home › Interesting › Yandex filters. Why you can get banned in Yandex, fall under the AGS or footcloth filter, as well as ways to get out of these sanctions How the AGS appeared and developed

Yandex filters. Why you can get banned in Yandex, fall under the AGS or footcloth filter, as well as ways to get out of these sanctions How the AGS appeared and developed

It is also important that the article you write contains about 2 thousand characters. Yandex will consider this amount normal. A wide variety of links also increases the chances that the site will be suspected of sending spam. Therefore, do not insert more than 4 links and make sure that the anchors are suitable for the theme of your site.

If you have a slow hosting, then it would be better for you to think about changing it, because if Yandex encounters a 502 error, it will immediately consider the site not working and will not show it in the list of found ones. Timely updating of content greatly influences the site's inclusion in the list of results. Sites running on WordPress have one feature - they create identical pages. The more such clones, the worse, but the correct robots.txt file for WordPress can easily solve this problem, I wrote about it in one of my articles, if you are interested, here, I also advise you to read the article about it, it complements the article about the robots. txt.

In general, now you know what is an AGS filter? and to all your sites, I wish you never to fall under the AGS filter, and for you to use only unique and high-quality content on your site and monitor the sale of links and site optimization. And of course, as always, I look forward to your comments on this article. Be sure to watch the video on what Yandex search engine filters are.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. In this series of articles we will talk about the sanctions and filters that the Yandex search engine tends to impose on offending sites.

We will also consider factors that can lead to a ban and describe filters that are used en masse. Well, and, of course, it will be impossible not to say about it.

True, we will not physically be able to cover the entire layer of information on filters within the framework of one article, so there will be a continuation of this publication. Today we will talk about and also learn how to calculate whether a site is subject to AGS and filters for over-optimization or overspam of content. Naturally, the combination of factors leading to the imposition of these sanctions will be described, and proven ways out of them will be identified. I hope that the information will be useful and you will use it for the benefit of your project.

Types of Yandex sanctions and reasons for a site getting banned

Unfortunately, even if you follow all the instructions below, you will not be one hundred percent insured against pessimization, but the risk will decrease significantly. In any case, by understanding the mechanism of applying the filter, you will be able to understand for yourself why you were punished and try to eliminate the existing shortcomings. Consultations with Plato (usually, an impersonal person answering your question asked to Yandex technical support is signed by Platon Shchukin, well, or it used to be like that, at least) will also be easier to conduct if you understand the principles of imposing bans.

So, all Yandex filters, and , can be divided into:

Preliminary filters - the search engine applies them at the stage of entering sites into the index and basic search. A typical example would be.
Post-filters - are applied after calculating the relevance of the document (ranked web page)

Sanctions imposed by Yandex can also be divided into:

Manual
Automatic

And according to the degree and type of damage we can distinguish:

Complete ban (site banned), i.e. All pages were excluded from the search database. Naturally, in this case, traffic from this search engine will stop completely.
A filter is possible in the form of not taking into account outgoing links from the resource. It may be important, for example, for those who plan to buy links from it.
It is also possible that incoming links are not taken into account, which will seriously worsen rankings.
For aggressive advertising or existing adult content, you may be limited in the search (for example, in the second case, you will be shown only when the user selects, ).
The notorious AGS, which leads to the exclusion of part of the resource pages (often a large part) from the search database.
Punishment for a detected attempt to cheat behavioral factors (we will talk in more detail below).
There are also a number of filters and sanctions that are imposed after ranking.

What reasons may lead to the imposition of sanctions??

Texts can easily lead to overlapping filters. For example, I have this.
You can also be punished for links. For example, for inept and excessive work on recruiting external link mass or for over-optimization when organizing internal linking.
Abuse of advertising placed on resource pages may also result in punishment.
It is clear that some attempts at cheating (PF, etc.) can lead to dire consequences.
They can identify your affiliate sites - created to promote services or products of the same company in order to occupy as many positions as possible in the search results (for most search queries, only one result from one resource will be presented in the search results).

Why can you get banned in Yandex?

Let's start with the most radical punishment by Yandex of ordinary webmasters, namely with things that can lead to a site being banned (the so-called black hat SEO).

Hidden text - in white font on a white background or using any other methods of placing content that ordinary visitors do not see. You can get a ban, for example, for using it to hide text.
Placing on the pages a list of keywords under which they are promoted. You’ve probably seen (it used to be common) the design of this list in the form of a block “We were also searched for by queries.” However, they can be punished (banned or filtered) even for ordinary linking, where you diligently link to other pages using keys (for example, by knocking from competitors). In this regard, it is quite dangerous to overdo it.
Cloaking is when search robots (they are recognized by the username they introduce themselves to when entering a site or IP address) are given some content (usually over-optimized and difficult to read), and visitors are given completely different content (without extra keys and quite laconic). Cloaking was actively used at the dawn of search engines, when they did not yet punish spam with keys, etc. things.
Links from an image the size of , which, of course, is not visible on the site, but the search engine sees the link and takes it into account. Again, this is a rudiment from the past, which now only very dense webmasters will use.
Content created automatically, for example, in a dorgen (doorway engine) or synonymizer. These things are still actively used, and doorway developers still manage to bypass the obstacles of search engines. The life of the dors is not long, but not much effort is spent on their creation, so they take advantage of the number and deep study of the changing algorithms of the search engine and an attempt to play on their vulnerabilities.
The presence on the site of pages or sections for exchanging links (created manually or automatically) or any other structures that can be classified as link scavengers (hundreds and thousands of links to different resources). Moreover, it does not matter whether the links will be placed with a text anchor or they will come from banners or pictures. All this is a direct path to a Yandex ban, or (if you’re lucky) to the imposition of sanctions. Moreover, you can exchange links, but they must be thematic to your resources and in small quantities.
Placing a web page as if outside the site, because there are no internal links to them (only external ones) from your resource and. They can be made in the design of the site and have all the same navigation elements.

If your resource contains any of the above (maybe even created without malicious intent), then.

From the ban, let's move on to more lenient penalties used by Yandex, namely filters. The presence of many of them is officially confirmed by this search engine, and some are idle speculation of optimizers, but this does not mean that they are not used (remember how in DMB: “Do you see a gopher? - No. - And I don’t. But he There is!").

Let's Let's list Yandex filters, which no one would want to fall under.

AGS filter (17, 30 and 40) from Yandex

AGS (antigo*nosite) - there are varieties with numbers 17, 30 and 40. First of all, those who create GS on stream (sites created for search engines or for selling links, but not for the benefit of visitors) should be wary of this filter. This type of pessimization appeared in 2009, and its latest modification, AGS 40, dates back to the end of 2013. As is already clear from the name, this filter is designed to mow down low-quality resources from search results, and its new versions are associated with an increase in its selectivity.

After its application, there are usually only a few pages left in the Yandex index (from one to ten). At the same time, the pages remaining in the index are not subject to any additional pessimization (their positions in the search results remain unchanged). The AGS operates, naturally, in automatic mode.

Let's look at some criteria, the totality of which the likelihood of falling under the Yandex AGS filter increases:

Newly registered domain name (young site)
Hosting a resource on free hosting
Usage (Joomla, WordPress, hacked DLE, etc.).
Low or almost zero attendance (several people per day). Based on existing statistics, we can conclude that if the traffic is less than fifty people per day, then the probability of the site falling under the Yandex AGS is very high. But if a visitor crosses the threshold of three hundred unique visitors, then picking up AGS will become a very difficult task. read the given publication.
. Once in both of these catalogs, you can guarantee yourself virtually immunity in relations with the AGS. This is evidenced by the analysis of those resources that fit this filter.
Absence or a small number of external links leading to this resource. To fill this gap without going too far, I advise you to read the following materials:
The presence of forums, blogs or message boards (on the same domain or subdomain), to which information is added by everyone without moderation. Usually, the result is a monstrous spam dump that greatly discredits this resource.
Repeated duplication of internal content (for example, to get more pages from which you can sell links). In WordPress, these can be archives of tags, categories, temporary archives, etc. things.
or texts of poor quality (low-grade rewriting or automatically generated texts).
Too aggressive internal linking of pages with large blocks of internal links. In this regard, many advise being careful with things like tag clouds.
Presence of signs of selling links (presence of external links on many pages of the site).
The presence of aggressive advertising such as pop-up or sliding windows, as well as. A resource that respects itself and its readers, as a rule, will not use such things.

How to remove a site from under the AGS (17, 30, 40)?

However, if you have already fallen under this type of pessimization, then you will first of all be interested in methods for escaping from the AGS filter. Essentially, these are universal recommendations that help you understand what happened to your site when you noticed.

Naturally, you need to start with a “letter to Plato,” or, in other words, try to contact Yandex support to find out the reason. Do not download your license under any circumstances, but simply explain the situation and ask for advice. you can look at the link.
If, after Plato’s answer or from your own understanding, you understand that the problem is in the content (namely, in its low quality or over-optimization), then there will be nothing else left but rewrite content. It’s clear that if your resource were a real GS, you wouldn’t do this due to inexpediency (it’s easier to slap together a new GS), but if your brainchild, which you cherish and cherish, falls under the AGS, you can strain yourself.
True, for me this resulted in five months of hard labor revising four hundred articles, but that’s why the game was worth the trouble. You can learn how to work with texts here:
If you also use a free engine, which is simultaneously used by thousands of other resources on the network, then it makes sense to try changing the design to a more unique one.
If the site you are creating is positioned as a commercial one, then be sure to add contact information to it (telephone, office address, directions), clearly indicating which organization it belongs to. , so... Many GS are disguised as commercial resources, but it is the lack of contacts that gives them away. For an information resource, add a contact email or .
Try adding some useful service to your website. For example, the standard for many commercial resources is the presence of calculators for calculating the cost of services or anything else. You can spy on this business from your competitors.
If you suspect that the usability and navigation of the site is poor, then do not try to fix it. In general, read the article about “” and draw conclusions for yourself about the non-compliance of your project with the standards of modern SEO, so that AGS is not even close.

In fact, all the above tips for getting out of the AGS boil down to one thing: make websites for people- with a normal design, with normal formatted content and easy navigation (usability). The advice is simple, but you will have to spend a lot of time (or money) to implement it.

Yandex sanctions for text content of the site (for content)

Text filters can be divided into two main types, which are listed and described below. The way out of them will be somewhat different, but the common feature is optimizing content for current SEO requirements, and not for what ruled ten years ago.

Footcloth filter

Filter for spamming or footcloth, which was introduced in 2010 and was not confirmed by Yandex in any way (but the gopher principle from the DMB still applies here). Its distinctive feature is that the page subsides for one query, while other queries for which this web page is ranked may remain in their positions.

Methods of combating the footcloth filter are quite simple: diluting pure occurrences of a sagging keyword (phrase), reducing the volume of text (again, this is more relevant for commercial rather than informational sites), and also rules (paragraphs, headings of different levels, lists and etc.). That is, a colorful and conveniently designed “footcloth” (even tens of thousands of characters) without the dominance of direct entry keys can be amazingly perceived by visitors and will pull the request up.

Those most often subject to sanctions for overspam are::

Pages heavily stuffed with keywords (in direct occurrences).
Texts tens of thousands of characters long that no one reads. The key thing is that they are not read due to their intimidating size, lack of formatting and a bunch of highlighted keys, instead of some kind of semantic highlighting. Readable text of a large volume, on the contrary, can be a very good help for promotion (especially of an information site).
By the way, it was precisely because five to seven years ago that optimizers wrote huge texts for commercial sites (without special formatting, because they were written only for Yandex and often hiding them from visitors behind spoilers or in forms without scrolling), in which they could It’s easy to cram hundreds of occurrences of a key without exceeding the critical value of nausea (the percentage of occurrences of keywords relative to the total number of words in the text). Search engines eventually figured out this method of dishonest optimization and introduced appropriate penalties for such cheating.
Someone compares the texts of my articles with foot wraps, but this is not correct, because they fall under this definition only in large sizes. And this is not so critical for an information resource (see Wikipedia, Habraharbr and other mainstream information resources). The main problem of long texts is to keep the user reading them, which is helped by formatting, design and catchy subheadings. Well, and the content, of course, where would we be without it.

Steps to get out from under the footcloth filter(for overspamming):

We write to Yandex support (yes, at the same time) about the possible imposition of sanctions with an attempt to find out which ones.
We clean texts from spam using keys, and also remove “water” along the way to reduce the volume while maintaining the essence. This will lead to a better perception of content by users, especially when coupled with the fulfillment of the conditions from the next paragraph.
We add formatting if it was not there (breaking into paragraphs according to meaning, adding subheadings, lists, semantic highlights, pictures, and also, if necessary, tables or something similar). This will increase the likelihood of reading the text and lead to improved behavioral factors. In other words, we make candy out of a footcloth.
Check whether the page content fully answers the user's request. This condition must also be met to exit the filter for overspam.

Filter for over-optimization of content

The Yandex filter for over-optimization was imposed on my blog in the spring of 2013, and I experienced all its charm quite well in my own skin. It appeared two years earlier, and its existence was officially confirmed by Yandex. A distinctive feature of the filter is the subsidence of not just one request, but of all queries for which the web page that came under the filter was ranked (promoted) (both HF and MF, and even LF and beyond LF are subsided). In my case, there were many such pages and the total loss of traffic was three to four times.

Well, firstly, you will need a complete rewrite or significant correction of the text of those pages that fell under this type of Yandex sanctions. Personally, I rewrote everything I added in the first three years of the blog. Also, during this lesson, it is desirable to remove the excessive use of accent tags (b, strong, em), as well as the abuse of keys in subheadings.

I also removed titles with alts from the pictures, because there were a lot of keys there (this was my first step even before rewriting the content, which I thought would quickly stop the problem, but this turned out to be not enough, and I didn’t even raise my hand to restore at least the alts) due to the scale of the work). I also (highlighted links to useful resources, updated outdated information and removed “water”).

In addition, I want to say that it is imposed only for spamming keys. The second of the described sanction tools is imposed not only for spamming keys, but also for attempting to slip text to a search engine that is not entirely relevant to the query for which it is optimized. Such text does not fully answer the user’s request or does not answer it at all, although it is full of the necessary keys.

Often meaningless content containing “water” on an oceanic scale also falls under the filter for over-optimization. An example of a lack of response to a user’s request could be optimization of a product or service for a commercial request, but without indicating prices. Or an attempt to advance on a request with the word “reviews”, but without providing these same reviews on the page. Such pages may fall under the Yandex filter precisely because you are deceiving the expectations of the user (your potential client).

Symptoms of a filter for over-optimization usually result in a sharp drop in queries promoted on a given web page by dozens of positions down at once. In very advanced cases, a similar subsidence may be observed not only of individual pages, but of the entire site (for all promoted queries), but without changing relevant pages. I didn’t have this, because for a number of queries, after applying the filter, the positions in Yandex results did not change. But it still suffered quite a bit (the total flow of visitors to the blog decreased three times).

Summarizing all of the above, we can give several general tips for getting out of Yandex text filters:

We are writing to Platon Shchukin (in support of Yandex) to find out or clarify the reason for the decrease in the flow of visitors coming to your site from this search engine. Again, remember that nothing is given to us so cheaply and nothing is valued so dearly as politeness.
We clean the content from spam using keywords (the process may require a lot of effort from you if there is a large volume of content that will need to be reviewed from a new angle).
Put yourself in the shoes of a user entering a query into the search bar for which you have optimized this page, and try to understand whether it gives an exhaustive and comprehensive answer to it. In the course of this, it may be necessary to update outdated information, remove “water” and place emphasis (highlights) not on keywords, but on important points to which the user’s eye should cling. This will help the page get good behavioral factors and get out of the filter for over-option or overspam of content. About the examples discussed just above, we can say that you will need to add prices to the pages (or give a link to them or organize their display in a pop-up window), if this expects the user when entering his request, or add reviews if they are mentioned in the request. In general, do not deceive the expectations of your potential clients and they (and Yandex along with them) will be satisfied with you. Everything is just like in real life.

I think that’s enough for today (otherwise it will turn out to be a “footcloth” and not an article). We will continue in the very near future, do not switch.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

Development of the Yandex AGS search filter

The search engine began filtering sites quite a long time ago - the AGS-17 filter was launched in 2008. True, no official statements were made about its existence. The AGS-17 filter simply worked and “threw out” from the search results sites that were not useful, but existed solely to sell links. The sites disappeared, but no one realized that these were sanctions from the Yandex AGS. Quite a few conflicts arose because the algorithm was imperfect and could kill a normal website.

Quite quickly, the Yandex team improved the algorithm and introduced a new AGS with a numerical index of 30. Its existence had already been officially announced (https://yandex.ru/blog/webmaster/6456) in 2009. The AGS-30 filter was intended for the same purpose - excluding from the search results sites that do not provide users with useful information and were created to manipulate search results. This algorithm existed unchanged for 4 years.

In November 2013, Yandex announced the release of the next version of the filter, called AGS-40 (https://yandex.ru/blog/webmaster/16272). This algorithm, according to the search engine, has slightly changed its focus, but the essence remains the same - the fight against “less useful” sites.

What factors did the Yandex AGS-40 search filter take into account?

Selling spam links. When actively selling links from a site, there was a 90% chance that it would fall under the AGS-40 filter.
Site age. Young domains were much more likely than old ones to fall under these Yandex sanctions.
Ratio of incoming and outgoing links. This is rather an indirect factor by which the search engine determined that the site is used to sell links. Obviously, if the number of outgoing links was many times greater than the number of incoming links, then the site sold them, for which Yandex imposed AGS-40.
Number of unique visitors. If almost no one visits the site or the stay time is very short, then it could well fall under the AGS filter.
Uniqueness. Yandex punishes in every possible way for non-unique content, but this algorithm also took into account copies within the same site. That is, if a resource contains many pages that duplicate each other, over time it will have to find a way to get out from under the Yandex AGS.

In 2015, Yandex announced a completely new AGS filter, the main task of which was to lower the ranking of sites selling links. Since the number of links affects the site’s position in search results, they began to sell them. From Yandex’s point of view, this is an attempt to deceive the search algorithm, which means that the attitude towards purchased links is negative.

The main difference of the new filter is that its application no longer depends on the quality and usefulness of the resource; the very fact of selling links is punished. Thus, both the principle of applying the filter and its purpose have changed. The modification of the algorithm and the creation of a new AGS logically continued Yandex’s large-scale fight against selling links, which has been ongoing over the past several years.

The filter included a large number of different sites that were interesting and useful to users, and often had high traffic. Many of the sanctioned sites existed for a long time and had a high level of trust. Despite all these factors, the resources fell under the new AGS filter due to the presence of sales links and were lowered in the search results. The restrictions imposed on the site by the new AGS, as before, are accompanied by the cancellation of the TIC.

How to determine filter overlay?

Unlike most Yandex filters, the new AGS is one-way. The filter will be applied if the site is caught selling links, including eternal ones (that is, links from articles that remain for the entire life of the site). However, Yandex does not provide a clear definition of which link can be considered a sales link and how it differs from a natural one. There is also no exact data on how many links will lead to sanctions. Sites that fall under the new AGS filter are lowered in search results and lose the previously obtained TCI value, which can be checked through the Yandex.Catalogue service (https://yandex.ru/yaca/).

If the TCI value is reset to zero and the site subsides in the search results, we can confidently say that it is the AGS that has been imposed on it. Also, when corresponding with Yandex technical support, you usually receive confirmation of the imposition of sanctions. Also, information about applying a filter can be posted in the new Yandex.Webmaster service (https://beta.webmaster.yandex.ru/). In addition, there are site analysis services that can indicate whether a filter is being applied. One of the simplest is RDS Bar.

How to get out from under the filter?

Since the new AGS is imposed for selling links, to remove the filter you must first remove your site from the exchanges and aggregators through which the sale was carried out, and also remove all outgoing links. After this, you need to write a letter to Yandex technical support service describing the situation and indicating that all links from the site have been removed. In addition, it is worth mentioning in the letter that the site was made for people, is interesting to them, responds well to their requests and helps in resolving their issues, therefore the imposition of sanctions by the new AGS filter is unfounded. Examples include statistical data confirming a large number of visits, time spent by users on the site, depth of page viewing, etc. Usually, after removing links and correspondence with technical support, the filter is removed after several updates.

Let's sum up the intermediate results: briefly about how to remove the Yandex AGS

So, if the site is subject to sanctions, you should perform the following algorithm of actions:

If Yandex has imposed sanctions from the ACS for selling links, then remove them as soon as possible.
If you find duplicate pages that arise due to the peculiarities of the CMS (this often happens in WordPress), exclude them from indexing in the robots.txt file.
If your site has low traffic, improve your content. Something as simple as placing a Yandex counter on the website will help you get out of the AGS.
In any case, write to the search engine technical support. In the letter, try to convince Yandex employees that the AGS filter was imposed on your site by accident, and you did everything possible to speed up the withdrawal from sanctions.

Website promotion under the new AGS filter

As mentioned above, the new AGS filter is aimed at preventing sites from selling links, which in general is a continuation of the search engine’s policy of combating unnatural links. With the emergence of a new filter, sites promoting using purchased links should reconsider their promotion strategy, including requirements for donors.

First of all, you need to get rid of links leading from sites that fall under the AGS, since Yandex has already clearly indicated that these links are unnatural, and the other side of this issue is the “Minusinsk” filter, which in turn is imposed on incoming purchased links. We should not forget that the site in any case should be useful for users, have interesting content and not have technical shortcomings, because even without sales links it is possible to overlay previous versions of the AGS filter.

AGS ( stands for anti shit site) is a series of filters of the Yandex search engine, which is aimed at combating low-quality sites.
The start of operation of the AGS-17 filter is considered to be 2008. But Yandex officially announced this only in 2009, while simultaneously introducing the more modern AGS-30. In 2013, the updated AGS-40 saw the light of day, which is still in use today.

The main purpose of these filters is to combat satellite sites that are created to sell SEO links.

In order to check a site for the AGS filter, you need to analyze its main characteristics.

And the main features of the AGS-40 filter are as follows:

1-10 pages remain in the index (it was before 04/21/2014, now the TIC is reset);
TIC reset;
a sharp drop in traffic from Yandex.

If your site has at least 1 of these signs, then the AGS filter is most likely applied to the resource.

Causes

The reasons for applying filters AGS-17, 30, 40 are as follows:

selling links;
non-unique and unhelpful content;
bad design;
lack of added value.

It is necessary to clearly understand that these reasons do not act individually, but they only influence the algorithm’s decision to apply a filter together. In itself, for example, the sale of links on a high-quality website is not grounds for imposing sanctions.

How to remove a site from the AGS filter?

In order to remove a site from under the AGS filter, you need to do the following: complex of works:

correct all technical errors on the site (for example, duplicate content);
completely rewrite low-quality content;
update the design;
introduce added value;
write to Yandex technical support with a request to review the site.

How not to fall under the filter

In order not to fall under the AGS, you must follow several simple rules for maintaining a website.

Of course, one can note a lot of reasons that can serve as a reason for imposing a filter on the Yandex AGS search system, however, as a rule, it is the inept actions of webmasters that lead to the fact that their resources are exposed to this filter, and therefore lose any opportunity to attract targeted users from Yandex.

The main reason for applying the AGS filter is to fill it with non-unique content. It is worth understanding that in this case we are not talking about the presence of several pages in the site structure that contain non-unique texts, but about a method of filling a resource with content, such as copying information from the pages of other projects. When filling a site with copied content, the webmaster must be prepared for the fact that at any moment it may be excluded from Yandex’s results. It is worth noting that in this case, returning a resource to the index of a given search engine is very difficult, because even processing the content is not a guarantee that the project will be returned to the Yandex results.
The second common reason for websites to fall under the AGS is the incorrect build-up of their link mass. In this case, we can talk about two factors. This is an overly active build-up of the link mass for the site, as well as the presence of a certain number of low-quality links in the link mass structure of the resource. As for the active building of the link mass, this factor of imposing AGS is usually faced by young resources, whose owners strive to increase their citation rates as quickly as possible, as well as increase their positions in search engine results. For example, among the reasons for falling under the AGS, one can note the running of a young resource through catalogues, message boards and profiles of trust sites.
Among the low-quality links, a large number of which can also serve as a reason for imposing AGS, one can note links from spammed forums, message boards, black directories, social bookmarks, and so on.
Among other things, answering the question of how to secure a site from AGS, it is worth noting the reason for its imposition, such as the non-unique design of the site. Of course, non-unique design in itself cannot be the reason for applying this filter. In this case, we are talking about using a template for a website that was previously used by projects that fell under the AGS for other reasons.
We should also not forget that high-quality hosting must be selected for a new resource, since the presence of a certain number of low-quality projects on one server can cause the AGS to be imposed on all sites operating under the same IP.

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