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Google Presents “Titanic” aka “Penguin” – Coming To SERPS Near You

By King Douche | April 26, 2012

Google Presents Titanic aka Penguin Coming To SERPS Near YouHoly sweet mother of God.

There’s adjustments, and there’s EVICTIONS.  Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Google’s latest algo adjustment dubbed ‘Titanic.”  Why “Titanic?”  Because you’ll be searching for survivors, that’s why.  Well, the official name has now been officially entitled “Penguin.”   Our original “Titanic” moniker was at least  related to something being cold and frigid.

THE FALSE ALARM
Last week, we saw some interesting, albeit odd, adjustments in the SERPS as Google wrangled with a buggy ‘parked-domain’ signal.  Many, like myself, thought it was some A/B/C split testing going on with Google SERPS and was likely a premonition to come.  This was not the case.    That false adjustment alarm was prelude to the real adjustment which was designed to further signal unnatural linking and ‘webspam.’  Both grey and white-hats were affected by this adjustment.

So, you say, “big deal,” King.  Well, here’s why I posted.

GOOGLEBOT IS AN ANGRY STEP-FATHER WHO DRINKS
As you might have read a few weeks ago, I went white-hat with my money site in January due to weak nerves and was sodomized by a robot named GoogleBot.  Sure, GoogleBot is cute and bleeps a lot but there’s a side to that machine that anally rapes you, uses sand as lubricant, and punches you in the face on the way out the door.   Yes, GoogleBot is passive-aggressive and has a temper.  Deal with it.

JUST MADE THE CUT-OFF
So, it seems, by 60 – 90 days, I went white hat just in time.  Because my money site, which was in the shitter a few weeks ago, just got promoted to #1 across the board for pretty much any keyword phrase even REMOTELY related to my niche.  All the other competitors that were running grey got their ass handed to them….many of them totally fucking nuked.

A FIERCE ADJUSTMENT
What shocks me the most about this algo adjustment is the fierceness of  it.  This isn’t some “move this site down 2 positions, or to page 2″ adjustment.  This is a total adjustment of a 3.1% of all search queries (the name “PI” for this adjustment was a close second.)  This is huge.  I would venture to say that this makes Panda looks like a cute, furry adjustment.  No, my friends, this adjustment is nothing less than MAJOR.

NOT A NEGATIVE SEO OPPORTUNITY
Some are saying that this is prelude to a new type of SEO campaign.  The “Negative SEO” campaign where you can actually hurt your competitors by placing shit-stained links in bad neighborhoods.  Me?  I am always on the prowl for my backlinks showing up in a bad place and am ripe-and-ready to file a notice to GoogleGods stating “that link is NOT mine, please don’t kill me, my income, and my life.” #kthxbye.

However, and this is what gives me pause, if Titanic was just a devaluation of poor links and/or content, then why are the affected sites NUKED rather than just demoted?  It sure looks like there is more than just de-valuation going on here.    This is a penalty, it seems and this paves the way for Negative SEO which is scary as hell.   Perhaps this was a one-time sweep although I highly doubt that.

TRENDS/PATTERNS
How did you do after this adjustment?  Did you find any pattern to the sites that were nuked?  I did.  The ones with paid links in shitty web spots all had the SERPS that were affected NUKED.  It seems that Amit found a way to really find many paid links and nuke the fucking shit out of the benefit of those links.  I personally don’t think that NEGATIVE SEO is possible.  I do think that there was benefit from even slightly shitty links and that benefit has now been mitigated.

FEEL CHEATED?  READY TO INFLICT MORE DEATH?
Google’s got a form for that.  If you feel that your site was wrongfully affected by the algo adjustment, you can submit your request for review using this form.  If you feel that the change wasn’t deep enough and there are still sites that missed The Death Penalty, use this Google Spam Report and mention the keyword “Penguin” in your report.

 

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  • Google Presents Titanic aka Penguin Coming To SERPS Near You

Topics: Other Stuff | 16 Comments »

Posted on 26 April 2012 by King Douche

Preferred Marketing Destination Manager. (Thanks to MM for that title).

has written 16 articles for SEO Bullshit

  • Marjory

    That doesn’t actually explain everything. Some pretty trusted sites are hurting too

  • Anonymous

    I think he mentioned white-hat sites as well.

  • Judith Kallos

    Hey, King — Titanic is perfect analogy!

    Older content lean sites with little to no social signals (no presence at all as a matter of fact) seem to be the cream that has risen to the top.  I know of a 4 page HTML site that hasn’t been updated in over a year that is now #2, while a white hat site on the same subject, all social, updated weekly nose-dived.

    Another instance of a very nice white hat site off the map while a stale low social signal eCom site is now in its place.  Even a bad blog post from 4 years ago is ranking better.

    No pay for links going on here — not even link exchanges.  The only thing I can think of is both are uber niche where their keyword phrase — is pretty much their only keyword phrase.  So are they being penalized for over optimization when in fact their main topic is what it is?  Why create more content on the same if it dilutes or penalizes you over those with a handful of outdated pages on the same topic?

    So what are these site owners to do so they can pay the bills?  AdWords to the rescue — how convenient.  Definitely a bunch of BS going on here….

  • http://seobullshit.com King Douche

    Great comment, Judith.  Props.  Of course, as you can imagine, writing automated algorithms is a 99% game at best…if your solution affected 99% of the probable situations correctly, you got an “A” grade.    It also seems that the ones that got passed up or wrongfully promoted get all the press.  Apparently there is a big stink about some bad SERPS for “make money online.”  A blank blog is getting top honors.  

    Thanks for your awesome comment and insight.

  • http://www.empreendedor-digital.com/ Bruno

    The blog that you are referring to is probably Griz’s old blog.

    He was the ‘gran’ master for many and has thought us a lot when he was active back in the days. 

    You can still find his old posts through the archives:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20100114033210/http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/ 

    And his new blog here:

    http://makemoneyonlinegrizzly.com/ 

    Congrats on getting back your rankings ;)

    Cheers!

  • http://seobullshit.com King Douche

    Yeah can you fucking believe how close I cut it?  If I had postponed my white hat changeover, and not taken the pain, or went back to grey, my ass would have REALLY been in the grinder.  Every once in awhile, I do something drastic and it pays off.  Just still in shock..checking SERPS 3x a day to make sure it all sticked and I am not looking at laggy data center…it seems to have stuck.  If you would have told me that I was making a life-changing decision back in January by going white hat I would have said you’re being paranoid—no one can write an algorithm that good or Google would NEVER adjust so heavily.  Well, by fucking God, they did and it did.

  • http://www.irishwonder.com IrishWonder

    And this only affected 3.1% of searches???

  • http://www.irishwonder.com IrishWonder

    I’d say it’s just your luck – I am seeing a number of pretty clean sites affected as well

  • http://www.bestelectricshaverreviews.co.uk/ Pete Morris

    The sites of mine that suffered haven’t been nuked out of the SERPs, they’ve just dropped down a few pages. In my case, it doesn’t look like a penalty. Just loss of the value of my backlinks (BMR gone, now all the syndicated spins that I did). Still seeing them jump up the the first page and back again, which is strange as Google said the update is complete so I wouldn’t expect to see that happening…

    I, like you, decided to go white hat recently but not quite in time unfortunately! I’ll just start link building again to replace the devalued links and see what happens.

  • http://seobullshit.com King Douche

    I don’t think you should do that.  What if I told you that you’ll need to be a “Lazy SEO” in order to rank now?  Don’t build a single link.  Just write a new post about the topic on your own site.  Link to your devalued piece and post that link in your G+ account for fast indexing.  Done.  I’ll be writing a post about that shortly.  But that’s SEO 2013, bro.  Trust me.  

  • Pingback: Grey Hat To White Hat Disaster | SEO Bullshit

  • http://www.cloudbackupservices.org/ Tom

    I got burned….I DO NOT participate in any schemes. But I do build too much (I guess) exact match anchor text links. So my sites range from -30% -> -85% loss in organic traffic from Google. Fuckers!!!!

  • http://www.frivjuegos2.net/ Juegos Friv

    I, like you, have decided to go white hat recently, but not quite in time unfortunately! I will just start building links again to replace the discount link and see what happens.

  • Wes

    “Me?  I am always on the prowl for my backlinks showing up in a bad place and am ripe-and-ready to file a notice to GoogleGods stating “that link is NOT mine, please don’t kill me, my income, and my life.” #kthxbye.”
    - Hey – How the hell do I do this??? I got a spamtastic crap site spam linking me for one of my best ranking keywords (which I now do not show up for at all) – webmaster tools shows over 500,000 pages linking to me from this crap website – how the hell do I tell Google the link is not mine? I looked everywhere – do I use the re-inclusion form? 

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