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11:23 am
November 22, 2011
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Watson Inc
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| Member | posts 371 | 
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The College Investor said:
I'm currently writing a post on this topic – TCI was penalized for over 1 year. Now, I'm back at PR3.
It seems like it took about 1 year and some change for me to return to PR3 too. I was wondering if your PR returned all at once or was it gradual (i.e., I wasn't really paying attention and found out in August that my PR was 2). Also, did you notice any change in your Google-derived traffic at all (I realize the Panda update may confound this determination)?
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11:47 am
November 22, 2011
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Aaron Hung
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Wow i didn't know linking out would be so bad…so having a lot can really hurt you?
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12:12 pm
November 22, 2011
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Watson Inc
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| Member | posts 371 |
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IDK.
All I can tell you is my experience. I didn't bother removing natural links. I would bet there are multiple people within Yakezie that have paid links without no-follow or clear indication that it is sponsored without any obvious consequences. Also, since I never received formal feedback from G, I still don't KNOW for sure, but multiple members of the Google Webmaster Forum (and other people who were familiar with SEO) told me to remove some "ads" that I had, and the PR did gradually come back. I suspect who you link to makes a difference too (I did check to make sure that I wasn't linking to bad neighborhoods though but still suffered a penalty). There are lots of people with positive experiences with this type of "ads" too. I am not one of them, so be wary of interpreting my completely biased answer.
Sincerely,
Scorned Twice Before 
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12:19 pm
November 22, 2011
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The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
| Admin
| posts 1935 |
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Watson Inc said:
The College Investor said:
I'm currently writing a post on this topic – TCI was penalized for over 1 year. Now, I'm back at PR3.
It seems like it took about 1 year and some change for me to return to PR3 too. I was wondering if your PR returned all at once or was it gradual (i.e., I wasn't really paying attention and found out in August that my PR was 2). Also, did you notice any change in your Google-derived traffic at all (I realize the Panda update may confound this determination)?
Not one bit. My busiest months were when I was penalized. That's how I know it was a PR penalty, and not something else. I went 3 to 1 (while being even busier than ever), then back to 3 after making various link changes.
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12:20 pm
November 22, 2011
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The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
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| posts 1935 |
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Watson Inc said:
IDK.
All I can tell you is my experience. I didn't bother removing natural links. I would bet there are multiple people within Yakezie that have paid links without no-follow or clear indication that it is sponsored without any obvious consequences. Also, since I never received formal feedback from G, I still don't KNOW for sure, but multiple members of the Google Webmaster Forum (and other people who were familiar with SEO) told me to remove some "ads" that I had, and the PR did gradually come back. I suspect who you link to makes a difference too (I did check to make sure that I wasn't linking to bad neighborhoods though but still suffered a penalty). There are lots of people with positive experiences with this type of "ads" too. I am not one of them, so be wary of interpreting my completely biased answer.
Sincerely,
Scorned Twice Before
100%! Google knows which advertisers pay for links…just be careful on this front.
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12:25 pm
November 22, 2011
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slug
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Lots of good info in this thread. Shows me how little I know. I guess with no paid advertisers I can stay safe….and poor :-)
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12:27 pm
November 22, 2011
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Watson Inc
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| Member | posts 371 |
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I had the same experience. My G traffic was higher under the penalty than when my site had PR 3 the first time. I never knew that was the way to ID a penalty. Thanks for the clarification.
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1:02 pm
November 22, 2011
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Jeff @ Sustainable Life Blog
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Thanks for all the great info and tips guys
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1:22 pm
November 22, 2011
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Jeffrey Trull
| | CT | |
| Member | posts 134 |
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Jeremy @ Personal Finance Whiz said:
Search engine traffic is worth its weight in gold if you can monetize it.
I think my first question would be: how does your search engine traffic look? If you're getting decent traffic, then I wouldn't be so concerned. If you're traffic from Google is awful, I think you seriously need to consider a new URL.
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5:30 pm
November 22, 2011
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BeatingBroke
| | North Dakota, USA | |
| Member | posts 860 |
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That's one of the reasons that I'm super hesitant to do anything too drastic. It does appear to only be a PR penalty, as I am still indexed and recieving traffic from Google. It's a lower percentage than what most people report, but I have no way of knowing if it would be higher than the ~35% that I get now, if I had the penalty removed.
So far, I've been going through my archives (almost 4 years worth), and adding nofollow to most of the outbound links. I've also been changing all guest posts to have the author "Guest Contributor" instead of having the admin account as the author. I installed the broken links plugin, and have been working the broken ones, but have no idea how to work the redirected ones that it points out. As soon as I complete the nofollow-ing, I'll submit a reconsideration request again and see what happens.
Based on what I've seen in coorelation with other sites, my site should be a PR3 or PR4. It was a 2 before, but has grown quite a bit since then (thanks Yakezie!), and all of it's ranking factors have increased.
As for other sites, I've got plenty, so if I decide to keep BB (highly likely), I've got plenty of other sites that I can work on as well and increase income with.
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6:08 pm
November 22, 2011
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The Single Saver
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Can someone explain the no follow thing in more detail? Specifically, does it hurt if we have legit links? Say, to yakezie members when we mention their sites? I have never done these as no follow as I wanted to help promote other's sites, but now I am wondering if that could cause a Big G backlash???
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6:54 pm
November 22, 2011
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Aaron Hung
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The Single Saver said:
Can someone explain the no follow thing in more detail? Specifically, does it hurt if we have legit links? Say, to yakezie members when we mention their sites? I have never done these as no follow as I wanted to help promote other's sites, but now I am wondering if that could cause a Big G backlash???
nofollow basically means that when you link out to a affiliate page, you're not giving them any PR juice, let's say you don't do a nofollow to a illegal gambling site, Google will see that and think that you are supporting the site and therefore you risk the chance of them de-indexing your page, and get downgraded
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5:50 am
November 23, 2011
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Frugal Confessions
| | Houston, TX | |
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I am in the same boat as BB! My traffic from search engines, though about 50% of my traffic, only yields like $30 a month. Jeremy–you're doing something awesome!
________________________________
BeatingBroke said:
Jeremy @ Personal Finance Whiz said:
Selling links (which is what you are doing if the advertiser cares about PR) is only one very small piece of the pie when it comes to making money. From what I can see it looks like you have a large enough audience that you should be able to do well with more traditional advertising – CPM banners or AdSense – or via CPA or promoting products as an affiliate. This is doubly true if you have any level of traffic from the search engines.
Search engine traffic is worth its weight in gold if you can monetize it. I have sites with a PR of 0 that earn 4 figures per month.
All of this is to say that your site is likely worth far more than whatever you were making selling links based on your PR.
You're better at it than I am, Jeremy. The traffic I do get barely manages to get me $20-$30 a month on adsense, and I don't know that I've ever sold an affiliate product through the site. I'll have the time to get better at that part though, so it's a valid point.
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5:52 am
November 23, 2011
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Frugal Confessions
| | Houston, TX | |
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Hi Aaron!
That is the frustrating part. There are many websites that sell space as do-follow and have not been penalized and other sites who do not and have lower PRs. We can't all seem to figure out the consistency…perhaps because there is none?
_________________________
Aaron Hung said:
Wow i didn't know linking out would be so bad…so having a lot can really hurt you?
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5:54 am
November 23, 2011
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Frugal Confessions
| | Houston, TX | |
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Hey College Investor and Watson–would you guys mind sharing with us which links you had to take down to see change? I think it could be really beneficial, though am not sure it should be public?
___________________________________
The College Investor said:
100%! Google knows which advertisers pay for links…just be careful on this front.
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3:17 pm
November 23, 2011
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Watson Inc
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| Member | posts 371 |
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Frugal Confessions said:
Hey College Investor and Watson–would you guys mind sharing with us which links you had to take down to see change? I think it could be really beneficial, though am not sure it should be public?
___________________________________
The College Investor said:
100%! Google knows which advertisers pay for links…just be careful on this front.
I don't mind. I'll check my records and get back to you (probably after the holiday). I do agree that this would not be ideal to discuss in the public forums though.
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9:24 am
November 24, 2011
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The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
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| posts 1935 |
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Frugal Confessions said:
Hey College Investor and Watson–would you guys mind sharing with us which links you had to take down to see change? I think it could be really beneficial, though am not sure it should be public?
___________________________________
The College Investor said:
100%! Google knows which advertisers pay for links…just be careful on this front.
For me, I removed all of my CommentLuv, and I used a script to make links not visible in the sidebar.
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9:58 am
November 24, 2011
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Sustainable PF
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Which script did you use?
The College Investor said:
Frugal Confessions said:
Hey College Investor and Watson–would you guys mind sharing with us which links you had to take down to see change? I think it could be really beneficial, though am not sure it should be public?
___________________________________
The College Investor said:
100%! Google knows which advertisers pay for links…just be careful on this front.
For me, I removed all of my CommentLuv, and I used a script to make links not visible in the sidebar.
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1:28 pm
November 24, 2011
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The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
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| posts 1935 |
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OIO Publisher – it doesn't show the links on the page source, but dynamically runs a script on pageload.
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8:03 pm
November 24, 2011
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Renée @ NickelbyNickel
| | Canada | |
| Member | posts 105 |
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I don't think you should quit, I have no technical reasoning to support that other than; you have a following, you put work into it… why stop?
I do have a question for you all… on-topic, after reading this thread I googled a few things and read this here:
"Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to
manipulate search engine results, such as excessive link exchanges and
purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or
selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links."
What does the phrase "links that pass PageRank" mean?
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