Monday, August 1, 2011

Most likely reasons for site de-indexed in Google

If your site has been suddenly de-indexed from Google, then this chart will guide you through the most likely reasons


Site de-indexed - Quick Text View>
  • Has there been any removal requests via webmaster tools?
  • Has your site been hacked or compromised recently or currently?
  • Do you have a message from Webmaster Tools mentioning hacked spammy content ?
  • Do you show different content to googlebot and users with the intent that users should not see the text?
  • Have you very recently purchased the domain and it is preowned?
  • Do you have a DMCA notice and/or is there one in the search results when looking for your site?
  • Do you have any other sites that are in any way similar?
  • Do you duplicate, copy, or rewrite content that can be found elsewhere?
  • Is your site themed around an affiliate scheme?
  • Does your site contain a very large amount of non-exclusive content?
  • Have you recently amended or removed problem content? 
Update April 2012 : This information is still current. If you have been given another reason not on this list for your site to have been de-indexed then treat with caution and look for authoritative supporting evidence. 

Saturday, July 30, 2011

De indexed by Google - unlikely reasons for the ultimate penalty.

If your site has been removed from Google's index; then, alongside another post on this site, Likely reasons for de-indexed; consider too some unlikely reasons for your site delisting.

  • Selling links or engaging in link schemes.
  • Linking to bad neighbourhoods.
  • Hosting multiple sites on the same server.
  • Duplicate content caused by standard site structure.
  • Copyright issues without a DMCA notice in search results.
  • Lack on nofollow tag on popular affiliate links
  • Canonical issues
  • Issues concerning H, H2 and H3 tags
  • HTML Markup or non 'validation'
  • Lack of alt text
  • Lack of a favicon
  • Capitalization issues in meta tags
  • Text colour issues whilst text is generally viewable
  • Lack of a privacy policy, terms and conditions and contact information.
  • Benign duplicated data in /head area.
  • Any issues regarding sitemaps
  • Accessibility and navigation issues
These unlikely reasons have been drawn from submissions found in webmaster forums everywhere..

    Thursday, June 2, 2011

    Posts regarding the mechanics of indexing.


    Googlebot noticed your site, uses an SSL certificate which may be considered invalid by web browsers
    Without knowing your site, it's hard to judge the exact situation. In general, we send this message when we think that you might have content hosted on https and have found the SSL certificate to be invalid. In practice, this doesn't affect your site's crawling, indexing, or ranking. It may, however, confuse users when they click on one of these results and see a certificate warning in their browser, which is why we flag it for webmasters. 

    If you really don't use https, then I'd double-check to make sure that none of your content is being indexed like that, and then you're welcome to ignore this message. If you do find content indexed as https, I'd recommend using the usual canonicalization methods to resolve that: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139066


    Crawling www and non www >
     For example, many sites let both the www and non-www versions of their site get indexed, without using something to control canonicalization (such as a redirect or the rel=canonical). Our algorithms will try to concentrate on one of those versions for search, meaning that we'd tend to crawl & index that version much more frequently than the other one. In a case like that, it could happen that the less-favored version was last seen with an older version of the CMS, just because we haven't been crawling it as frequently.
    https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/webmasters/GV2rvgM1o_M/discussion

    .. having a site indexed with www and non-www URLs at the same time is not a problem and generally wouldn't result in fluctuations in ranking in web-search. It helps us a little bit when we can focus on a single host name (www or non-www) since we don't have to worry about crawling both versions, but for the largest part, our algorithms also get along fine when there's a mixture of both.
    https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/gw9VG0qcOl8/LhXYtaTp8pkJ



    Canonical tags : following, pagination, print and product pages.
    When we see a canonical link element like that and follow it (which we mostly do), we'll treat it similarly to a redirect. So if you play around with the rel=canonical, you have to be very careful because you won't see the "redirect" that Googlebot will use for indexing.

    - Pagination: this is complicated, I personally would be careful when using with rel=canonical with paginated lists. The important part is that we should be able to find all products listed, so at the very least those lists should provide a default sort order where we can access (and index) all pages. Since this is somewhat difficult unless you really, really know what you are doing, I would personally avoid adding rel=canonical for these pages. One possible solution could be to use JavaScript for paginated lists with different sort orders, for example, that way you would have a single URL which lists all products.

    - Printer-friendly pages: Personally, I'd suggest just using a normal printer style sheet, which would let you keep the same URLs. Short of that, using a rel=canonical is also fine.

    - Product pages: If you have separate URLs for the same products (eg books>non-fiction>guide-to-Italy // books>travel>guide-to-Italy) then picking one and pointing that canonical from the other pages is fine. Setting a category page as canonical seems like a bad idea since we won't be able to index the product pages.
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6c18b666a552585d&hl=en

    Crawling canonical links
    The data shown there is based on our crawling activity, which is why you'd see those URLs there if you're using rel=canonical. We have to crawl and index these URLs first, before the rel=canonical is extracted, so it may even happen that they are temporarily visible in the search results. That's fine - and not something you'd need to prevent. As we process the content there, we'll focus on your preferred canonical for further indexing.
    https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/WBelnjvAoV0/0WJYoMT73s0J

    The sky is not falling : www and non-www
    In general, just having a site accessible via www and non-www is not so much of a problem.
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=422222e1d443a2b2&hl=en

    We're generally pretty good at figuring that out
    While cleaning up issues like canonicalization with 301 redirects are good, they aren't the most important thing on a website. If It gets way too complicated to fix that with your current setup, I'd just leave them as is, perhaps using Webmaster Tools to select your preference if you can. We're generally pretty good at figuring that out, no need to worry too much about it :-).
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6b46b3c44ca83c1c&hl=en

    Google auto-canonicalise ?
    Yes, we can and do sort this kind of issue out algorithmically all the time :-). Most sites don't specify a canonical in Webmaster Tools, yet we index them just the same. That said, if we notice that http://www.example.com/ and http://example.com/ show the same page, we'll just pick one of those and show it to our users in the search results. By doing that, there's a chance that we might not pick the one which YOU prefer -- so with this setting and with the 301 redirect you have a way of telling us your preference.
    There are a few other advantages of specifying one or the other. For example, in order for us to notice that the content on both URLs is the same, we have to actually crawl both versions. Depending on your website and on your server, this might not be a problem -- or it might be a big problem (if accessing those URLs uses a lot of your resources). By using a redirect or specifying a canonical version you can help reduce that overhead.
    At any rate, no you certainly don't have to do this; it's just something that you could do if you wanted to :).
    Regarding the original question, if we have chosen to index your site as "http://example.com/" then you won't find it by searching for "www.example.com" (because we don't have the "www" part in the URLs). However, if you turn it around and tell us to index "http://www.example.com" we'll have both versions available. Regardless of that, when a user searches for your URL they generally already know how to reach you, so this is usually not something worth getting grey hair over.http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?hl=en&tid=292f710a19b96319&fid=292f710a19b9631900046c89c6750aa9

    Cleaning up the index ?
    From the search you mentioned, I searched for some of the product titles there. For the ones that I checked, your HTTPS pages did not show up in the search results, so I wouldn't really worry about it. Give it time and as we recrawl these pages, we'll update them in the index accordingly. At any rate, since the pages redirect to the preferred ones, you wouldn't have to specify the "noindex" x-robots-tag anyway and in addition, any users who happen to come through the HTTPS pages will make it to your site regardless. There's generally no need to clean up the indexed URLs this granularly :-). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?hl=en&tid=5c06376078285c36&fid=5c06376078285c36000474caa5674e32

    Session urls in sitemap files
    If you are not submitting clean URLs in your Sitemap file, you'd be better off not using a Sitemap file. With session-IDs in there, it'll cause more problems (with us crawling and indexing those URLs) than if you just let us crawl your website normally (especially if you really have a clean URL structure). So my advice would be to either delete the Sitemap file, or make sure that the submitted URLs are really exactly the same, clean ones that we find while crawling.
    ttp://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=1aecf6b16fb263bb&hl=e

    304 Not Modified
    As many servers are incorrectly configured, we do not always crawl using conditional requests, so what you are seeing -- as far as I understand it -- would be normal. Additionally, as Cristina mentioned, the "Fetch as Googlebot" feature will always use unconditional requests, so you should also see the "200 OK" there as well. Additionally, the type of request made will generally not have an influence on your site's ranking (assuming your server is returning the proper content for those requests). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2bfc17d6618c4cc2&hl=en

    302 redirect away from root
    For what it's worth, a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page (such as from "/" to "/sites/bursa/"). This is one of the few situations where a 302 redirect is preferred over a 301 redirect. However, as Colin mentioned, if you were hosting this yourself, you might want to look into saving an additional jump by just serving the content directly (it's not necessary, but if you can do it, it's always nice to save the user a redirect). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276539078ba67f48&hl=en

    Generally speaking, with a 302 redirect we'd try to take the content of the redirect target (in your case PAGE-B) and index it under the redirecting URL (in your case PAGE-A). If the target has a noindex meta tag, then it's likely that we'd apply that to the redirecting URL as well.
    https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/9jcvGn5xGyM/uFFPDq4KadsJ

    Change of Hosting
    Secondly, it seems you changed hosting infrastructure around May 11th. When our algorithms see a hosting change, they try to lower Googlebot's crawling rate as a safety mechanism to not overload the servers. In time, as we crawl more and learn more about the crawling load the hosting seems capable of handling, the algorithms will automatically try to increase the crawl rate. You're seeing this process when you report 30% growth in crawl rate recently, and there is a good chance that will continue to grow. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/9-dEyw-xsp0/XCPBz809M3wJ

    Making a great site
    Looking through here, I think Cristina mentioned a really good point -- having great content, especially on your homepage, can do wonders for your site's visibility in search results. Not only will it provide something for our crawlers to pick up & to help us better understand your website, but it will also be something that can and will attract links from other websites.
    In my opinion, next to having a technically "ok" website, the content itself is one of the biggest "SEO-elements" that you can work on for your site. That's not something you need a SEO company for, that's something which you -- as the expert in that business -- need to work on yourself. Make something that you would recommend to others in the same business! http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?hl=en&tid=4e4d38a38ffcdd77&fid=4e4d38a38ffcdd77000494d889628bdf

    Friday, May 6, 2011

    Little or no original content ?


    As far as I can tell, those links are not negatively affecting your site's performance in our search results, so I wouldn't worry too much about them. If you feel that you're seeing changes in the way that your site is ranking in our search results, then I'd recommend focusing on your own site, on your own content, and working to make it the best it can possibly be.

    One thing I noticed while looking at your site is that you have a wide range of interests and accordingly, very different topics on your website -- from photo manipulation to webdesign & SEO to religious topics and probably some that I missed. Generally speaking, that's fine, however, personally, when I was clicking around your site I found it a bit distracting because I ended up getting lost a bit. I found some interesting content on editing graphics, but I wasn't able to go to other parts of your site from there -- it felt a bit disconnected, and not as integrated as it could be. Sometimes issues like that can confuse users -- and sometimes even our algorithms (when they can't easily pick up the context and the connections between pages on your website).  Personally, that's something I'd try to improve -- not directly for search, but rather for your users, and if users love & recommend your site more, then I'm sure you'll start seeing that reflected in search as well over time.



    It looks like the majority of the content on your site comes from other sources. In situations like that, we may choose to focus our efforts on other sites that provide significant unique, compelling, and high-quality content of their own. You can find out more about that at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359 & http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66361 .

    If you wish to be listed in our search results, I'd recommend working on your site to make sure that all of its content is of the kind that our algorithms would want to show to searchers, and then submitting a reconsideration request detailing the changes that you've made. ..

    I think you'd have a better chance by removing all scraped / copied / rewritten / obfuscated content -- it generally doesn't make sense for our algorithms to spend time on a site that does not provide unique, compelling, and high-quality content. https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msg/webmasters/ElrA6rYrXmY/YfZhKVUasqYJ


    Tarakt, keep in mind that unique, compelling, and high-quality content is extremely important to our algorithms and to our users. Rewriting content, "spinning," automatically translating or otherwise generating your content automatically is not something that appeals to our users.
    Personally speaking, I am particularly unhappy when this is done on a site with a health theme... such as one that publishes content like http://healthwikionline.com/is-there-a-healthy-diabetes-diet/ which has the potential (given that it's automatically generated) to cause harm to readers. Can you explain the reasoning behind publishing content like that?
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6657e6fc69c7b145

    One thing that is very important to our users and to our algorithms is that sites are unique, compelling and of high quality. In general, it's not enough to manually or automatically rewrite or automatically translate content -- having a website primarily made up of content such as that would not be interesting to our users, and could be seen as an automatically generated site that we would not want to include in our search results. If this were to apply to your site(s), then I would strongly recommend removing any and all such content, making sure that the content you provide is of the highest possible quality, unique and compelling and can stand on its own for users. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=0ef9d971a5c752de&hl=en
    As mentioned by the others (thanks, everyone!) I'd strongly recommend focusing on unique and compelling content. Our users expect to find a variety of high-quality content in our search results, and our algorithms work hard to make this happen. Reusing content in a way that is indexable (such as on http://www.mickjaggernews.com/news/google.aspx and other pages) is something that we strongly discourage in our Webmaster Guidelines. To resolve this, I would recommend working to make sure that all of your crawlable and indexable content is unique, compelling, and of a high quality. It's fine to use scripts to automatically create content for your website, but those parts should be blocked from crawling and/or indexing using the normal mechanisms such as the robots.txt or robots meta tags. Once you've done this, I imagine that submitting a reconsideration request detailing the changes that you've made would be a good next step. Hope it helps! http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6c49ef0368a23188&hl=en
    One factor that is very important to us is that a site has unique and compelling content. If content is already found on other sites, it makes very little sense for us to crawl, index and show duplicates. With that in mind, I would work hard at removing all content which comes from elsewhere from your website and making sure that the unique and compelling content on your site is in the foreground. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=0b4ad1ffe5cfb7ed&hl=en
    Looking at your site, I only see pages that contain content from other sites. I have a hard time finding unique and compelling content, content for which we would want to send users to your site (and not any other site). Having some auto-generated content is fine, we just prefer not to have this kind of content indexable. So I would recommend making sure that all indexable pages on your site are significantly unique and compelling, and contain content which is important to users, content which users want to recommend to their friends -- enough so that we'd want to absolutely make sure that your site is indexed properly. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=62305e9e863213d5&hl=en
    Circling back to your original problem -- I think it would be very wise to not only look at technical issues. While small technical glitches can cause problems, our crawlers are pretty adept to looking over issues that don't impact the way that we crawl and index content (the largest part of the web has technical issues in one way or another). It's certainly a good idea to clean up these technical issues as you find them, but personally, I think it's even more important to make sure that your content and your site's strategy has a long-term focus on providing unique and compelling content to users. Making something available on the web that does not already exist, providing something of value that goes well beyond what other sites have offered, is a great way to move forward in the long run. With that in mind, I would definitely take critical comments - such as those above - seriously and think about ways that you can make sure that your website's strategy has a high chance of success in the long term http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=4f2c48776c983e0a&hl=en
    Also, it looks like some of your content may already be found on the web (such as on Stack Overflow) -- keep in mind that our algorithms prefer high-quality, unique and compelling content, not content that has been copied, rewritten, reprocessed or otherwise modified in an attempt to appear original. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6a3eda51c1737fca&hl=en
    As a general recommendation, we like to return results to our users that provide unique and compelling content. Looking through your website, it seems little content of it is unique to your website. To take two examples, from this page: A search for a long bit of text from it shows many other websites: So while we do use the quantity and quality of links in determining the PageRank of a page, it's even more important to our algorithms that the content is of high-quality, unique and compelling to our users. I would start with focusing on providing your own unique content that users want to view. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=1e713d8bb94459e4&hl=en
    You want to keep in mind that the users (and also our algorithms) prefer unique and compelling content. See the following related Help Center article: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361 In case of affiliate sites, the webmaster should make sure to have elements in the pages that are unique and valuable for the users, give a good reason for them to visit the site. With websites like that, generally my advice is to take note of the Webmaster Guidelines ( http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 ), change the content and/or site if needed and then submit a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools ( http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 ). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=3a9bf6e85bf77c02&hl=en
    In general, I don't see anything technically incorrect with the way that you're providing your website, and it appears that we're regularly crawling and indexing your content. Blocking the browser context menu is really a bad practice that I'd recommend avoiding (it doesn't protect anything - it just makes it harder for legitimate users to use your website). The IE6-redirect is currently not causing Googlebot problems, but as the others mentioned, it seems unnecessary as well. Given that the technical side is not causing issues, you may want to look at the content on your site, and the way users are using & recommending it to others. Looking at a random page, http://www.besttechnology.org/techdetail/pd1_7_2010.php , it looks like some of the content there is from other sources (such as from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/technology/26security.html ). In general, users expect to find unique and compelling content on sites that we list in our search results -- so our algorithms work hard to make sure that this is possible. If a site were to mostly reproduce news & articles already published elsewhere, then that is generally not going to be a strategy that will help the site to succeed in the long run. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=46a4e97c964b849d&hl=en
    Additionally, one thing to keep in mind is that it's important for our algorithms that your site has unique and compelling content. Copying content from other sources, even if it is just slightly rewritten, is a bad idea and goes against out Webmaster Guidelines and can result in your site being removed from our index. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=1bb051fde3fb784a&hl=en
    In general, reconsideration requests are processed within a few days, and if you do not see changes, then it's possible that you have not remedied the issues (or, in some cases, it's possible that the site does not have anything specific that can be affected with a reconsideration request). The forums here are often even better than feedback from Google -- the users here are fast, knowledgeable and extremely honest. Taking Leonel80's comparison and modifying it slightly, I'd say it's more like going to the doctor with a headache, hoping for a pill, and finding out that you should to stop eating chocolate & go running more often; it's not easy, and maybe you'll decide to ignore it, but the doctors here are fairly experienced :-). Looking through your site, I agree that you do have some novel ideas there, but overall, users expect to find unique and compelling content in the search results, so indexing content that's already been indexed before, and showing those copies in search results, might not always be what users want. Our algorithms work hard on providing users a variety of content. One thing I would try to do with a site like that is to make sure that the crawlable and indexable content is all of high quality, and unique and valuable. It's fine to sometimes reuse content from elsewhere -- as long as that's not the bulk of your site and provided it's blocked from crawling and indexing appropriately. You can find more about our stance on this kind of content in the links below. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=564569678699b25f&hl=en
    One thing that I would recommend is working hard to make sure that your site has unique and compelling content. I realize this is a bit hard for a site that focuses only on lyrics for a certain band, but I bet there are ways to handle this :-). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5be2b45f776c8893&hl=en
    Looking at your sites, I can see that our algorithms might have a hard time finding the unique and compelling content on them. For example, a random page I looked at, http://www.wtechz.com/2011/01/adsense-account-getting-trick-2011.html , seems to be copied on (from?) various other sites. When our algorithms have a hard time recognizing the unique content that provides value to our users, it's possible that they will decide to show other sites instead. To fix that, I'd strongly recommend removing all of the copied, rewritten, "respun", or translated content and making sure that your site focuses on topics where you can provide a unique insight that our users will want to find in the search results. Once you have taken steps to make sure that this is the case, it would probably make sense to submit a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you've made. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=661286661d61fab2&hl=en
    I would recommend listening to the feedback provided here by the others -- it really is important to us (and our users!) that a site has unique and compelling content. I would strongly recommend going back to your site, removing all of the copied and rewritten content, making sure that your site gives users something of high value, something they'll want to come back to and recommend to their friends. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=55b6ee5a300a9690&hl=en
    - Many of your pages seem to be focused on a video from YouTube. For me, it feels a bit weird for search engines to send users to your site when the users are actually looking for content hosted elsewhere. When combined with pages like http://www.topcountrymusicvideos.com/marty-robbins-youtube-videos/ that appear to consist only of shared text ("This page contains Marty Robbins YouTube Videos that will be updated on a regular basis.(...)") together with YouTube videos, I imagine that our algorithms might prefer to send users to sites that have a bit more unique and compelling content. In general, I would recommend working to make sure that your site has as much unique and compelling content as possible; working to make sure that your site would stand alone even without videos from other sites. Additionally, I would recommend working to make sure that pages such as the above that do not have unique content on them, are blocked from indexing. You could do that with a "noindex" robots meta tag. - The comment about your site having to stand on it's own even without videos leads to my second point: I couldn't watch most videos from your site -- they're all blocked in my country (Switzerland). I don't know if that's based on your choice of videos or based on the content owners' preferences, but it's frustrating :-) (I would never admit it in public, but I'm currently listening to Johnny Cash while writing this post.). It would be a neat addition -- and provide some unique value! -- to have a way of letting users know about content that is or is not available in their country, perhaps even allow users to flag videos that are blocked in their location so that you can show that data to others in the same location. Obviously search engine algorithms would want more unique content than just a "yes/no", but that would certainly be useful for users like me :-). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=65ccf406b7790e01&hl=en
    One thing I'd recommend is focusing on unique and compelling content -- pick a subject that fascinates you, where you have a lot of knowledge and go with that. We also have a great SEO starter guide, that helps you once you have great content, I've linked to it below. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7960f45a62573711&hl=en
    As mentioned by Squibble, I too think your site could really profit from more unique and compelling content. Without content, all that we find when crawling and indexing your site is tags and domain names. This doesn't really give us that much information based on which we can understand your pages. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=4e7a3568a5befd0d&hl=en
    Looking at your pages for the topic that you mentioned, I'm a bit worried: http://www.gunbladespecialist.com/2010/04/29/mall-world-facebook-cheats/ ... mentions "Since I don’t really pay close attention to Facebook Games in general, (...) there seems to be no sites on the internet offering Mall World Cheats or even Tips. (...) I will be posting Mall World Cheats, Tips and Hacks as soon as they become available. I will also start to feature more Facebook Games, since I think it can really generate a fair share of traffic in my blog which will lead to more “make money online” opportunities." ... which to me, sounds like your site doesn't actually have any content on that subject, so I'm curious as to why you believe it would make sense to show your site for that topic? This also seems to apply to other topics on your site: http://www.gunbladespecialist.com/2010/05/03/treasure-isle-facebook-cheats/ "So what about Treasure Isle Facebook Cheats? As much as I want to provide them, there just seems to be no cheat or bug in Treasure Isle (...)" http://www.gunbladespecialist.com/2010/05/05/happy-island-facebook-cheats/ "I’m quite new in the game and I haven’t discovered a bug or exploit that we can classify as a cheat in Happy Island." gunblade06, posts like these could be somewhat misleading to users, don't you think? Instead of writing about topics like these, I would strongly recommend writing about topics where you can really provide unique and compelling content that users will want to refer their friends to your site for. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=01e3238cb3cc75ca&hl=en
    It looks like your site is fine and does not have malware on it. Our systems know that things can change, so they don't "hold a grudge" against a site that used to have malware or that used to be hacked. That said, looking at your site, I could imagine that it would really help to have more unique and compelling content, so that our systems have something to go by. Content that's unique and compelling is something that our users love to see and love to get referred to. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5cfef18b3aa75a8a&hl=en
    One thing that is very important to us is that a site like that contains a significant amount of unique and compelling content. Links, headlines and snippets from other sites does not provide a lot of value to our users -- they'd probably prefer to be sent to the source directly. I'm sure there's a way to manage that & once you have worked out a way to make sure that the majority of your site is made up of unique and compelling content, I'd submit a reconsideration request detailing the changes that you have made. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7613ea61b12beba3&hl=en
    Thanks for providing your URL. I'm unable to spot any obvious signs of hacking, but make sure you keep your software updated and use secure passwords to be safe. Looking at the content of your site, I think you could benefit from reading Google's webmaster guidelines (linked below) if you're concerned about your site's appearance in Google's search results. We do not guarantee indexing for any site, but following the guidelines puts you on the right track to showing up in our search results. Google likes to index pages which provide unique and compelling content, and provide an overall good user experience. So, making great content that your visitors will find useful should be goal #1. And since you accept advertising on your site (which on its own is certainly not a violation of the guidelines), you'll want to pay special attention to our article on paid links, which I'm linking to at the bottom of this post. If you feel your site violates these guidelines, you're welcome to submit a reconsideration request via Webmaster Tools after making the necessary fixes to your site. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6011dc8de3ed1506&hl=en
    Trying out your site, it appears that you just scrape Google's search results with a filetype:pdf (for PDFs) addition, is that correct? If so, that would be against not only our terms of service but providing those pages for crawling and indexing would also be against our Webmaster Guidelines. I would recommend working to create a website that is built on unique and compelling content which is not just copied and repackaged from other sites. If you wish to keep your website's model, I would recommend making sure that none of the search results pages - or scraped & repackaged URLs - are available for crawling and indexing. Additionally, I would recommend making sure that your site does not infringe on the terms of service of the search engines that you use to create your search results. I realize this is not an easy change, but given your site's structure at the moment, there is no easy solution :-/ http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5c8ae5d1f7a8cb88&hl=en
    While you mentioned that there might be 100 sites that are similar on the web, I wouldn't compare my site with them. Make your site better than all the rest, make it the best, most complete site, with unique and compelling content that users are looking for. That generally means a lot of work, but if you're looking to remain relevant on the web for the long run, you should make sure that you provide something of high value, that users are not going to forget for the long run either :). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=363d403880568fd0&hl=en
    As mentioned by others (thanks for all the suggestions!), it looks like the changes you're seeing here may be from an algorithmic change. As part of our recent algorithmic changes (which the outside world sometimes refers to as the "May Day update" because it happened primarily in May), our algorithms are assessing the site differently. This is a ranking change, not any sort of manual spam penalty. You can hear more about this change in Matt's video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM Working on making sure that your site is of a high-quality and has unique and compelling content is certainly a good idea, and something I would always recommend working on, regardless of the site's current standing. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=4a54a17fbb8649c7&hl=en
    That said, looking at your site, it appears that it mostly just shows Google Maps and links to another maps service.... For us, that might be a bit problematic as it's our goal to show users unique and compelling content -- not just content from other sites. With that in mind, I would not just wait for things to settle down, but also work very hard to make sure that your site is really unique, that it contains awesome content which users demand to see in search results. In the long run, that is one of the most vital elements of any website. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6cdc2d67751579b5&hl=en
    I think Squibble's point is worth looking at -- your site is titles "All about FC Barcelona" and you mention that your content is based on what you see in TV. While I can't judge the quality of your content, I would - personally - probably expect a bit more than just TV-based content. That said, perhaps that doesn't apply to the rest of your site, but anyway, I would definitely look into making sure that your content is of high-quality, unique and compelling. Finally, this is just my personal opinion, looking through your site and the page that you mentioned above, I noticed that even with a large monitor, I am only seeing ads and banners when viewing your pages. Have you considered how users might react when they are confronted with "just ads" (with the content buried a click or two away)? That may not have a direct impact on your site's standing in search engines, but if users were to be confused by the ads, that will almost certainly have an indirect impact -- with new users not digging down to see your content, and accordingly not recommending it to their friends. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7e275b8f88ce9da4
    As the others have mentioned here, our users, and our algorithms, cherish content that is of high-quality, unique and compelling. When content is copied, rewritten, respun, automatically translated, etc, then it doesn't really make sense for us to index it again. If you find that your site has content like that, then I'd recommend removing all of it, making sure that the rest of your content is great, and then submitting a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you have made. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6426ec62a35cec6c
    Both copied, high-quality content and low-quality, unique content are not really what users want to find on the web. If you're asking me what kind of content you should have on your website, then I'd personally recommend using high-quality, unique (not rewritten / respun / retranslated) content is the only strategy that makes sense in the long run. Your users will recognize attempts to cut corners, and they'll react accordingly. If you want to have a long-term web-presence, then you need to provide something of unique value to users, something they will want to come back to on their own, something they will recommend to their friends. Create something that you can be proud of, something that will continue to stand on its own over the years. Search engines are not interested in content that's generated for search engines, they want to serve their users with something users would find useful. Low quality or copied, rewritten, respun, retranslated content is not something that users like. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=27888eeb80f5a978&hl=en

    Tuesday, April 26, 2011

    10 top fixes for Google Panda issues

    • Noindex
    • 404 Not Found
    • URL Removal
    • 301 Redirect
    • Disallow: /tag
    • Nofollow
    • DMCA
    • Canonical Tags
    • Parameter Handling
    • Reconsideration Request
    mm No further comment needed.

    Saturday, April 23, 2011

    Do you need to 'nofollow' affiliate links

    This query does come up a few times on Google's webmasters forum, beware of scaremongering.

    I have never seen lack of nofollow tag on affiliate links cited as a confirmed reason for a ranking drop  on Google's webmaster forums and it has never been a confirmed reason for a site deindexing.


    Update. Google's Matt Cutts finally states the obvious in a clear statement. 

    Google’s Matt Cutts On Affiliate Links: We Handle Majority Of Them

    We handle the vast majority of affiliate stuff correctly because if it is a large enough affiliate network we know about it and we handle it on our side. Even though we handle I believe the vast majority of affiliate links appropriately if you are at all worried about it, I would go ahead and just add the nofollow because you might be earning money from that.
    http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-affiliate-links-we-handle-majority-of-them-125859


    If Google is applying spam penalties to affiliate links then it means that someone in Google is looking at sites and applying link penalties to prevent you passing page rank to your... affiliates. Like this: 'Not only are they trying to pass traffic via that long affiliate tracked url, but also they are trying to pass page rank ! This must stop'

    If linking to affiliates was such a big problem for page rank passing, then I presume that Google would compile a list of the major affiliates and discount them. ...Google may have done so already.. (see update)

    If you are working on your site and adding affiliate links then putting nofollow tags on will no harm. If you are looking for reasons for rankings drop or site deindexing then I would look elsewhere.

    This is also relevant, though regarding banner adverts:
    For most cases, Google handles the typical banner ad and all that sort of stuff very well so they dont flow page rank and things are handled appropriately and so if that is the case then I wouldnt worry about that situation.
    From :

    Should I add nofollow to banner ads?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SesBNVanGs

    I see that it is not precisely the same, but what reason would there be to think that there is a different set of rules for links which are not actually paid links, but affiliate links. And perhaps that is why confirmed instances of lack of nofollow on affiliate links as being the case of problems are so hard to find.

    Google, looking for reports of paid links (passing page rank) specifically say here they are not seeking examples of nofollowed affiliates links :

    Q: Are you interested in things like affiliate links? Are you interested in hearing about directories in this report?
    A: Nope, I’d be most interested in feedback like the examples that I mentioned above, or things like paid posts that might affect search engines. If you’re still unsure what sort of reports we’d like to get, that’s okay. Fortunately, the vast majority of people sending in reports are on the same wavelength and are sending in solid feedback like the examples above. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

    Thursday, April 7, 2011

    What does Google think of thin affiliates ?

    I would recommend reading the whole of the Help Center page that Squibble linked to -- Google has no problem with affiliate programs, but we do expect that the website provides something unique and compelling of its own. The majority of the content should not be coming from other sites, it should be something that users would want to visit and recommend on its own. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2b49f21127bda467&hl=en

    One factor that is very important for us is unique and compelling content. It might be good to ask yourself: How does this site provide unique and compelling value to your users? What makes it stand out above other shops offering the same products -- or even above the original source where users are sent to buy these products? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=32d2e8f6699a956a&hl=en

    As mentioned by some of the others here, I think it would make sense to work on making your site as unique and compelling as possible. At the moment, it appears that a relatively large part of your site is concentrated on ebay affiliate content, so it would be good to make sure to balance that with more high quality content. That said, if you feel that your site is not ranking where it should be and you are confident that it complies with our webmaster guidelines and provides unique and compelling content to your visitors, I would recommend submitting a reconsideration request. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=3c660de9c2fc94d6&hl=en

    Additionally, it seems that your site is partly a collection of affiliate offers. From our point of view, one very important item for sites like that is to make sure that they are build on unique and compelling content. For instance, it makes little sense to send users to a site that just points them to affiliate links and lets them click through -- it's much more interesting for users to be sent to something that provides value of its own. A good way to judge that for yourself would be to ask yourself if users would find your site compelling enough on its own (without affiliate offers) to return to and to refer their friends to.http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=55cdf3fc241200aa&hl=en

    One element that is very important to us is that a site has unique and compelling content. Looking at your site, it appears to mostly point to auctions on auction sites. I'm certain that I must be missing the relevant parts, but it's possible that search engines are only seeing the auction listings as well. If that is the case, I'd recommend removing the shared content and focusing your efforts on the unique and compelling parts of your site. I'm sure that over time users and search engines will come to value your site as a trusted resource.http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7f8fef9a6fcd2ec7&hl=en

    You want to keep in mind that both the users and our algorithms prefer unique and compelling content. See the following Help Center article on this subject: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361

    In case of affiliate sites, the webmaster should make sure to have elements in the pages that are unique and valuable for the users, give a good reason for them to visit the site. With websites like that, generally my advice is to take note of the Webmaster Guidelines ( http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 ), change the content and/or site if needed and then submit a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 ).http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6c2c1b377c7072e3&hl=en

    One general thing I would however try to do is to make sure that your pages have enough unique and compelling content in comparison to the content (affiliate listings) that you're pulling in as well. Overall, I only found a small number of those pages (eg >Zeiss Ikon, Contaflex (TLR) "For China"< ), but that would be something I'd recommend watching out for. Generally speaking, there's no reason to "hide" affiliate links. Affiliate links are not bad :) -- provided that they do not make up a large part of your content. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=37119022ebbbd46e&hl=en

    Looking through your site, I'd really recommend working hard on providing unique and compelling content, as much as you can. While it's interesting to browse the auctions that are running elsewhere, I'd recommend not building your site around content like that -- build it around content that users are interested in and provide something which throws them off of their chairs, something which fascinates them, something that keeps them coming back to YOUR site and most of all, something they wouldn't want to wait to recommend to their friends.

    If after some time after you receive a confirmation like this things do not change for your site, I would assume that there are still issues that need to be resolved. So in your case, I would definitely continue working on the website, perhaps not focusing so much on adding content from other sites and instead working to create awesome, fascinating, unique and compelling content for your users. Make something that people will want to come back to directly, every day. Make something that users can't find elsewhere, something that sets your site apart from all the others. Another way of thinking about it is asking yourself what would *you* want to find on the web about this topic? What kind of content would get you to talk about the website when having a beer (or tea) with friends? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=210aaacdbc0e9e5f&hl=en

    Styling of your tags wouldn't be a reason for the website not to be indexed however. Looking at your site, one thing worth mentioning is that our algorithms prefer unique and compelling content, so that's what I'd recommend working hard on. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=51032657f33ac44e&hl=en

    In general, what is really important for us on a site that is affiliate-focused is that there is sufficient unique and compelling content on the site -- that it can stand on its own even without the affiliate content and optimally, that the affiliate content adds value as well. Clicking through your site I do see quite a bit of content, but most of it seems to be secondary to your affiliate form. When I try to enter a local zip code into the form, I don't really get anywhere. Is it US-only? Filling it out with an example US-based address, I just get a small collection of generic affiliate links.

    One thing I would recommend for a site like yours is to make sure that your unique and compelling content is the focus throughout the site. If visitors come to look for your content, then they should see that content in a clear and straight-forward way (for example, if I search for the dangers of texting while driving, and 2/3rds of the resulting page is filled with an insurance ad, then that would make the result much less interesting to me). If your content is not that unique and compelling, then I would recommend working on that (I'm guessing you already have, which is great!). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6dcd2428eb4fc691&hl=en

    Going through your site and seeing what's being indexed, one thing that strikes me as a bit low on unique and compelling content (Google has a fancy for that -- our users are pretty demanding :-)) are the pages where you just aggregate content from other shopping and auction sites. While price comparisons may be interesting, I don't think it makes much sense for a user to land on a page like that only to click through to another site to actually get what they're looking for. Two ways to change that could be to prevent those aggregation pages from being indexed or to add significant unique and compelling content to them. In my opinion, the rest of your site does have a lot of neat and valuable content (I'm no expert in your field, but that would be my guess), so perhaps focusing on the existing, unique & compelling pages is the best strategy http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7b157c805421e7ca&hl=en

    It looks like the changes you're seeing here may be from an algorithmic change. As part of our recent algorithmic changes (which the outside world sometimes refers to as the "May Day update" because it happened primarily in May), our algorithms are assessing the site differently. This is a ranking change, not any sort of manual spam penalty. You can hear more about this change in Matt's video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM Matt mentions in the video that it would be good to go back, ask yourself: Have I got the highest-quality site? Am I showing up for the most relevant searches? What sort of thing can I do in terms of adding great content, making sure that people consider me an authority, that I'm not just matching something that's off-topic, or that users won't find all that useful? Are your pages the most relevant pages for those topics? If not, what could you do to change that? Working on making sure that your site is of a high-quality and has unique and compelling content is certainly a good idea, and something I would always recommend working on, regardless of the site's current standing. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=48e76a554b0cab0c&hl=en

    Looking at your site and the various other sites that offer the same product, I would strongly recommend that you work on strong, unique and compelling content. I understand that this is difficult in an area that is somewhat medical, but it's vital for a website in a competitive area that it provides something which users want and expect to find in the search results -- something which users can recommend to their friends directly (not just the product which they can get from 100s of other websites). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5cf11235394e14ed&hl=en

    As Squibble mentioned, there are a lot of copies of the same content out there. If you're selling the same products (even if it were a "physical" store), then I would strongly recommend working hard to make sure that the content on your site is of high-quality, unique and compelling. Squibble mentioned the appropriate Help Center article about this (and I imagine it would also apply to the articles that Will spotted), but overall, you should not be doing that just because someone might review the text and check it, you should be doing it to stand out from the rest in the search results. Our algorithms work hard to reduce the amount of duplication in search results, so if you can make sure that your content is really high-quality, unique and valuable to users, then that will make a difference.

    Additionally, as you mentioned the 2 million links ... keep in mind that we discourage links that are bought, sold, traded or otherwise artificially gained. If some of those 2 million links were to fall into those categories, then it's possible that they're no longer being valued as they might have in the past.

    So in your situation, I'd recommend working to make sure that all of your site is as unique as possible (and keep your users in mind; don't just swap words around in the hope that the algorithms won't notice). Should you find any issues with regards to the Webmaster Guidelines that you have resolved, then it would also be good to shoot off a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you've made. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=470306ff139aea76&hl=en

    One factor that is very important for us is unique and compelling content. It might be good to ask yourself: How does this site provide unique and compelling value to your users? What makes it stand out above other shops offering the same products -- or even above the original source where users are sent to buy these products? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=32d2e8f6699a956a&hl=en

    As mentioned by some of the others here, I think it would make sense to work on making your site as unique and compelling as possible. At the moment, it appears that a relatively large part of your site is concentrated on ebay affiliate content, so it would be good to make sure to balance that with more high quality content. That said, if you feel that your site is not ranking where it should be and you are confident that it complies with our webmaster guidelines and provides unique and compelling content to your visitors, I would recommend submitting a reconsideration request. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=3c660de9c2fc94d6&hl=en

    Additionally, it seems that your site is partly a collection of affiliate offers. From our point of view, one very important item for sites like that is to make sure that they are build on unique and compelling content. For instance, it makes little sense to send users to a site that just points them to affiliate links and lets them click through -- it's much more interesting for users to be sent to something that provides value of its own. A good way to judge that for yourself would be to ask yourself if users would find your site compelling enough on its own (without affiliate offers) to return to and to refer their friends to.http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=55cdf3fc241200aa&hl=en

    One element that is very important to us is that a site has unique and compelling content. Looking at your site, it appears to mostly point to auctions on auction sites. I'm certain that I must be missing the relevant parts, but it's possible that search engines are only seeing the auction listings as well. If that is the case, I'd recommend removing the shared content and focusing your efforts on the unique and compelling parts of your site. I'm sure that over time users and search engines will come to value your site as a trusted resource.http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7f8fef9a6fcd2ec7&hl=en

    You want to keep in mind that both the users and our algorithms prefer unique and compelling content. See the following Help Center article on this subject: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361

    In case of affiliate sites, the webmaster should make sure to have elements in the pages that are unique and valuable for the users, give a good reason for them to visit the site. With websites like that, generally my advice is to take note of the Webmaster Guidelines ( http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 ), change the content and/or site if needed and then submit a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 ).http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6c2c1b377c7072e3&hl=en

    One general thing I would however try to do is to make sure that your pages have enough unique and compelling content in comparison to the content (affiliate listings) that you're pulling in as well. Overall, I only found a small number of those pages (eg >Zeiss Ikon, Contaflex (TLR) "For China"< ), but that would be something I'd recommend watching out for. Generally speaking, there's no reason to "hide" affiliate links. Affiliate links are not bad :) -- provided that they do not make up a large part of your content. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=37119022ebbbd46e&hl=en

    Looking through your site, I'd really recommend working hard on providing unique and compelling content, as much as you can. While it's interesting to browse the auctions that are running elsewhere, I'd recommend not building your site around content like that -- build it around content that users are interested in and provide something which throws them off of their chairs, something which fascinates them, something that keeps them coming back to YOUR site and most of all, something they wouldn't want to wait to recommend to their friends.

    If after some time after you receive a confirmation like this things do not change for your site, I would assume that there are still issues that need to be resolved. So in your case, I would definitely continue working on the website, perhaps not focusing so much on adding content from other sites and instead working to create awesome, fascinating, unique and compelling content for your users. Make something that people will want to come back to directly, every day. Make something that users can't find elsewhere, something that sets your site apart from all the others. Another way of thinking about it is asking yourself what would *you* want to find on the web about this topic? What kind of content would get you to talk about the website when having a beer (or tea) with friends? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=210aaacdbc0e9e5f&hl=en

    Styling of your tags wouldn't be a reason for the website not to be indexed however. Looking at your site, one thing worth mentioning is that our algorithms prefer unique and compelling content, so that's what I'd recommend working hard on. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=51032657f33ac44e&hl=en

    In general, what is really important for us on a site that is affiliate-focused is that there is sufficient unique and compelling content on the site -- that it can stand on its own even without the affiliate content and optimally, that the affiliate content adds value as well. Clicking through your site I do see quite a bit of content, but most of it seems to be secondary to your affiliate form. When I try to enter a local zip code into the form, I don't really get anywhere. Is it US-only? Filling it out with an example US-based address, I just get a small collection of generic affiliate links.

    One thing I would recommend for a site like yours is to make sure that your unique and compelling content is the focus throughout the site. If visitors come to look for your content, then they should see that content in a clear and straight-forward way (for example, if I search for the dangers of texting while driving, and 2/3rds of the resulting page is filled with an insurance ad, then that would make the result much less interesting to me). If your content is not that unique and compelling, then I would recommend working on that (I'm guessing you already have, which is great!). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6dcd2428eb4fc691&hl=en

    Going through your site and seeing what's being indexed, one thing that strikes me as a bit low on unique and compelling content (Google has a fancy for that -- our users are pretty demanding :-)) are the pages where you just aggregate content from other shopping and auction sites. While price comparisons may be interesting, I don't think it makes much sense for a user to land on a page like that only to click through to another site to actually get what they're looking for. Two ways to change that could be to prevent those aggregation pages from being indexed or to add significant unique and compelling content to them. In my opinion, the rest of your site does have a lot of neat and valuable content (I'm no expert in your field, but that would be my guess), so perhaps focusing on the existing, unique & compelling pages is the best strategy http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7b157c805421e7ca&hl=en

    It looks like the changes you're seeing here may be from an algorithmic change. As part of our recent algorithmic changes (which the outside world sometimes refers to as the "May Day update" because it happened primarily in May), our algorithms are assessing the site differently. This is a ranking change, not any sort of manual spam penalty. You can hear more about this change in Matt's video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM Matt mentions in the video that it would be good to go back, ask yourself: Have I got the highest-quality site? Am I showing up for the most relevant searches? What sort of thing can I do in terms of adding great content, making sure that people consider me an authority, that I'm not just matching something that's off-topic, or that users won't find all that useful? Are your pages the most relevant pages for those topics? If not, what could you do to change that? Working on making sure that your site is of a high-quality and has unique and compelling content is certainly a good idea, and something I would always recommend working on, regardless of the site's current standing. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=48e76a554b0cab0c&hl=en

    Looking at your site and the various other sites that offer the same product, I would strongly recommend that you work on strong, unique and compelling content. I understand that this is difficult in an area that is somewhat medical, but it's vital for a website in a competitive area that it provides something which users want and expect to find in the search results -- something which users can recommend to their friends directly (not just the product which they can get from 100s of other websites). http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5cf11235394e14ed&hl=en

    As Squibble mentioned, there are a lot of copies of the same content out there. If you're selling the same products (even if it were a "physical" store), then I would strongly recommend working hard to make sure that the content on your site is of high-quality, unique and compelling. Squibble mentioned the appropriate Help Center article about this (and I imagine it would also apply to the articles that Will spotted), but overall, you should not be doing that just because someone might review the text and check it, you should be doing it to stand out from the rest in the search results. Our algorithms work hard to reduce the amount of duplication in search results, so if you can make sure that your content is really high-quality, unique and valuable to users, then that will make a difference.

    Additionally, as you mentioned the 2 million links ... keep in mind that we discourage links that are bought, sold, traded or otherwise artificially gained. If some of those 2 million links were to fall into those categories, then it's possible that they're no longer being valued as they might have in the past.

    So in your situation, I'd recommend working to make sure that all of your site is as unique as possible (and keep your users in mind; don't just swap words around in the hope that the algorithms won't notice). Should you find any issues with regards to the Webmaster Guidelines that you have resolved, then it would also be good to shoot off a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you've made. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=470306ff139aea76&hl=en

    Tuesday, March 15, 2011

    Google boasts of Alexa rankings

    On the official google blog.
    We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa.
    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/whats-new-with-blogger.html 

    I did not think that 'according to Alexa' meant that much to write home about.

    Tuesday, February 8, 2011

    Header Tags SEO osCommerce

    I received an email asking me to take a look at some code contributed to osCommerce called Header Tags SEO. I did take a look and intrigued at the output I decided to install it on a vanilla install of osCommerce. I was installing on an unmodified version of osCommerce. Most sites would not be and perhaps would not find the install to be a simple task.

    Luckily (?) there is a paid option for install and as the general feeling is that this contributed code is much needed then one might pay without questioning the benefits. So what are the benefits of Header Tags SEO ? A standard version of oscommerce comes with no tags installed. Some are needed. This contribution outputs the following >

    <title>Default title - Shop Home Page</title> <meta name="Description" content="Default description - Home page meta description snippet. This page allows the setting up of all of the pages in a shop. In order for this section to work on a page you must do this." > <meta name="Keywords" content="Default Keywords , _font color="#f0000"__b_osCommerce 2.2-MS2_/b__/font_Once that code has been added, the following options will allow for setting it up and applying whatever options are applicable to it." > <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-GB" > <meta name="googlebot" content="all" > <meta name="robots" content="noodp" > <meta name="slurp" content="noydir" > <meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" > <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" > <meta name="no-email-collection" value="http://canig.com/" > <meta name="Reply-to" content="email@canig.com"> <link rel="canonical" href="http://canig.com//" > <!-- EOF: Header Tags SEO Generated Meta Tags -->
    mmm and users are installing this on their sites in the belief it will advance them in Google rankings ?

     Let us not think seriously that users are installing this to advance in any search engine other than Google. » <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-GB" > Google does not use language tags to define language.
    This is duff. » <meta name="googlebot" content="all" > This is the default setting.
    This is duff. » <meta name="robots" content="noodp" > <meta name="slurp" content="noydir" > Whilst these can be valid you certainly do not need to install Header Tags SEO to include these lines in your home page content.>
    This is nothing.  » <meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" >
    This is duff. » <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" > This is the default setting.
    This is duff. » <meta name="no-email-collection" value="http://canig.com/" > What ?

      » <link rel="canonical" href="http://canig.com//" > Canonical tag, incorrect.

     That the canonical tags are not good are acknowledged in various places on the oscommerce forums eg http://forums.oscommerce.com/topic/298099-header-tags-seo/page__st__4480 http://forums.oscommerce.com/topic/298099-header-tags-seo/page__st__5000

    Don't install anything with incorrect canonical tags.

    They are very powerful and unless set 100% correctly you can cause more harm than good. In this instance with a code history of faults I would not touch at all at any time in the future. Any author's statement claiming resolution should be treated with caution if it seems that many have been allowed to install incorrect canonical tags on their sites for months with no recall or serious alerts.

     * Example shown is one instance of incorrect canonical tag usage. 3 more spotted. » <meta name="Description" content=" The description meta tag is not used by Google for ranking purposes. It can be good to have an enticing snippet in the search results. » <meta name="Keywords" The keyword meta tag is not used by Google for ranking purposes. » <title>Default title - Shop Home Page</title> Wayhey - A unique title is a good idea for ranking purposes ! 

    This contribution encourages users to fill their header tags with the information already on the site, which is probably good that the page detail reflects the page content but to achieve this > Title Description You do not need to install Header Tags SEO contribution and if you do install Header Tags SEO then you must be sure not to 'buy into' the general feeling that this installation is a required one for your online store.

    It is not. This review does not even cover the strange elements included of 'silo control' box or a column box that inexplicably redraws your already on page product description and features the same link to the page you are now.

    What is remarkable further is that it seems like a whole mini-industry has grown around companies offering the installation of this code and all with the same inference that this is the magical panacea a store needs.

    I am led to believe there has been some mild challenges to the value in the past but to no effect. It is the same as all junky low-level crap 'seo' of which the internet is abundant with - fighting against it is futile whilst the hope that it is a 'cure-all' is present.

    Your site hopefully, would be as unique as you and the best approach would be to look at your products and categories and see how best you can deal with them. It could be as simple as echoing existing data for the page title and description and so on. Either way, be very wary of installing something that purports to offer so much by implication yet actually does little. osCommerce and SEO

    Looking around since then in the forum at general seo suggestions given to new owners of osCommerce based sites, I dont see that much which would actually impact in a positive way and enhance an online store in Google's results. Installing any contribution, even a good one.. will not help your site if your contents are very poor. Duplicated product descriptions downloaded from manufacturers feeds will need alot of work and effort to give Google a reason to index and rank them highly and most of that work will centre around making your contents a unique and valuable source for users to find in their search results.

    If you are having problem with indexing and ranking for your site, ask in Google's webmaster forum for independent, qualified input.

     (Update 23rd Nov 2010) Oscommerce SEO basics


    » Secure your site.
      » Set the preferred domain in webmaster tools to either www or non-www
      » Avoid Header Tags SEO as a contribution.
      » Look for either a trusted canonical tag add-on to install or get one built that you can trust yourself.
      » Look for either a trusted friendly url rewriter script to install or - as above get one built that you can trust yourself.
      » Page titles. Look for a light easy script that will echo your product/category details as page titles.
      » Meta Descriptions. As above, same as the page titles. (Also note: Google will build search snippets to match the query searched)
      » Do not use currency as an option on your site without canonical tags or look to either block Google from seeing the currencies or set them as parameters in webmaster tools.
      » Languages - If offering a site in different languages and looking to rank bilingually, create new sites in directories, folders, sub domains or separate domains and avoid offering the language selection on the oscommerce url parameters.
      » Set pages like advanced search results, tell a friend and empty reviews to noindex. (Possibly delete tell a friend if not secured from email spammers)
      » Set pages with no content to return correct 404 responses instead of 200 okay responses. » Ensure that your most important aspect - content - is fantastic enough to be an asset in the search results which Google would love to return high to searchers. Duplicated drop-shipper/manufacturers feeds are not good for high scores in Google if you see many other sites with the same content. » Describe all your products in your own words and try to avoid simply swapping words around from existing indexed feeds or content. » Upload a sitemap to Google via webmaster tools and ensure you have email forwarding from Webmaster Tools set so that you can be alerted of any important messages.
     » Promote your site well and let others know you are in business.

    Spammed By Fiona Hudson Kelly

    After being spammed for what seems a lifetime by Fiona Hudson-Kelly "award winning entrepreneur" I thought I would take a look to see what she had to offer. I mean, who was I to ignore anything that could enhance my limited knowledge.

    It is remarkable what I found and even more of note is that this appears to be in some way funded by taxpayers via business link funding. (By taxpayers = myself and like minded people)

    Have a gasp in amazement at this 'presentation' on You Tube explaining to the uneducated 'Google Juice' It is also linked on the scam site Fiona Hudson-Kelly Scam

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYezTkkSo1k

    For those that simply cant watch, here is a transcript :
    Google Juice = SEO

    All you have to do is find out what your customers type into Google to find you - do you think you can do that ?

    Put yourself in customers shoes. So for example Sue. Sue publishes books - she doesn't publish just any book, she is not your average publisher, she is a fantastic publisher you know why, she does not a one-size fits all, she figures out what the customers want and then she gives them an appropriate solution

    All Sue's got to do to get the magic glass of Google juice is figure out what people are going to type in to find a great publisher like Sue

    So Richard, what would you type in if you were looking to get a book published on Rugby ?

    Book Publishers ? (Audience)

    What you would actually type in is something like ' I want to write a book or I want to an Author ' You probably won't think about 'I want to get published'

    So the people typing into Google to find Sue will be 'I want to write a book' Now all Sue's got to do once she understands what customers are writing into Google is ensure that she has got that splattered everywhere on her website.

    How does Google figure out who to put at the top of the search list - does anyone know.

    Frequency the keywords are used on the site, number of times site visited (Audience)- what else

    Links (Audience) - which is the number of times the website is visited

    Well, it is really interesting Sue cause the truth is that no knows - Google don't know how they do it !!

    No one person in Google knows how to do it.

    It is split across the company so no one person knows and to make it more complex they change it constantly so different things that they do affect your ranking.

    What we do know is what Steven said - the two things that do work is the frequency it is used on your pages and the number of clicks that you get so if you can figure out those two things you would have the magic glass of Google juice.

    How do we get the frequency of the words across the website, well this is really complicated so you need to take your pads out, your calculators out, your computers out and write this down:

    Are you ready for this ?

    What you have to is get your keywords splattered all over your website is - "type it in."

    If 'I want to write a book' are Sue's keywords the website should be called 'Iwanttowriteabook.com' the first banner on her website should be 'I want to write a book' and the first title should be 'I want to write a book' and to get click thrus to her website all she has got to do is write articles on 'I want to write a book' and include keywords and then publish her article anywhere and everywhere that she can - to lots of websites where you can upload your article to have it published, lots of friends, family networking, where you can publish your article on their site too and as they are reading Sue's article they click through to her website giving her Google juice.

    So what I have shared with you is the ultimate secret in the closet of how to not be lonely and drive traffic to finding you so if you want this magic juice what I would like you to commit to is to go out and find out what keywords your customers are using.
    Is it me or did that just read like a mile of total bollocks ?

    I would not know where to begin with a dissection with the aims of correction. It is beyond reasonable comment. Please, if you have heard that somewhere or paid money to hear it you would be best to disregard all aspects.

    I will investigate more regarding the business link connection and the funding as I dont believe that 1. People should pay £1000 to hear crap like this. 2. That it should not be promoted with any Business Link association.

    And I also think that Trading Standards should take a close look at this under the Trades Description Act. Obviously Fiona is no marketing guru and plainly has no knowledge of any elements of Google, so apart from a some tea and biscuits what is on offer to justify the expense to the taxpayer ?

    It is further noted that her constant marketing methods have been troubling others. Here is the fcablog who have documented other blog posts regarding this spammed by Fiona Hudson Kelly and you can find even more with a quick search of twitter http://twitter.com/#search?q=fhudsonkelly


    Respammed by Fiona Hudson Kelly

    Spammed again. That she is aware of the onslaught of complaints, yet still continues the spam is remarkable for one funded by taxpayers.

    On twitter, the invite is there for all "just updated my blog to discuss social media, go to my web site "

    Those with prior knowledge of Fiona Hudson Kelly will be unsurprised to find a weak, uninsipriring ramble regarding nothing in particular.
    Which social media should you engage in? I am often asked this question and I advise my clients to check out what their competitors and clients are doing in the mainstream social media sites before embarking on their social media strategy.
    » Nice introduction. I am often asked too about what tactics I engage in. I rarely mention my spam activities and tend to divert the conversation away and suggest that instead of asking me it would be better to check out direct competitors and see what they are doing.  Simple.
    To my mind Facebook has a track record of Business to Consumer engagement; take a look at the Cadbury Diary Milk page for a quick look at how effective this social media can be for B2C. If possible incentivize Facebook users to interact with you through your web site by directing them back to useful articles you have published.
    » When asked how to use Facebook for marketing, I often have the same retort - 'Get Facebook users to visit your site by posting stuff they might be interested in'
    Linked In is great for connecting to other professionals, keeping in touch with people you have met at networking events and finding key contact information in companies you would otherwise find difficult to engage with. Join groups with Linked In and you will soon get connected with like minded people.
    » When challenged as to the best way to met others with the same business interests, this is also normally my answer. Use linked In.
    I’ll leave Twitter for my next post – meanwhile do let me know how you are using Twitter within your marketing strategy.
    » There will be many who will wait with interest to hear about how you have tamed twitter into becoming a powerful marketing tool.

    In all, I could probably condense the 'discussion on social media' into an easier to understand segment >
    • Check out your competitors
    • Get Facebook users to visit your site
    • Meet others via Linked in
    Wait - you could charge people £1000's to hear that and sell yourself as the next big marketing expert. Oh what - you already have ?

    For your next blog post idea. I will save the trouble of thought. A good hookable article would be something like 'What is your online business strategy?'

    And the condensed version, if the above is anything to judge from would be as follows :
    • Check out your competitors
    • Ensure your site has Google juice (see above)
    • Get your users to buy stuff

    Fiona Hudson Kelly has emailed the Junk Site

    Contents of the email are as follows :
    Further to your very public comments of me I assume you would like to be removed from our mailing list?

    Please supply your email details that we have been using and I will remove them immediately.
    In response :

    Please assume nothing.

    You assumed incorrectly in the first instance that I would be interested in your junk mail.

    As others have pointed out to you along the same lines before, simply removing the names of users who make public comment does not solve your issue and nor does it make your spam mailing list valid. The correct solution would be to cease the spam campaign and not try and plaster over it.

    Removing my details at this point may also mean that I miss out on some more golden nuggets from you that are worthy of further comment.


    Re-re-spammed By Fiona Hudson Kelly

    29th September and new spam from the elite email marketing guru - Fiona Hudson Kelly.

    Do you get one ? Did you know there is still some taxpayers money left in the pot which she needs to claim. Can anyone help her get her hands on this money ? All you have to do is sign up for the internet marketing workshop detailed below.
    There is still some funding available for eligible companies to claim a training grant to cover the cost of attending our one day internet marketing workshop.

    Internet marketing helps you reach more potential clients quickly, easily with very little cost.

    Find out how to use e-mail marketing where you can see who is opening your e-mails, reading them and then visiting your web site using free software such as mail chimp.

    Discover how to make your web site more interesting and improve your rankings in the search engines to get found by more people looking for the things you do.

    The one day marketing workshops are delivered personally by award winning Business Woman Fiona Hudson Kelly in very small groups of 10 or less for small company directors.

    If you employ more than 5 people and haven’t had the Leadership Funding Grant, why not go to our workshop calendar to see if there is a date and location that suits you to register your interest?
    Okay, you may have to sit through an excruciatingly painful session whilst Fiona explains to you about 'google juice' and successful email marketing but it would be best in the long run for everyone concerned if all seats were filled so as to deplete the government funds allocated for this speedily.

    Once the funds run out then I imagine she would have to revert to signing on for standard taxpayer benefits instead of the advanced high-income benefits currently being enjoyed.