that any engine would waste time monitoring what a person does next. They don't care what a person does next. If they programmatically find something that they don't like on a page or in a site, they will programmatically take some action.

Maybe that came out wrong. I'm not implying that Google is watching to see what somebody does to their site after a drop, but that the algorithm may be programmed to drop sites on a suspicious spammer list. Of the algo notices major site changes in conjunction with the drop then the site might suffer some form of over-SEO penalty.

And of course, Google cares about such things? Sandboxing and new site aging issues really have nothing to do with eliminating on-page spam. This is nothing more than pushing sites to the side (for whatever reason) to monitor the reactions those sites may or may not have.

Of course sandboxing, new site aging and seo-penalties are still hotly debated and they may not actually exist in the forms we think of them to be, but *something* is at work when those things happen. And if the Google algorithm is not "watching" such sites in those odd phases, what *is* happening?