Yesterday Jeff from Aviva Directory posted on his blog about how you can get your Google rankings back. This post relates primarily to the large number of web directories and bidding directories which are currently suffering from a Google penalty.

Now I say that he may be a little premature for three reasons.

1. Google is currently in the process of updating backlinks and PR and all indications shows that Aviva (and many other penalized directories) are about to have their PR dropped to 0.

2. Aviva Directory has certainly regained it’s site links and does indeed now appear first for the search term “aviva directory” which is a tell tale sign of a directory being under a penalty. However it still doesn’t rank first for long tail keyphrases which it did prior to the original penalty being implemented. It is gaining ground but it is not where it once was.

3. Jeff states in his post that he has yet to file a reinclusion request with Google and I am doubtful that they will lift a penalty without manual review (something which Jeff also states). Given the amount of web sites which Google has applied penalties to, I am not convinced that they manually review without a reinclusion request being presented.

Despite my views above, I am both pleased and grateful that Jeff took the time out to post his actions with regards to this penalty so that others who were affected could learn from his experience. I sincerely wish Jeff and his family well with their endeavors to get Aviva back to it’s former status.

Now to go through some of the points he raised and how it may apply to the bidding directory scene:

1. Paid Links - I think this is a given that Google has now acted and many have now learned their lesson that if they want Google rankings they just cant use this method anymore.

2. Sponsoring Templates - This one is a shame as it is a great method for promoting a web directory but I agree with Jeff that because Matt Cutts has gone on record as being against this method it would be wise not to do it.

3. No Linking To Bad Neighborhoods - Again I think this one is a given, if your allowing your bidding directories to link into bad neighborhoods be warned that this could affect your own rankings. Good examples of this would be to allow adult, pharmacy, gambling, etc.

4. More Quality Content - This is a problem that I estimate 90% of bidding directories struggle with. Not just because of empty categories but pure lack of anything written on a page.

5. Reciprocal Linking - This doesn’t apply to bidding directories as the issue was as a direct result of Matt Cutts failure to review a page on a web site properly and comprehend exactly what was being asked for.

6. No Cross Linking - I disagree with Jeff on this point and not because Matt Cutts didn’t come out and specifically state this. However Matt did make reference to the fact that Jeff was using Private Registration for his domains. Therefore there was no way that Google could have known whether Jeff was cross linking web sites which he owned as opposed to link buying. I am of the opinion that Google thought these were paid links.

7. Contact Details - I think the fact that Google takes this into consideration is a shame. Jeff’s reasons for not wishing to share his contact details were completely understandable. Now as it was Matt Cutts himself who pointed out this potential problem to Jeff via this comment and this comment I will use him as an example. But first lets be clear, Matt did not state Jeff should post this information on his web site, he was pointing out a combination of ‘hidden’ information which Google was taking into account.

Matt however does hide behind Googles corporate address for his domain name whois information and does not publish a phone number. In addition, his blog does not provide ANY way to contact him other than through the comment system, let alone offer an  address or telephone. I do to some degree think that this is double standards.

8. Too Many Directories - I agree with Jeff’s comment in that I do not agree with Google applying penalties based on the wider spectrum of web sites owned by the same person. While Jeff felt the need to shed some of his neglected projects, this is not something which I will be doing purely to please Google.

9. No Redirection of Expired Domains - This is something that I had been doing on a few of my projects. From a directory owners perspective the purpose is to drive as much traffic through the directory to the sites listed in order to provide a more optimal service for the customer. Therefore it did make sense to 301 redirect other domains to relevant categories or to the homepage of the site.

However what caught my eye was this comment posted by the owner of ask-dir.com. You will note that he mentioned how the two domains have differing PR values. This led me to investigate my 301 redirects before I removed them and sure enough the evidence was the same.

Basically what was happening was that the original web directory would be placed under a manual penalty and it’s PR would be frozen for want of a better word. However because Google doesn’t factor in the 301 domains during the manual penalty, when the PR update occurs, the 301 redirects get assigned the REAL PR that the penalized domain would have received if it wasn’t frozen.

Sadly Matt didn’t respond to any further questions so we never got an answer, however it does make me wonder if Matt noticed that this may indeed be a problem with the Google algorithm

Anyway, I will leave you to make up your own mind on that point.

I would like to thank Jeff once again for posting a great article which is sure to help out many web directory and bidding directory owners.