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