Google Bowling
[Update: I've managed to get a FREE copy of Dr Andy's excellent guide to creating affiliate websites that Google loves. Just click here to download it. No squeeze page, just open the zip file and enjoy the 155-page PDF!]
I’ve been building new affiliate websites to diversify away from the Internet Marketing niche for the last few years.
In the past, getting Google to index and rank a new site wasn’t difficult. In fact, my last two IM products were to do with using datafeed content (going back several years!) and, more recently, using the power of a “future niche” to plant your website at the top of Google and stay there.
But, I’ve noticed that Google is using its penalty filters more strictly now than it used to. It seems that if you build a few “suspicious” links, with optimised anchor text, you’ll get slapped with a penalty filter before you can blink.
What interesting is that this activity breaks one of the fundamental rules of Google… a website owner is NOT responsible for links pointing to their website. The reason for this Golden Rule is simple… if it didn’t exist, the world of Black Hat SEO would spend their time and energy building BAD links to competitors to push them out of the search engine results pages (known as Google Bowling).
OK, so how can Google justify breaking its own Golden Rule? Well, it seems that the penalty is only applied to brand new sites… those whose age is measured in months rather than years. And here’s the super-smart bit… Google’s algorithm mostly prevents new sites ranking for competitive phrases… so there won’t be much “Google Bowling” going on because, by definition, trying to knock a competitor out of the rankings only makes sense if they have a valuable number one ranking.
It’s genius. You let webmasters build new websites and if they do anything suspicious in the first year (my guess for how long probation lasts), they’re on the “naughty step”. You give a free pass to any website older than a year to prevent Google bowling. You apply penalties algorithmically to avoid any manual overheads.
My guess is that you can avoid the 12-month probation by getting a link or two from older sites who have some authority and can “vouch” for your new website. If you can’t get those links, be prepared for a long wait before you can do any “real” link building.
What do you think? Am I right, or wrong? I’ll leave comments open for a few days. Also, please share this blog post if you like it… thanks! 
[Thanks for all your feedback. Comments are now closed]
Maybe this sis somewhat true but its really hard to tell at times. I’m dong lots of link building and what I see if you stay consistence, then your gong to rank..Just my thoughts.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Exactly, I think we need to be build quality links and do it consistently. I care less if my blog is new or the authority of my domain. Google is smarter than our back-links, don’t you think?
Neil,
I think what you say makes a lot of sense. Why don’t we get everyone who reads your blog to create different categorized link pages on their websites if they are older than one year, and lets all share categorized links to help each other out? Or, do you think that is going to set off google?
I have enjoyed your information since the 10 day cash secret. Is there any chance of resurrecting that with improvements?
I seriously hope that this is not the case, I have both new and old sites and i work very hard doing things the way google says, I spend a lot of time reading and commenting on blogs that are within the field i am interested in, how can google penalise me for joining in communities in my fields of interest?
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Nothing Google does surprises me anymore! But certainly, webmasters will learn how to adjust and deal with this newest nuisance.
May be that explains why my “less than a year” website just dropped all of a sudden after averaging an organic traffic of around 80 visits a day.
Now i get at most 3 organic visits a day. I guess i better start a new website all together.
They breaks one of the fundamental rules of Google ? Hehe, nice. And Neil, good information. If I understand good this, we must get some Back link from “better” sites in this Period of 12 months ? I think that we can do without any problem, or ?
I hope that I’ll get from your site one Backlink ,too !
Or maybe on my other site which is Helping People About CopyWriting, http://copywritingreview.net/, where can people Learn to Crank Out Profit Pulling Sales Letters for FREE and Watch There Conversion Rates Skyrocket!
So, Basiclly, we must do a lot on Back links and get more back links from PR 4+ sites for better Ranking. I think that you’re right about everything, about this.
Thank you for your Value information !
Alex Orlic
More rules to follow? It sure is hard to please King Google. I hope Google doesn’t penalize me for the link I’m posting on this site.
Hey Neil,
It seems like that is true, but then from what I see with my own eyes… it seems to only be true about half of the time. Lately I have not been able to find rhyme or reason because as soon as I see one thing and test it, it seems like the very next time I do it, something different happens. It’s almost like we are back to the Wild West again… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It seems to be “truest” if we can use that label, when the site’s content is not completely unique. If you borrowed article content from directories to fatten up your new site, and there is not a good number of pages with completely unique content, then it definitely seems like there is a penalty going on, or at least something that wasn’t there before.
Thanks for the news… A “new brand” one for me.
) with the alternative.
Like this – sure – Adword stays the “recommend”
way – by Google himself – to make traffic with a new
site ! Well done. But you’re there
Thanks again.
More sandbox than a penalty?
Hey Neil,
You hit the nail right on the head! Google thinks they are God, and they can do whatever they want. However, I think these filters may have the greatest affect on websites that are optimizing for Google.com, and not the international version of Google such as Google.ca.
If you build JUNK links, like most affiliate marketers do Google will drop you like a bad habit. They should. However, if you take the time to do things the right way Google will reward you. I have the #4 spot for a very competitive phrase on a site that is only 18 days old. How? Proper onpage optimization with 100% original content and 67 backlinks all properly optimized with 100% original content. If you are a spinner or duplicate content automated internet litter bug tough $hi+.
Hi John
Good observations based on real results. I agree. My only variation is that the definion of a bad link is pretty loose in my mind. For example I consider forumn signature links to be complete rubiish from a valid link perspecive HOWEVER they do count and they do help a site rank! so even those can help.
You spot on with the 100% onpage factors really helping though.
congrats on ranking. 1st place soon i hope
regards
I think you are spot on with your assessment. There are a lot of peole that over the years have thrown up rubbish sites and then chuck masses of links at them to get the site high in the rankings. Having effectively a 12 month sandbox is Googles way of saying that quality counts and if your quality is good enough to last a year we will take a look.
Is this a way to prevent new people from entering the market? It just doesn’t seem fair. If I learn all I can about making Google happy and doing what they want, it doesn’t matter, because the first one to the top gets to stay there no matter what I do. If what you’re writing is correct, I’m not even sure getting a link from a high-ranking site will matter! OK, I’m depressed now! But thanks for sharing. . .
Neil
This is a good philosophy. I have just experienced a couple of hard slaps from big G in the last 5 weeks for a tv site. The site was bumbling along at 15-25 daily visits, we decided to work on the site SEO wise and it started climbing (overnight in fact) to around 200 daily. Now…. 6 days later and SLAP down to 5-8. Took out a datafeed plug in associated with Amazon and a few days later, back up (again overnight) to around 200 daily visits.
Then a few days ago, SLAP again! down to zilch again! The only changes were 2 extra affiliate banners above the fold and an adsense search bar at the top.
Well, we have removed the changes and will wait to see what happens. The site is just over year old and it does seem as though Google are giving us snippets of the big boy traffic but pushing us over when we stick our chins out a little.
The week will be interesting….!
Nice blog mate
Lee
Interesting Neil. Sounds to me like Google is trying to be too smart and could actually penalise good new sites who and being genuinely linked to. Although. it makes sense to buy an aged domain anyway if you can (as well all know), but that isn’t always possible of course.
It all sounds logical and makes sense until you see people getting on the first page of Google in no time with brand new sites built on brand new domains.
And Oh, Gosh, are you suggesting that all those “Get on Google Page 1 Overnight” products are hogwash? Blasphemy Neil!
I keep hearing how tough Google is and could believe it if there wasn’t thousands of bad sites littering the search results.
In my opinion Google has a long way to go with their algorithms before good sites regularly out rank all the trash sites. Perhaps the problem is that there is so much trash that Google can’t find and rank any good sites?
I guess I’ll just keep building websites that serve people and not worry about it all…
Phil
Hey Neil, thanks for sharing your great observation and article… agree with you in only using established domains older than one year, definitely the smart way to go… or else if you’ve plenty of time to spare you can rub two sticks together to start a fire.
Hi Neil,
I have just had that experience with a number of new sites I had been building, all less than 3 months old. Some were just starting to take off traffic wise, 50 to 100 uniques a day, but only a few links to them. Some keywords up to around 200 in some very competitive niches.
Then last weekend, most of the traffic stopped, Google bot was no longer on my bot list, all keywords disappeared from the rankings. What traffic there was coming from some minor search engines.
So I went about getting a few good links to a couple of the sites and today Google is back (to these sites) and a jump in traffic as well. That quick – just a couple of days.
Boy, it sure is hard to keep on top of these rule changes, or is it just the way they are applied. Either way it makes things harder than they need to be, especially for those of us who try to play by the rules.
Thanks for another great blog.
Alan
Makes sense Neil -as you say, it’s genius but then as Google buys up genius talent I guess that’s what you’d expect.
What I’m seeing, even with established sites is that the time lag between adding links and serps movement has increased. Maybe new links go into a sandbox for a period of time before they are counted, to weed out spammy links that don’t stick.
Tony
Interesting blog post. And interesting variety of comments. It seems the key is to produce good original content with optimised on-page optimisation.
Good point, I have done testing on a new site and I noticed after links indexed to the site were picked up by google my rankings dropped om that site May be coincidence but will see after a few more tests
I have no idea of what the big google is doing and why all I know is it’s very hard to figure out with it’s complicated nature.
So…what if you already have a website with a pr4? Can’t we just start a new website and link to it ourselves?
BTW: From my own research I’ve heard the Google Gods do not like Internet Marketing sites…or is this bull too?
Paul
That doesn’t make any sense really, if you think about it. What about all of those new sites being built by people who know nothing of IM? If they become popular quickly they get a bunch of legit backlinks and will rank for various keywords even if they aren’t meaning too.
Neil, How do google determine the website age? If i bought a new domain and do a blog post dated back to start from a year ago will they know?
If think that if you just create great content and people like it and they will link to it… And you will have nothing to worry about.
I’ve been reading seo stuff for 4 years now. In that time I have learned a few things.
Well planned keyword rich text is primary, the length is optional. Links of any sort to this article are most beneficial and on page seo tips are valid. The best content is something that answers a question people ask but isn’t commonly answered. Anchor text is a two edged sword, very effective if handled carefully but easy to cut yourself on. Link building is similar to speeding.
Unlike site owners who have written current seo articles (similar to this- or the farmer algo change etc) – in the last few months, I have gained much better serp traffic to my domains that have had little else changed on them recently – maybe they are now aged, as Neil suggested! On the other hand I have also had success with 2 brand new domains for (mostly) longtail serp.
After 4 years I’m (nearly) as clueless about seo as I was when I started, except that now I know – that so is (almost) everyone else!
Hi
Just wanted to ask, is this a hunch or is there any proof to it.
I am ranking my new websites well in competitive searches already and I don’t see a G slap.
The only thing I know is, if you got your content right and a proper link structure / link wheel, you get what you want.
Now if you massively started spamming any website with more than 1000′s of links in a month, it would happen to any website, new or old, it does not make a difference.
In the past the I have helped few people get out of the same problem, who massively built more than 1000′s of links on their website without knowing about the G slap.
If you want to rank too, try building a lense/blog and give that as many links to get your money site to top rankings.
As far the competition goes, YES, you can get them slapped, old or new, does not matter.
These are my findings with the few tests I have done recently and found MR G does not spare ANYONE ANYMORE, or the google Panda AKA farmer update would not have effected the older sites at all. Offcourse, that’s a diff. story altogether.
But what I am saying here is OLD or NEW, you get a slap. Why blame Google, its only cleaning the web from being spammed.
Naveen
Neil
This is tough for an amateur like me. I have one site for my Pembrokeshire holiday cottage and trying to keep it visible is a full time job! And almost every day someone calls me offering a special deal to get me on Page 1!
Steve
We recently build 9 niche specific sites. 5 were added to Google Webmaster Tools and 4 were not – and we start sending links their way. The 4 that we didn’t told Google of (through Webmaster Tools), was indexed by Google and even start receiving traffic from them.
The 5 that we told Google of and for which we submitted sitemaps for, was sandbox for about 3 months.
The interesting thing was after the 3 month waiting period, Google start giving us first page rankings.
So my advice is this – don’t tell Google about your site before they’ve discovered it themselves through inbound links. If your site is in the sandbox, don’t stop sending links to it. Always make sure that you only add unique quality content to your sites, you will eventually be rewarded by Mr. G.
My site is 3 years old,
but still I saw something similar, creating links to a page and using same article even fjust few times, made me to loose / reduce that page rank + the ranking on google- as a reasult for that page.
I can understand it, google does not want spinned articles+ not natural links
What is really not fair is that some of us already built their emire that way,
happy days gone,
sure forums and blogs commeting should still work- if done well.
Havent they been doing this in competitive nieches for ages? I certainly thought they had.
I think a hell of alot of web site owners fall into the trap of believing the first opinion on how to rank a web page / site they find and when it doesnt happen for them, they cry ‘sand trap’, when actually its just [rubbish] link building because they dont actually understand what they are doing.
Way too much false information and plastic guru’s on this tinterweb.
I Think You Are Partially Right Has Far as That I See That Google Does Seem To Be Penalizing New Sites Due To There “Link Activity” But the Thing about How it Makes Sense Because No “Google Bowling” Would happen early On is Wrong i’ve Enterered a Niche Recently and Was Toward The Bottom Of Page One(Now In The Middle) But Some Other Webmaster(i assume in That Niche) Created a “False” RSS Feed That Could Have Ruined Me.Luckily I Accidently Stumbled On In It And Contacted The Site Owner And Had It Removed It Would Have ruined My Site.The Point Being a Site Can Be Very Young and Still Be a Target For “Google Bowling” A Keyword Rich Domain Is Enough to Signal Another Webmaster That a Site Will Soon Command The Top 3 Results For a Keyword(Ergo Early “Google Bowling”).This Actually Happened To Me Drew H.
Perhaps the problem is that there is so much trash that Google can’t find and rank any good sites?
Everything is changing, so as Google. Building new site and getting some king od serp was easy in the past. Now we have to be a little more innovative.
Hi
Well guys as with to so many blogs these days wehere comments are invited to help the site grow. This one also has all your links as No Follow. the page has no PR and very few links. SO dont worry to much about google having any issue with the link your have built
A good mix of naturally occuring do follow and No follow links is not bad thing anyway. Whilst ofcourse no follow links are completely against the whole concept of the We in the first place ! why link but recieve no credit !
No issue woth Neil doing this but Im just point out the way people obscese about the irrelevant.
Back to the point (at last) Gooogle is not going to ban, sandbox or anything else a site that is 5 days old and gaining 100000 links a day as long as they are relevant. For example a break new story showing that xx is actually a man when “she” has been a movie star in hollywood for ten years.
Whats not going to be allowed and get sandboxed is an amazon afffiliate site getting that many links.
I think Neil has something but the 1 year rule just isnt going to be valid. Its much more complex than that.
After all a 5 year old site that has 1000 links and gains 2000 in one day may get sandboxed or the links discounted if there are not a similar or increasing number of links built in the following days weeks and months
regards
Neil, ” It seems that if you build a few “suspicious” links, with optimised anchor text, ” are you saying that well optimised anchor text is suspicious? What is a suspicious link? I’d love to know coz I might be creating them!
Hi Neil
Interesting, but not surprising, Google getting tough on all the crappy automated sites clogging up the internet. When are people going to learn that Google is ranking good quality sites with good unique content that provides a solution to to the searchers problems.
You don’t need 1000′s of backlinks to try and manipulate the serps, [rubbish] sites are full of [rubbish] that Google doesn’t want. Get real and wise up!
I think that you need to expand on the “a few ‘suspicious’ links, with optimised anchor text” bit for clarification. Are you referring to low value links (profile links etc.) or virgin links (backlinks with no backlinks of their own).
I’d be very surprised if just “a few” links could get you slapped with a penalty filter unless there’s something inherently bad about those links.
Are you sure there isn’t something else at play here like Google trying to target obvious exact match domains with corresponding backlinks?
Diana
This is so “evergreen” topic. On the other hand, implications of backlinking change every now and then. There’s not much there to be set as a rule, but we always tend to create a rule from what we have observed or noticed as a pattern.
Google is not working that way, and as you’ve already mentioned, the rules for rankings are changing all the time (either by Google itself, or we, site promoters, forced G to make changes by exploting weaknesses of its system).
I don’t agree that backlinks from the wrong neighborhood will do harm to your rankings. With only 2 of my websites as an example, I can tell that such fact does not keep grounds. Both of the websites were created 3 months ago, different niches, moderate competition, same backlinking procedures and backlink places. Both sites showed on page 1 (#5 and #2) after 2 months for the main keyword search. Then, one site (the one that ranked #2) completely disappeared from the search results, and the second remained where it is now (pos #5). The backlinking is still taking place for both sites, but there were no changes at all in the last 30 days, that is, disappeared site is still not showing, and the second one is still at position #5.
The conclusion:
Every new site/domain HAS to go through the process of aging before it can compete for higher rankings with other (older) sites. The fact that one of my new sites still remains on page 1 proves nothing but Google’s far from perfect algorithm for being ranked, or…. well, that we will never ever have a clue about how these things really work. So, maybe it’s better to stay away from discussing things we know nothing about.
Simon
It seems to us that brand new sites linking to older ones with a clear relevancy chain can still impart that relevancy to those older sites – our next step was going to be to backlink those sites with a cheap & cheerful backlink selection, but I’ll tread more carefully on that now, especially as they seem help the older site significantly without having their own backlinks past a basic pingomatic “hello please index me”
Cheers Neil
Great Blog Neil!! Thank you. And yes, I have run into some real inconsistencies with Google. I have had content rich squeeze pages shot down (with PPC) and some other things like that happen. However, with other squeeze pages in the same format and content, there was no problem with any PPC adds. Still trying to figure this out.
Take care and keep up the great blogs.
Chris
I have to think that all this is conspiracy theory, and while I admit I don’t try to do anything too stupid on my websites, I also don’t try to limit what I’m trying to do for fear of what will happen – and it doesn’t seem to be putting me in the Google [toilet].
From what I’ve been reading it seems that the sandbox lasts for around 3 months – general rule of thumb though seems to be about 30-50 links per day but don’t go crazy – once you have the sandbox lifted, you will probably get a big Google dance going on then you can begin to increase your backlinks (key is consistency).
If your scared about it having any negative effects at first, build a blog on squidoo or something with (DO FOLLOW) and fire your links at that page with keyword link to your main website\page, will act as a shield but still give your main site good link juice.
I have a site that I built in December on a 600,000 competition (in quotes) was ranking around 70-80 in Google until Panda\Farmer. I’ts now ranking 12th and climbing fast.
I think the answer is in LSI rich content and high quality links .gov .edu are helping massively, it’s just finding them and getting them to stick.
It seems to me that having all ones eggs in one basket is a waste of time.
I just discovered that having three baskets full – all built differently in terms of optimisation for the monster, is neither use nor ornament.
Neil will find a way to overcome and tell us. Please.
Will google penalize webmaster if you have lots of profile backlinks? I had one website with lots of profile backlinks seems disappear from search engine.
Just build sites based on buyer keywords (if you’re selling products) or high ctr keywords for adsense sites. Keep adding quality content and in context backlinks. Works for me, but took a while to simplify down to this level.
Wendy
This whole subject is very confusing. I have a bunch of new niche sites and don’t know what to do with them – build links, do videos — or wait awhile until they’re aged…
Hi Neil,
Looking at your post and all the subsequent comments, one thing becomes blatantly clear – CONFUSION.
I believe Google was on the right track at the very beginning when it announced that content was king.
Then Google mucked it all up by stating that it would rate the value of that content on the recommendation of others – via links coming in from other sites.
Perhaps the Google bots could not assess the worth of content? This decision to rank sites on the amount and quality of backlinks started the insidious practice of creating articles, blog comments, forum comments etc, etc, via automation – this has spammed the whole internet – Googles Fault in the first place!
My sites are consistently at the top of Google search. I have stuck to one rule – put yourself in the shoes of the people who are searching on the search engine and over deliver on top quality information on the topic your site promises they will find.
Contact top authority sites and let them know that you have developed a site that compliments the information their viewers are looking for. If the webmaster feels that your site will enhance the experience for his/her visitors they will link to you.
Three such one-way backlinks are worth thousands of other backlinks – but your content really has to shine.
Cheers,
Kitty.