Part 2 - Google Spam Team Targets Real Estate Websites

Great posts, Marc. I do agree that they could have come up with a better way to go about letting people know that this was a bad thing... Like.. maybe a warning or something.

Interesting read and a great summary of the events! I could have saved countless hours reading forums last month! Hopefully you will be back in business soon.

O.K. Marc, This not something that I ever intended on going public with and it is only speculation on my part.I certainly cannot confirm any type of relationship with Greg Boser and anyone at Google as I am simply a mom and pop REALTOR® who operates a website that was also hit by the penalty in Atlanta. I will say this: Greg Boser (webguerilla) came up (as webguerilla llc) while I was checking my Google Analytics reports and then shortly threafter I was visited by Google (it shows Google) in my Google Analytics and then I was penalized. I can't make the connection any further than that so this is not an accusation. I took screenshots of all of the visits from both Google and webguerilla llc and have them in a file on my computer and on a CD. You can call me if you have any questions. I am free all day tomorrow.

Well Marc, I had originally felt there would be no need to ever follow up on your suspicion, but, you know this has affected my livelihood and it needs to see the light of day. Like I said in my earlier comment, I can't put the pieces together, but, my suspicions are there is something to this. I would love some more investigation into this because I too had removed my state pages before I was penalized. Unfortunately it appears that there were other forces at work that pointed our websites out before the pages were removed. Here is the timeline for the series of events I outlined in the above post. I have sceenshots for all of these events: April 15th - AA websites hit April 17th and 18th - I was visited by Greg Boser. Do you think he said something to Google? Because.... April 20th - Google AND Greg Boser aka, webguerilla, llc paid a visit. April 24th - Google came back again. April 30th and May 1st - Advanced Access - Who do you think told them? May 3rd - Google one more time and my state pages had been removed by then. May 9th (Day of Penalty) - Greg Boser, coincidence? May 11th - Greg Boser - Maybe checking to make sure? I don't know for sure, but, this all seems very suspicious to me and it has affected my livelihood in a serious way. My wife just finished a battle with breast cancer and I have a 1 year old daughter. It's not a good time to loose the income revenue because some "SEO expert" felt his reputation would be tarnished since he was on the books at Advanced Access. I would like this cleared up and have considered speaking with a lawyer about it. Any question for anyone reading this post you can call me at 404.630.3187. I'm not hiding this anymore.

It does seem that Greg Boser was somehow involved in all of this. But the damage has already been done. At this time everyone needs to get on Matt Cutt's blog and join in the discussion going on there. This blog and Active Rain are ok forums, but let's be honest they probably aren't going to get noticed like a post on Matt Cutt's blog will. If you want attention this is the way to go about doing it. What is the worst that can happen? He'll ban your site? For all intents and purposes your site is already banned. If your own name search in Google doesn't show your site until the 6th page you are buried anyways. You might not realize it yet but you should – war has been declared upon you and your sites. Sitting around doing nothing will not help you. Fight back. None of you who have been penalized have anything to lose by pointing this nonsense out and trying to demand answers. It looks as if Google isn’t going to let REW sites back in anytime soon. Sure two sites did get back in, but that seems more like a fluke to me. Those sites appear to have gotten lucky because of the engineer that came across their reinclusion requests actually acted upon them. If you do nothing with the hope that somehow Google will magically let you back into the index you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Go read the minus 30 penalty page at Webmaster World. There are sites on there that have been waiting over 1 year to get back in – after numerous reinclusion requests. Advanced Access sites got back in around the 30-40 day mark because they had this Greg Boser character working on their behalf. There is no definitive proof but it certainly appears that he was somehow involved with this REW ban. At the very least it looks as if he has some serious juice inside of Google. No one at REW is working on your behalf to get your sites reincluded. You have nothing to lose by speaking up for yourselves. Your sites were hand picked for this penalty while your competitors continue to get away with it. That is not right. No one has anything to lose. Only good things can happen by speaking out. It looks as if only three Realtors are posting on Matt Cutt’s blog. Are those the only three Realtors willing to stand up for themselves? Does everyone else really believe that silence will help their sites be reincluded?

Thanks Jim.

Thanks for the comment and information Ryan. Hope your wife is doing well. I am in the same boat. I have a wife and 2 kids to feed with me as the sole sourece of income. I thought about the lawyer thing but cannot imagine it would go anywhere without a significant amount of money to throw at it.

A pretty good racket - get em banned and get paid to get em back.