Penguin

[I, Brian]

Idly checking GA today for my main sites, and found one dropped from 1100's to 700's daily uniques after Penguin - though none of the others affected.

Ironically, it's probably my most authorative site and not one I do link building for - an interfaith site I run for personal interest, not a money site.

I find that result somewhat bizarre, considering the anti-spam focus being touted. Maybe it has too many universities and government sites using the same anchor text. 

[Chunkford]

Maybe it's internal links penguin looks at also?

[I, Brian]

Standard Wordpress and vbulletin install, just like my other sites. Generally same site structure and nav links on each.

[grnidone]

This was a decent write up on Penguin...might be good to read, but much of what it says you all said...

http://www.ppcassociates.com/blog/experience/when-penguins-attack/

[2much]

Have you guys seen this?

http://www.seonitro.com/easyblog/entry/pandapenguin-case-study-analysis

Pretty impressive and summarizes everything I've been seeing too.

[Chunkford]

I like that 2much, its a good writeup and pretty much says what I've been thinking especially about brands

[I, Brian]

Interesting link - so if I'm reading this right, then links that disappear in volume are working against a link profile? In which case, would the removal of low quality links not compound the issue?

[Drastic]

Good read, I'm glad to see someone else thinking like I am about links being counted while not indexed.

>In which case, would the removal of low quality links not compound the issue?
Correct.

[Rupert]

>In which case, would the removal of low quality links not compound the issue?

I remember some time ago someone on this board telling me that was a negative SEO trick.   Put up 27,000 links, make sure they are all indexed by Google, remove them all.

[JasonD]

> Put up * links, make sure they are all indexed by Google, remove them all.

Negative link growth is a funny thing

[Rupert]

I was wondering if that would catch your attention Jason.   

[I, Brian]

>In which case, would the removal of low quality links not compound the issue?
Correct.

Very, very, interesting. I was going through the spammy links and found a big chunk of them already gone, through direct removal and site churn.

I had presumed the spun nature of the links was responsible for the Penguin hit, as we've seen semantic processing covered with Pandora, and Matt Cutt's highlighted spun text.

I was even wrestling with the idea of maybe even trying to get someone to DDoS the remaining junk sites!

But sounds like, instead, the best way to beat Penguin is to churn out stable links fast?

[Gurtie]

well yeah, but I was having this exact conversation with someone the other day and he was absolutely sure that his switching off of a link network had recovered one of this sites from penguin. I was wondering if switching off effectively just reconfirmed the penalty, but apparently not.

I'd like to see someone test whether you can use  link network we know google are penalising for to run the link removal trick still? I have been wondering, especially considering the volume of stuff which still seems to be ranking off the back of crap inbounds, whether Penguin actually only acted on one or two link networks, but the panic induced is letting G identify others as people pull links? in which case we might be in a rather surreal scenario in which some links hurt you going in, and some don't until you pull them out.

[BST]

A few months passed from Penguin. We should have some tests and results.

Since our sites that were hit were money sites we were very careful in testing. We lowered the on-page optimization, build some new "brand" anchor links and removed a few sidewide links.

The Googlers seem to be fairly confident that they didn't open widely the doors to "outside your control factors" hurting your site. One way of doing that is by combining/confirming outside data with data that is under your control (like on-page optimization and internal link structure).

Have someone been able to recover from Penguin?

[Rupert]

Hi BST, not me.  Panda, Penguin whatever. 

Have you? Have the changes you made made any difference?