An Unfair Content related penalty :(
-
Hi Guys,
Google.com.au
website: http://partysuppliesnow.com.au/We had a massive drop in search queries in WMT around the 11th of september this year, I investigated and it seemed as though there were no updates around this time.
Our site is only receiving branded search now - and after investigating i am led to believe that Google has mistakingly affected our website in the panda algorithm. There are no manual penalties applies on this site as confirmed by WMT.
Our product descriptions are pretty much all unique but i have noticed that when typing a portion of text from these pages into google search using quotation marks, shopping affiliate sites which we use are being displayed first and our page no where to be seen or last in the results. This leads me to believe that Google thinks we have scraped the content from these sites when in actual fact they have from us. We also have G+ authorship setup.
Typing a products full name into Google (tried a handful) our site is not in the top 100 or 200 at times, i think this further clarifies that we are penalised.
We would really appreciate some opinions on this. Any course of actions would be great. We don't particularly want to invest in writing content again.
From our point of view it looks like Google is stopping our site from ranking because it's getting mixed up with who the originator for our content is.
Thanks and really appreciate it.
-
Hey Jarrod,
I'm afraid there isn't anything you can actually do to tell Google you are the original author of your content, other than the tips Remus mentioned.
However, there is a service that you can use to help you identify sites that are duplicating your content. It's called Copysentry and it automatically scans the web to check for content duplication. You could use this, in conjunction with DMCA take down requests (as mentioned in Remus's post) to help to defend against this in future.
-
Hi guys,
Thank you all, for your kind advices. We have planned to re-write our content (product descriptions). Now, we will write 2 types of descriptions. 1 for our site and 1 for our affiliates (who promote our products). We hope Google won't confuse it this time.
As we are going to write the content again. I am still afraid, it could be stolen again. So, is there a way that we could tell Google that we are the originator of this new content???
If there isn't any solution, I think, we would lose our ranking again. Right??? I don't wanna lose our efforts again. So, can you suggest any concrete solution???
thanks again guys
Jarrod -
Our product descriptions are pretty much all unique but i have noticed that when typing a portion of text from these pages into google search using quotation marks, shopping affiliate sites which we use are being displayed first and our page no where to be seen or last in the results.
I saw the same thing. There is your problem.
This leads me to believe that Google thinks we have scraped the content from these sites when in actual fact they have from us. We also have G+ authorship setup.
Although google says that they are "pretty good" at attributing content to the creator the truth is that the suck at it.
Lots of people have this problem. Guard your content so it doesn't get out to affiliates and shopping engines. This means strongly enforced rules for your affiliates and blocking crawlers from your site - but allowing google in.
-
In addition going forward you should always ensure you have two types of content. A set of content you use on your site, and another set of content that you supply to affiliate sites and any other sites you supply products too.
I know this isn't much help now, but its something you should do in future to prevent such issues.
-
Hi Jarrod,
You are in a very complicated situation. I hope you can find a solution.
This video posted by Matt Cutts a wile ago might help you with a few additional tips:
How can I make sure that Google knows my content is original?
- DMCA request: http://www.google.com/dmca.html
- Google News source attribution metatags: link here
- Or even spam report like Matt Cutts suggests.
-
Hi Jarrod,
The first thing I noticed, a lot of pages in your site don't contain a rel=canonical tag. For example, this one: http://www.partysuppliesnow.com.au/view-products/96/LED-Furniture
We know that Google is not particularly good at identifying the original source of a content. So, you can report the sites that scraped your content to Google (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en). That'll let Google know about the issue and hopefully lift the penalty off your site and penalize the other site.
Another issue could be the Authorship setup on product pages. It's considered as Authorship abuse. Generally, you don't want to link a Google+ profile with a site's homepage and other generic pages.
I've had some experience with Panda. I can say no-indexing is very effective in fighting Panda. If you know about a significant number of low-quality pages in your site, that you wouldn't prefer to open as a searcher, you should add a meta no-index tag in the section of those pages. It takes some time to get out of the Panda box.
Regards,
Rohit
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Content From API - Remove or to Redirect ?
Hi Guys,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaddyM556
I am working on a site at the moment,
Previous developer used a API to pull in HealthCare content (HSE) .
So the API basically generates landing pages within the site, and generates the content.
To date it has over 2k in pages being generated.
Some actually rank organically and some don't. New site being launch: So a new site is being launched & the "health advice" where this content used to live be not included in the new site. So this content will not have a place to be displayed. My Query: Would you allow the old content die off in the migration process & just become 404's
Or
Would you 301 redirect the all or only ranking pages to the homepage ? Other considerations, site will be moved to https:// so site will be submitted to search console & re-indexed by Google. Would love to hear if anyone had similar situation or suggestions.
Best Regards
Pat0 -
Google related searches
Hello, Are the related searches, the words that I should use when writing my content. For ex : when I type online spreadsheet in google, in the related searches it list online spreadsheet open source and spreasheet download. Does it means that when writing content I should included those terms in order to be relevant on the keyword online spreadsheet ? because they are considered closely related by google ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
No content using Fetch
Wooah, this one makes me feel a bit nervous. The cache version of the site homepage shows all the text, but I understand that is the html code constructed by the browser. So I get that. If I Google some of the content it is there in the index and the cache version is yesterday. If I Fetch and Render in GWT then none of the content is available in the preview - neither Googlebot or visitor view. The whole preview is just the menu, a holding image for a video and a tag line for it. There are no reports of blocked resources apart from a Wistia URL. How can I decipher what is blocking Google if it does not report any problems? The CSS is visible for reference to, for example, <section class="text-within-lines big-text narrow"> class="data"> some content... Ranking is a real issue, in part by a poorly functioning main menu. But i'm really concerned with what is happening with the render.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Demoting a URL (not-WMT Related)
I have a pharmaceutical brand that treats two diseases, but wants to primarily promote one. We want searches for "brand dosing" to go to Side A, but currently "brand dosing" goes to Side B. BUT, I want "brand dosing Side B" to still show up in organic search, so a noindex on Side B, or canonicalization of Side A, won't work. Essentially, I want any searches that are not specific to a disease treatment to go to Side A, and then specific Side B related searches, go to Side B. Because this is a client paying me to optimize their site, I obviously want to optimize their whole site, so only optimizing Side A, or unoptimizing Side B, aren't solutions I want to employ. I don't think a solution exists, but I figured my fellow Mozers would know best. Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GTO_Pharma_SEO0 -
WhoIs penalty
Does anyone know if it's possible to get a penalty on WHOIS data and a shared IP address? We had some bad SEO done (And at ranking demolished) on one of our company websites which has the same WHOIS data and is on the same IP address as another side which is just seems to have taken a knock. Is it possible Google could have associated both and penalised accordingly?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Interlinking from unique content page to limited content page
I have a page (page 1) with a lot of unique content which may rank for "Example for sale". On this page I Interlink to a page (page 2) with very limited unique content, but a page I believe is better for the user with anchor "See all Example for sale". In other words, the 1st page is more like a guide with items for sale mixed, whereas the 2nd page is purely a "for sale" page with almost no unique content, but very engaging for users. Questions: Is it risky that I interlink with "Example for sale" to a page with limited unique content, as I risk not being able to rank for either of these 2 pages Would it make sense to "no index, follow" page 2 as there is limited unique content, and is actually a page that exist across the web on other websites in different formats (it is real estate MLS listings), but I can still keep the "Example for sale" link leading to page 2 without risking losing ranking of page 1 for "Example for sale"keyword phrase I am basically trying to work out best solution to rank for "Keyword for sale" and dilemma is page 2 is best for users, but is not a very unique page and page 2 is very unique and OK for users but mixed up writing, pictures and more with properties for sale.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0