Closing Down the Blog..
update : On why davidnaylor.co.uk is under a large penalty in Google. Today I was in a meeting in Lancaster so I had 1 hour in the office first thing and I felt that it must be Outbound links that I was getting hit down with, so I removed adsense and my recent comments widget. I also removed my sidebar ad’s, cleaned out a few comments that had used a post and switch method,
I then checked my rankings in Google, noticed I had dropped more pages. Checked a few headlines from the blog in the serps and found the scrapers ranking and my blog nowhere, so I wrote this post and decided that the blog was fucked on this domain name and I wasn’t going to waste any more time trying to save it.
I wasn’t even sure if it was the scrapers that had killed me so that was the decision to move onto a new domain. While I was in the meeting Becky texted me to say they had found something Patrick at Blogstorm ( I’m not linking out just in case I pass bad karma) and Josh from JaeWeb , had spotted an issue. It was spot on, the server had been comprised and the site was cloaking links to google of antidepressant drugs and we had a fake adsense code injected into the blog.
This is what looks likely why I got banned for now, but I’m not a normal webmaster I have pretty good relations with Google and this blog is registered with webmaster tools, but I never got one message about this issue even though I couldn’t see the links (I don’t have a google IP address) I still picked up a penalty. I even sent emails to google and they never said hey remove the spam links on your blog.
Don’t get me wrong I’m blaming myself here, I added the plugin that opened my xmlrpc to a bad guys, I feel let down by Google due to fact they have a message system to reach out the webmasters and this system obviously failed, whether I didn’t meet the correct criteria on davidnaylor.co.uk (I get plenty of help on sites that send lots of traffic to adsense ) maybe it’s the industry I’m in,
But what happens from here I don’t know, I never said I was stopping blogging I’m a SEO, I work in the search engine industry and having your site dead in the biggest search engine to me just doesn’t sit right.
whatever happens If I keep on blogging on Davidnaylor.co.uk I will just 404 this page, so that the people that think this is just linkbait can feel a little better about themselves ๐ Thankyou Donna for sphinning this Post and sorry that your getting shit over that.
DaveN
____________________________________________
It kills me to see my content been scraped and people making adsense revenues off it all over the web, we have tried everything what we can think to get the blog reindexing again and it’s just not happening, I love Blogging never thought I would say that but I do,
To all the bloggers out there first off I’m sorry about the blog spamming that may or may not have happened a few years ago, But I guess what goes around comes around..
I not giving up on Blogging and I will let people know in due course what I going to do, I once said if your out of Google your out of the internet and I feel that i have spent enough time going though my Logs and wasting my tech guys time trying to find a solution .. so Google you won this battle. but the war is not over yet
Any ideas for a new url for the David Naylor blog comments away ๐ keep it clean !! or any Ideas at all what we should do 9 days out of Google I said I would give it 2 weekS
DaveN
53 Comments
Lyndon Antcliff - http://www.cornwallseo.com
Dude, that’s out of order. I’m glad you’re not going to stop blogging though.
MelC - http://www.melcarson.com
With your direct readership Dave who cares if you’re not indexed?
Just because Amazon doesn’t stock a particular book, it won’t stop people from finding and reading it!
Yura - http://www.seorefugee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10624
If you were using AdSense in feeds with Feedburner, then you might find these quotes from a thread on the SEO Refugees forums interesting.
“My theory is because Blog Search grabs the data from the sites feed and not the web page like a normal crawl that when Google made the change to the new feedburner location feedburner.google.com somehow the sites feed isn’t being read. My next step is to revert my site back to the regular wordpress feed without the redirect to feedburner (deactivating Feedsmith) to see if the raw RSS does any better.”
“HOLY CRAP – IT WORKED!
My blog is now read in Blog search!!”
“So at least in your case, Navy, it’s a feedburner issue?”
“Must be. Problem started the same day they switched me over to the AdSense for Feed thing. Blog Search gets its data from the site feed. I think something in that process did it.
After reading the links Donna provided it wouldn’t surprise me if this is their problem too. All are WordPress and all started seeing the problem around the same date.”
Sadly, the thread is a members only section, you’ll have to dig out your account, if you have one, or register again (for free).
Cheers.
P.S. I am totally out of synch with the WordPress-Google bug fixes, so apologies, if this problem is unrelated to yours.
Rishil - http://treatmentsearch.co.uk
Naylorpwnsgoogle.com
Glen Allsopp - http://www.viperchill.com
What difference does it make? I doubt any of the core followers and the people you have now actually know about you coming from search engines.
This seems a little baity / attention-seeking, I’m not saying that is what you are but there’s no reason that ‘google have won’. You didn’t build your name and reputation through google traffic.
Keep blogging…on this site ๐
Ben Steele - http://www.inspiron.net
navedaylor.co.uk?
gimpy
what about PW protecting it?
Adam - http://www.conversion-matters.co.uk
daven.co.uk ?
gimpy
Anyway, if you do start a new one, what will stop that one having the same problem?
Vinay - http://www.juretic.com/
Now you seem to join the “blog closing down” crowd and soon to be picked up at http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=blog+closing+down&btnG=Search . Most spammers try to find blogs under those terms and try to take the domain to pass the link juice! LOL!
Yura has given a good suggestion.. why not try it? And MelC is perfectly right.. you still have our direct readership.. ๐ !! We love you Dave.. don’t go away ๐
RuZ
on dax’s blog you are linked as Daven Mcloud, so how about http://www.davenmcloud.co.uk
Dexter | Tech At Hand Dot Net - http://techathand.net
This is where I admire John Chow.. He manage to continue blogging even without google.
Dan Mcskelly
I told Dave the blog was essential to our business but he couldn’t hear me over the sound of his own sobbing.
Despite not smoking in 10 years he just bought a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of whisky and said he’s gone to sit in the park for the rest of the day.
Josh - http://www.jaeweb.com.au
dave i found something weird on your blog i need to talk to you about. email me asap if you can
Lee Marriott - http://www.leemarriott.co.uk
Go underground Dave, under an alias name!
Chris
C’mon Dave don’t go all Calacanis on us…
Jim McNelis - http://ditoweb.com
Everytime I read your blog, I am amazed that you have readers…and yet here I am, one of them..
Badi Jones
Sorry to hear it…Anyway, this is my absolute fav for finding new domains: http://instantdomainsearch.com/
Peter Young - http://holisticsearch.co.uk
Your more than welcome to join the holisticsearch camp if you want – two’s company, but having Dave Naylor (and dan) is even better !!!
Brad McAllister - http://www.bradmcallister.com
Something sounds fishy about this post….
ScreenRant.com - http://screenrant.com
Dave,
Sorry to hear that, bud. Sucks all variations of dave/david naylor seem to be taken already.
Vic
Mike Dammann - http://www.firetown.com
If you quit, you will allow Google to dictate who has a voice and who doesn’t.
Dan Mcskelly
Dave is now back in the office, reeking of cider, and was mumbling something about “I’ll show them” before falling asleep under his desk.
Peter Young - http://holisticsearch.co.uk
@Dan – Nice to see some things don’t change then ๐
Joe Hall - http://www.jozsoft.com/blog/
Dave,
I am a very new reader to your blog, and I didn’t find you through Google. I found you through Twitter. I really think that it would be cool to operate with out Google, try to make it on your own! With your sphere of influence you should be able to continue to drive traffic to your blog with out Google. Honestly, I think it would be a breath of fresh air to see some one do really well, with out Google’s help. Just my two cents!
Dan Horton SEO
I like to think of the blog as a community too. I know Dave’s not messing on this one, certainly not a Calacanis exploit. We all put so much time into the blog, Dave always gives his advice freely. For what? So we can be non-indexed in Google.
Who knew about this? Who is doing anything to help?
Shame. Thanks to the new Dan for holding the fort today too !
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Sean Carlos - http://www.antezeta.com/blog/
I know your mileage may vary etc, but I’m seeing DaveN’s 15/9 post as number one for this query:
http://www.google.com/search?q=are+blogs+a+waste+of+time
using a browser w/o cookies etc. Same is true using Google.it :-).
justin - http://justinrumpf.com
I think your post about shutting down your blog will actually give you more traffic. Way to go with the semi-link-bait, Dave. Interesting way to pick up more of a following.
Marty Weintraub - http://www.aimclearblog.com
๐
Please just let us know where we can read your stuff man…best of luck.
Bryan McDade - http://b.c4.ca
Problem with people stealing the content? then just use flash to display, and disable the rss/atom feeds since text could be easily pulled from these, or just use a digest to feed.
Actually i’m becoming partial to using only rss feeds since you don’t get ads and all that crap. content on a webpage is close approaching that of print now.
DazzlinDonna - http://www.seo-scoop.com
Cleanup instructions, etc. at http://www.seo-scoop.com/2008/07/01/the-ultimate-hacker-prevention-guide/
(i’m sure dave knows all this info, already, but in case others need it too)
fireblade
Dave have you thought about trying a subdomain for the blog? It seems to work for everyone else and their dogs.
Roger - http://liebt.at
So, why exactly are you expexting Google to baby-sit you, then?
Mark
Can you please share how your friends found out that you were hacked and you were linking to bad sites. If you cound not find this, then how will normal peopl elike us find it. Please share how the detection was found! Please
Josh Smithyman - http://www.howconvenient.co.uk
Hi Dave im a regular reader ut 1st time commenter. I work for Doug Scott at ASAP Ventures and Paul has just shown me exactly what it is that those hackers have done. I used to be so naive about the internet, but 6 months in SEO kinda destroys that! But good luck with the new domain and im glad you aren’t going to stop blogging!
brewgin
Are you insinuating Dave is not normal? ๐
Obviously, it sucks that this happened and it’s good you found the cause with a bit of help.
May we expect a somewhat more extensive report on what happened so other people can plug up their websites to prevent this?
Daniel Mcskelly - http://www.bronco.co.uk
Working on it now Brewgin, but it was a pretty sneaky exploit that’s going to take some explaining, so it’ll probably be next week before we post a breakdown.
Frank Richard - http://www.frankrichard.com
Bad news, hope you ll well soon, continue blogging pls, you own a fantastic blog!
Sean Carlos - http://www.antezeta.com/blog/
Several blogger friends had WordPress based blogs banned from Google last May – after being hacked. As a response to that, I put together a list of 9 tips to improve your WP blog security. The first point is “know your plugins” ๐
http://www.antezeta.com/blog/top-wordpress-security-tips/
That said, I’m the first to admit I’m not on a first name basis with all of my plugins nor am I under any illusions as to how hardened my blog may or may not be. In bocca al lupo….
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g1smd
I’m surprised this hack got past you Dave, but then again I guess no one is totally infallible. This thread gets the word out for people to be vigilant with what is going on on their sites.
WMT can often take many days to let you know about things happening on your site. Some data can take a week or more to appear.
You might yet get notification – after you have fixed the problems.
For example, Google wouldn’t want to flag a forum or a blog every time a spammy link appeared – because they would assume the site is moderated and that the owners would remove the stuff themselves in a reasonable timeframe.
If I were Google, I would save resources and only send a notification out when the problem was severe, and then only after a lag of several weeks.
DaveN
g1smd we traced it back to June when we got hit !
g1smd
In that case, I would have expected WMT to have at least given you a hint by now.
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Josh - http://www.jaeweb.com.au
glad you sorted it dave. when i was surfin on me smart phone and saw a post with 400+ spammy links alarm bells started goin off =/
Ivan | SEO Consultant - http://www.SEOConsultant.ie
Brian,
You have the BEST looking SEO Blog that there is. We will keep on reading it just because it is good and nice.
And clicking on those AdSense links – just put them back! ๐
Al the best,
Ivan
DaveN
@josh yer the mobile thing was because you get a google proxy, so they de cloaked the links
Lisa Ditlefsen - http://www.baseonesearch.co.uk
Guess what, it happened on SEO Chicks as well. Donna found it literally swamped with spammy links due to a plugin installed. Still in shock it happened to be honest, Donkey managed to fix it and have upgraded the WP but god damn, I have no clue how long it’s been on there. It’s not like I’m checking the source code every day.
Everything is ok now right? Or are you having to submit a reconsideration request to Google?
Above comments are right though, most of your readers don’t come to you via the SE though =) They know you already.
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