Thought I would start a thread to expose any SE filters you've run into
Me:
2002 launched site, loved by Google tons of pages indexed and traffic, lots of links blah blah
1st filter - tried to get targeted anchor text to an internal category index page using blog comment anchor text like top ranking competitors were using - result was page knocked out of the top 200 for a time for that anchor/keyword and came back to its 70 ish position after a few months
2nd filter - recently bought site wide same targeted anchor text on a blog, looks like it tripped a -30 penalty on that anchor text
If it is that easy to trip filters on yourself, imagine what you could do to competitors (if you were that type of person). I am surprised G is being this aggressive.
I've also seen some sites pop in and out of the penalties. Not 100% sure what will lift the filters though.
Quotetried to get targeted anchor text to an internal category index page using blog comment anchor text like top ranking competitors were using
yup - hit that one a couple of times - lesson learned now :)
I had a client who used every linking spam program on record. Their links were utter crap. They also ranked in the top 10 for 200+ keywords.
I warned them I didn't think that was wise to have such crappy links pointing at the site.
Google banned them.
They whined to Google who looked at their site and told them their text on the page "was too light" and looked like invisible text. They fixed that and Google put them back.
This was also a client who spent a million plus dollars in buying google ads during Christmas. Ad spend *does* matter.
>>>I've run into the "You are a total spammer so we will ban this domain forever" penalty
Ditto.....but exactly 3 and a half years later it returned, not the same amount of traffic i must add but it reappeared in the index from being totally removed