Google Punishing WordPress Themes
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Hi,
I was trying to figure out why my stats have taken a sudden plunge over the past few days and if it had anything to do with Google’s latest update to it’s algorithm. After reading quite a few articles on it I came across a post at Search Engine Round Table which was posted on Friday. I believe the update to Google’s Panda algorithm was made on Thursday?
The problem seems to stem from WordPress themes that have a link in the footer to the designer of the theme. In my case, it’s Fresh & Clean by AJ Clarke. According to a post here (which is where The Search Engine Round Table states its source) Google are now punishing people who use themes that have links (backlinks) in the footer that point back to the designer of said themes.I hope that I am reading it wrong, but there are a lot of blogs talking about this at the moment. I think it would be a shame for Google to do this as the theme I am using is not only free, but perfect for my needs, and the designer should be able to add a link if he wishes.
Is there anything I can do to with regards this issue?
I have noticed that my stats have dropped by more that half over the past few day, and continue to fall.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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What I understood from the post you linked to is that Google is ‘punishing’ people for changing the link from the name of the designer to a link of their own. And you can’t do that in a WordPress.com blog.
If I’m wrong, my apologies, but that’s how I read it.
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“According to a post here […] Google are now punishing people who use themes that have links (backlinks) in the footer that point back to the designer of said themes.”
Where exactly did you see this? As AOB pointed out, the post you linked to is referring to, and I’m quoting, “themes where the “Designed by” link in the footer gets replaced by a link to your site“.
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Thank you both for your replies.
That’s also how I first read it, however I also read it that it also applies to themes having the link at the bottom of the theme that links back to the creator of the theme, regardless of whether it has been changed or not.
I could have been misreading this though, and if I have I apologize for the misunderstanding.
I just wanted verification from the official forums as to whether or not this was true?
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It makes no sense to penalize the user of a Theme for the footer credit unless it was spammy – I could believe that Google would reduce somehow the juice to the creator of the Theme since the link is somewhat passive.
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I can’t see Google whacking people because their theme has a link to the theme designer. That would be a seriously bad thing and would not only affect wordpress users, but also drupal and joomla users as well as any site which was designed by a web designer with their link at the bottom.
That said, if this is true, that they whack people for removing or replacing a link on the bottom of a GPL licensed theme, it would be time to get out the pitchforks and torches and Occupy Google.
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@thegift73
The latest update to the Google algorithm is refreed to as the Penguin update. The algorithm is targeting over-optimized sitesand black hat SEO techniques such as cloaking, embedding invisible links in footers and in theme templates and other black hat practices as well. It’s my opinion that thinking this Penguin update which happened on April 24 will have no effect one blogs wherein the blogger is no doing things that violate Google’s guidelines. -
(Sorry for that incoherent last sentence above).
It’s my opinion that thinking this Penguin update which happened on April 24 has had a negative affect of your traffic is wrong as it will have no effect on blogs wherein the blogger is no doing things that violate Google’s guidelines. For context, the initial Panda change affected about 12% of queries to a significant degree; this Penguin algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice. -
What I expect this means is that Google is penalizing the destination of those links, in other words the designer’s site.
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@raincoaster
I agree but think that would only do half the job. The primary focus isn’t on cloaked footer links. It’s on all black hat SEO techniques aimed at gaming search engine results for higher placement in the SERPs. BTW I blogged this. -
So does this mean that all WordPress sites are suffering? Google stopped crawling my website at all on Thursday, after having previously crawled it every few hours.
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I doubt seriously that Google is penalizing wordpress sites because they have a link to the theme designer’s website in the footer. This would be going way too far and affect millions of sites.
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@timethief Thank you for the explanation.I read your article as well and what Google are doing makes perfect sense and is welcome. It was just that I read that the footer re-directs in some themes would have a negative impact with the changes as there is effectively a link to the designers site on every article the users makes.
I now see that Google only punish site that re-direct the original link and change it to point to their own site instead, which would probably also violate the original ToS for using the themes/ templates.With regards stats, I have resubmitted my sitemap.xml via Webmasters tool (Google). When I submitted the sitemap, it said that 439 pages were submitted (there are actually 446 posts) but only 346 of which have been indexed. The process is in the ‘Pending’ state, so this may balance out in a few hours?
The main reason for my initial concern was to find out if there was something I was doing on my blog that Google didn’t like which would explain my dip in views, which have tumbled since late on April 24 to today. I know I don’t ‘tag stuff’ my articles nor have I changed the footer link (pretty sure I couldn’t anyway)
I do notice that views tend to take a dip every 3 or 4 months for certain posts and then the opposite will happen for the next 3 or 4 months, so may be it’s just a coincidence that it was happening with the Panda/ Penguin updates.
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