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scampygrassnake

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Hi there,

I'm new here and also to this side of the internet. However, I bought a domain a few months back and started creating content.

A little while later I noticed a pure spam manual penalty. There was no history on the way back machine, but even my homepage still says indexing requested so I guessed it was affecting the site before I added anything? Although it can be fetched as google.

I've been asking around to get answers and someone found a huge amount of urls linked to the site in 2017 through Majestic.

50 days ago I submitted a reconsideration request and waited. Yesterday google replied but declined to lift the penalty. No one has been able to explain why and i'm at a loss.

There is no copied content, nothing is thin or spammy (as per Matt Cutts' definition on the video), there is no cloaking and I wrote every word myself. About 90% of the pictures are mine except from the amazon affiliate pics and a couple from free media sites.

The site was scanned by Siteground and Sucuri and no malware whatsoever was found.

I have no idea (and it seems no one has) as to why the penalty was upheld. I would be very grateful if anyone here can offer any insight!

sleepingbagsolutions.com (I haven't posted enough to add links, sorry)

Regards
Matt
 
Domain is dead in ELGOOG -- buy another domain and let that old one expire.
Well the story does not match the whois -- the subject domain didn't exist in 2017
I've been asking around to get answers and someone found a huge amount of urls linked to the site in 2017 through Majestic.

whois sleepingbagsolutions.com
Domain Name: SLEEPINGBAGSOLUTIONS.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2233417908_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: Domain Names | The World's Largest Domain Name Registrar - GoDaddy
Updated Date: 2018-02-28T14:38:25Z
Creation Date: 2018-02-28T14:38:25Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2019-02-28T14:38:25Z
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC


barry@---:~$ curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +Googlebot - Search Console Help)" "ttps://sleepingbagsolutions.com]" >temporary/seepingbags.html
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
curl: (52) Empty reply from server
barry@----:~$ curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;)" "ttps://sleepingbagsolutions.com" >temporary/seepingbags2.html
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 151k 0 151k 0 0 90587 0 --:--:-- 0:00:01 --:--:-- 90587

Either you are cloaking the Googlebot or My IP is detected as a forged header (possible but unlikely) so what gives?
 
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This is the message I received in the webmasters forum...

"I took another look - and I'm pretty certain this is a case of bad history. If you look in the historic index of Majestic (a backlink checker), you can see 249,696 indexed URLs dated April 4, 2017. There's no other information - and no way to see what these URLs led to - but it does prove the site had a history before your ownership, which seems to have started on Feb 28, 2018 (according to WHOIS)."

The WHOIS data is correct for me, I bought the domain on Feb 28th.

Ive added a ton of fresh content in the last few months and aside from my social media accounts, from what I see there are no backlinks to the site.

Does that mean you think there's no possible recovery from this?


 
Recreate as in rewrite? That certainly wouldn't be faster process...

I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to do blackhat SEO even if I wanted to... as I was stupid enough not to keep copies. This is the first time I've attempted this, so everyone has to learn from mistakes at the beginning I guess.

What causes a Nginx 444? All I have done is add content to a domain and install a few seemingly standard plugins...

If you're suggesting my tagline is egregious then I'll concede that there's some truth to that.
 
Why are you blocking the googlebot?
You are using a Nginx 444
$ curl -I "Sleeping Bag Solutions - The No.1 source for sleeping bag information and reviews"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2018 13:18:50 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Connection: keep-alive
Link: <https://sleepingbagsolutions.com/wp-json/>; rel="REST API Handbook | WordPress Developer Resources"
Host-Header: 192fc2e7e50945beb8231a492d6a8024

Majestic is a parasite -- has been for years.
Maybe your wordpress is hacked or you got caught for blackhat SEO IDK
WordPress is a exploit magnet.

If you have not done anything to cause this I would dump that domain and stop beating a dead baby. I you think it is a hack do not reuse that website's database or files. Its faster to recreate them.

It's smart to keep copies of the text of posts -- just for this reason -- plain text not HTML source code.

As far as I am concerned all WordPress installs are throw-aways -- they always get trashed.
 
Sorry, I missed the bit about cloaking the google bot... It certainly wasn't me. I lack both the skills and knowledge to get into that sort of stuff.

Even my homepage still says indexing requested on search console so presumably what ever is going on has been affecting the site for the duration of my ownership...
 
Wow... no I didn't see that, although that's a touch extreme for me, I'm new to this and still hopeful lol

Bing has so far delivered about 1% of my total traffic (which amounts to about 4 people :eek:) It's gettting blown out the water by pinterest and instagram so I doubt those ads will yield much :p

I was intending to keep it completely ad free and pay for my time writing the (hopefully) useful trekking guides/ travel blog stuff with a few affiliate camping gear reviews... maybe it is time I found another option.

Thanks for your time!
 
None of the referrals were from google... I couldn't ever get my site indexed.

The traffic all comes through facebook, instagram and pinterest and occasionally twitter. From which I have a grand total of 1 sale... and not of a sleeping bag, just someone wandering on to amazon and buying coffee for some reason :D
 
see /etc/nginx/sites-available/[domain]
check your site's integrity at the server configuration level FIRST.
disable all your plugins

Taglines are always spammy :D

Bing is indexing you -- forget Google and keep the domain -- buy Bing ads.

No it is one of your plugins blocking my curl with the user-agent bingbot i get 0 also (so it's not a bad thing)

ELGOOG = 3v1L corp ;) the internet bully -- better luck next time
If you wonder why that that vegan-freak girl went postal at Youtube and started shooting -- Google has learned nothing apparently ...

Disallow googlebot in robots.txt and get a new plan.
 
I guess these are avenues i'll explore when I find my feet a little bit. Contests especially sound like something I could get into!

Initially I was hoping one side of the site would become a good resource for trekkers, backpackers and travelers and crossing my fingers massively that it turns into trust and sales.

I've been on the road for 9 years now and am massively dissatisfied with the whole "go here because they paid me to say it's great" direction travel blogging has taken.... believe it or not, it used to be of a really good standard (I appreciate the irony of using affiliate links while suggesting this, too :p)

Certainly the pinterest route is the main attraction at the moment... and hopefully it'll rival google eventually anyway... if addictions can be broken. An image based search engine sounds like a reasonable next evolution! (He says optimistically)
 
I think Pinterest could work you have product visuals that are mainsteam.
Bing ads may convert affiliate sales for you -- don't underestimate the CPC ads. You would probably lose money on AdWords -- they are too expensive for the CPS (commission -- rev-share) Amazon pays affiiates. Bing ads are a lot less expensive but I am not sure about the ROI if you are trying to monetize with Amazon -- haven't tried it myself.

If Bing search referred 4 people -- How much did you make off the 400 Goggle referrals?
 
OK. Personally, I am trying the paid ad route. You are trying to sell higher-end stuff.
I had some luck drawing website traffic with post booster ads for an image post contest project (experiment) I did with a Facebook account. For $100 I got some reasonable action there.
 
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