Irwin Mitchell Suffer Google Whiplash As Google Penalty Knocks Them Out of Index
Google have been firm and consistent when it comes to taking action against sites that have broken their guidelines and once again there is another large scale company that will be waking up with a headache as soon as they realise the fact that Google have once again flexed their search engine muscle.
Irwin Mitchell are considered to be one of the biggest solicitors in the UK today but that hasn't stopped Google from doing something that we have seen happen countless times over the past few years, completely eliminate a brand from their organic rankings.
After the following tweet was fired over to Dave, we took a deeper look into the situation to see what we could dig up and it seems that Irwin Mitchell have a huge headache coming their way…
Did Google just wipe out UK law firm Irwin Mitchell with a Link Penalty?
https://t.co/vVLnznqeIp cc @DaveNaylor
— Matthew weeks (@mattyweeks) January 24, 2014
On taking a look at the organics surrounding the company, we can quickly see that the main domain that the brand use (www.IrwinMitchell.com) has been removed from the organic rankings, even for direct brand search terms.
On sifting through the various tools and checks that we undertake, we noticed that there was something strange going on, there were some occasions that IrwinMitchell.co.uk was appearing within the search results, a secondary domain for the brand which has been 301 redirected into their main site, meaning that you would expect Google to respect the request and present the .com version of the domain, however they are now ignoring that and showing the .co.uk domain to users in a strange state of affairs.
With Google showing the UK version of their domain to some searchers and not others, we began to wonder whether this was something that was going on with the domain itself, so proceeded to check whether Irwin Mitchell were aware of the issue and were trying to reverse their de-indexation, so we checked the header status of the UK site.
As you can see above, the UK extension of the branded domain is still rendering a header 301 redirect into IrwinMitchell.com, the site that is now clearly being placed under penalisation.
Fluctuations within the Google search engine seem to be a regular thing in the present climate, so you could understand the fact that the sites rankings were dropping for keyword terms that they were ranking for previously but that would not tend to affect brand term rankings, that is an indication that the site has caught the eye of Google and had an infraction placed over it.
With the brand term ‘Irwin Mitchell' no longer displaying their main domain even on the first page of the Google search results, we decided that we would take a look at some of the keyword terms that they have been affected on too.
Entering IrwinMitchell.com into SearchMetrics, we are able to see the rankings that the tool had recorded, showing proof that not only has the site lost their branded rankings but they have lost all of their keyword terms too!
A quick look at the keyword positions mentioned on the report from SearchMetrics shows that the site has taken a hard hit from Google as they take action against the site, so let's take a look at what the issue could be…
A look at the link profile above seems to show that the site has been focused on making sure that they have a large scale brand focus on the links that they have placed but sometimes a link profile can look better than it is when you don’t take the time to take a look at the placements themselves:
Okay so we have 2 instances of paid blogposts there…
Oh we have instances of guest blogging too, with keyword anchor text and everything… Could this be about to get worse for them? I mean its not like they have comment spam in the mix too is it…?
Oh… Guess we can call it a full house now then!
You can see above that the content that has been taken from the IrwinMitchell.com site to perform a check on the content shows that the site is no longer ranking at the top of the results and that means only one thing… Google don’t trust you!
20 Comments
Tom
HAHAHA! About time 🙂
Ron
Have you also seen that Protect Your Bubble have oddly been absent for around a month, with only a secure domain retaining their brand search. Zero visibility on general phone and gadget insurance terms.
Darren Moloney
I’m seeing them in G’s results for their .com domain though it is a Local listing…
Col Skinner - http://www.twitter.com/SEOsherlock
This Dec 2013 article suggests that it is an in-house team working on the digital marketing strategy including SEO: http://www.kimtasso.com/legal-marketing-case-study-irwin-mitchell-combines-dr-advertising-online-promotion-brand-building/
Col Skinner - http://www.twitter.com/SEOsherlock
A hint at the kind of crap SEO from the past that may have lead to this penalisation: http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2012/06/on-the-naughty-step-part-1-geeks-bearing-gifts/
james blunt
And in other news, Google has just abolished searching forums.
On the search bar to the left of Search Tools, there is a dropdown menu that used to include “Discussions” which listed all sorts of forums, ie enthusiasts’ discussion groups. Now search results link primarily to commercial websites :(((
See:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/Psb6OmlLJTg%5B1-25-true%5D
Kate Wilson - http://www.businesstoolboxcumbria.co.uk
The “icing on the cake” has to be the spam comment links. Slow build of genuinely useful and related links worth a thousand of the mass “link building” junk. I avoid guest blog offers on my site like the plague. SEO is not rocket science, and involves good ol’ honest hard graft. Great article and shows Google true to their word
Johnny
I’d be interested to see the actual number of links included in your ‘full house’. A couple instances of each doesn’t seem penalty worthy unless Google has become mind readers. Granted the branded anchors look like they are covering their tracks but again, who determines intent?
Mike Fawcett
You have to look at the agency Foward3D (I believe) and ask them some serious questions about the SEO practices they employed to get Irwin Mitchell in such a mess, obviously they will be losing the account after such a farce, but what about the person that chose the agency presume they will be shown the door as well.
On a plus note it would for once and for all let you know what the value of your website was! Sure they will be happy knowing that the website is worth £X,000’s a month now that income is going to a competitor.
Mike Fawcett
Oh dear, the person who chose the agency will have a lot to answer for. Sure the head of BD will be keeping his head down, nothing sticks to Mr Powell.
Larry
That’s very weak analysis on the link type. Every website in the world has those type of links so can’t oust them for that however if you look into Majestic backlink history and see the sheer amount of domains built last August and compare it to the other spike they had in February there is a clear difference in the type of building going on.
Alex Graves
Larry,
You may feel that the analysis of the links in their profile within the post is “very weak” but these are not placements that we have had to drill down to find, they are the majority of the link building practice that the SEO’s have followed and the profile is full of them.
The breakdown within the article are there to show an indication to the issues that the site has within its current situation and are not an indepth dive into each and every link that they possess, instead they are just a shadow of what their profile holds.
At the end of the day, they have triggered Google’s inspection and have failed to pass an manual review, resulting in a time-staking penalty that looks like it will be a pain to resolve.
Link spikes, types of links and generally overcooking their keyword anchor text with direct terms are more then enough to have caused the issue and for me to have included more examples into this post, it would have been another of my well documented articles that spans more than the average readers willing to continue to follow the story.
The key point to this article is to explain a question that was asked to Dave about whether a site had gone from the organics and we have answered that with reasoning and presentation as to why the .co.uk domain is still featuring.
Catherine Gannon - http://www.gannons.co.uk
Bizarrely, and only to a small degree, I feel a bit sorry for Irwin Mitchell. They have a huge budget and are happy to use it to try and dominate. My sympathy only extends to the fact that it looks like most of what they did was back in the day when it was commonplace. Suppose the mistake they made was not trying to clean up enough post penguin. The good thing about this is that it shows google will go after the big boys, even if they spend money on ppc – suppose it also helps google that way. Finally, as many others also say, it indicates no-one should rely too much on google – what google giveth it can taketh away v easily !
Leo Franklin
Clearly the agency should have disavowed a ton of links. However one of the links that you have produced in the article from the comments section of a blog post is from 2007!
In those days and even more recently nearly everyone was using comments to ‘game’ the system, even those who today proclaim themselves to be whiter than white. The same goes for guest posting – lets be real here, everywhere you see the internet famous SEO’s say produce great content and visitors will flock, but in reality we all know that doesn’t work for most businesses.
Agencies of all sizes were using the tactics in the past few years ( & probably today) that produced results. Google moves the goalposts so often and speak in half truths, agencies (IMO & IME) do what they have to do to get results. We’ve all seen public exposes on certain big agencies that have used spammy tactics.
I imagine, if you look hard enough in all the big brands link profiles you will find links just like Irwin Mitchell.
I’m not saying its right or wrong, i’m just stating that most agencies have in the past used ‘spammy’ tactics as you highlighted to get clients to rank & I imagine they are doing similar activities today.
It’s the client that suffers as they have no idea what is and isn’t allowed. For example i’ve seen some of the big agencies say that clients should sponsor a local charity to get a link- isn’t that just buying a link?
PJ
This article inspired me to look at another UK law site that has shot up to the top slot in the past few months.
Can you take a look at asons.co.uk ?
I’ve found some fake press releases – they look real but they are completely off topic for a law firm (writing about scientific research) and an excuse for anchor text links
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11379031.htm
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11307362.htm
The usual dodgy directory submissions
http://www.freeindex.co.uk/profile(asons-solicitors)_494220.htm
http://solicitors.b99.co.uk/bolton/asons-solicitors/
And they are still guest blogging despite all the dire warnings
https://www.bee-communications.com/2013/06/guest-post-recent-study-finds-mechanism-that-causes-tinnitus-and-drug-that-can-prevent-it-by-asons-solicitors/
http://www.jameshearing.co.uk/2013/09/asons-solicitors-win-3000-client-industrial-deafness-claim
http://copingwiththebigc.blogspot.com/2013/06/guest-blog-post-advice-on-cancer.html#.UudZrRaCo18
There must be a way to report dodgy tactics?
Mayur
I did search for their brand name “Irwin Mitchell” & now Google not even showing their co.uk domain, really a hard road for them.
bob
>>>Google have been firm and consistent when it comes to taking action against sites that have broken their guidelines
Not true. Amazon have 50 anchor links on homepage and at internal pages. Google not care about it, but it was reported lot of times.
Leo Franklin
@PJ I don’t think it’s right to openly ‘out’ other companies.
In terms of directory submissions, what’s wrong with being listed in local useful directories? Hopefully that is not their tactic for generating links, but for exposure why not?
I can’t see that they’re spamming directories here.
MAKS
@MikeFawcett That agency also runs the SEO for these guys if I’m not mistaken: www. musicmagpie .co.uk/,
who also happen to be Search Metric’s top loser this week :-/
Mike Fawcett
MAKS, Very interesting, looks like the agency will be very busy trying to survive!