What´s the penalization extent applied by Google?
-
Hi!
I still don´t get this web site penalization applied by Google due to duplicate content.
My site has many of pages that were among the first positions for top keywords (A Photoshop web site).
Those pages were linked by sites like LifeHacker, BoingBoing, Microsiervos, SmashingMagazine, John Nack, and many other well known blogs.
After mid February 2012 everything went down the drain. I lost half of my traffic and my well ranked pages are now almost nowhere to be found.
I have plenty of ads in some pages of my site, and duplicate content (amazon product description only) in other pages of my site.
So, the good quality pages my site has, are no longer considered as good quality just because I have some duplicate content or ad filled pages?
I´m not complaining. I´m trying to understand this.
Google needs to serve good information to their visitors. But since they found some trash in my site, they decide to remove both the trash and the good information from the search engine?
That doesn´t sound logical to me. Why don´t they just remove the trash and leave the good content?
Of course, I understand that information is added everyday and some may come up with something better than mine, but dropping 40 or more places in the ranking sounds more like a penalty to me.
Again, I´m not complaining (although it sounds like I am!), just want to understand the reasons behind this.
Thanks,
Enrique
-
Yes, thanks Anthony. I will post back as soon (soon..?) as I find something.
Enrique
-
sometimes what you call natural google calls spammy or unnatural. Just sayin. Good luck. Post back with your findings. Im interested to see how things work out for you. Best regards.
-
Yes, thanks, I will check that. I was planning to add nofollow to the amazon pages, I will also check the anchors, but since they are all natural, any change I make will look artificial.
Enrique
-
Have you tried removing the amazon data feed from those pages? Just to see if that's is in fact what is impacting your rankings? What about the thousands of natural links pointing to your site? Are they all using varied anchor text or is it just five for your five main pages? If just five that could also be affecting your ranking.
-
Yes, I know that's the thing to do, but you must agree with me that it's something unnatural.
I have thousands of incoming links, and only exchanged or asked for less than 20 of those. The rest are natural. If I spend time analyzing links it would be something absolutely artificial.
The same goes with quality pages. Let's say that I have four or five pages that are the most referenced in my industry (just and example, of course). Visitors that read those pages get really good, top class information. But I have an Amazon datafeed in my site.
Suddenly, the information of those top quality pages are hidden from search results in Google because my site has an Amazon datafeed?
I know it's a simplistic example, but it can be translated as:
"A good article isn't good anymore just because of a site penalty"
It seems that Google is saying something like "Hey, you can't read this amazing article because it is from a site has lots of junk. So suck it up and read this article of a lesser quality but from from a pristine site!"
It is not about my site anymore, but about trying to understand the concept of it all. And of course it is an extreme example, but I think it is relevant.
-
No, google does care about good quality pages. Its just if you throw in a bunch of bad pages they dilute the goodness of your good pages. Once you clean yp duplicate content then i would suggest running a report on your inbound links. Check to see if your anchor text is spammy, or concentrating on only a few choice keywords. When it comes to link building you want to spread out the keywords to there isn't one or two money keywords banking on the anchor text.
Also, I would remove any inbound links from questionable directories. Once you do that I wold think you should see some significant gains in rankings.
-
Thanks! So it is clear that Google doesn´t care about single, good quality, pages with good quality links.
A good quality page needs a quality site to back it up.
Is that the criteria?
It sounds reasonable to me, but very difficult to repair.
Just for the records, my site isn´t trash or low quality, but it is an old site and has some quirks from old times: lots of directory entries with little content and datafeeds that used to work very well some years ago.
-
The trash part of your site affects the site as a whole, not specifically just the trash parts. If they did just that, then you would still benefit from using trash to promote your good pages.
Now from what I understand about penalties, there is a manual penalty and an algorythm or natural penalty.
The algo penalty can be easily fixed by addressing your penalty issue, which would be duplicate content. Clean up all duplicate content and you will be on your way to flying under the penalty radar so to speak. However, you will still need to add more quality content to make up for the removed or cleaned up duplicate content.
Once that takes place you should notice your ranking drop stabilize, and over time begin the crawl back up. This would be a good time to implement other strategies like social media and quality link building.
Now if its a manual penalty, then you need to clean up all duplicate content and ask for a manual review, and pray. Manual penalties are heard to overcome and will require much more work. Sometimes its best to just start with a new domain from scratch.
Hope this helps some.
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
-
Snippet showed in google search is not from metaDescription
This is my page https://www.collegehippo.com/graduate-school/programs/top-ranked-masters-degree-museum-museology-and-curatorial-studies The metaDescription is | |
On-Page Optimization | | etattva
| name="description" content="Master's degree in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is offered by 49 American universities. New York University had highest number of international students receiving a Master's degree. Johns Hopkins University had the most women graduates in this program. Job outlook for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than average for all occupations. Median pay for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies in 2018 was $53,360. The number of jobs were 11170. Check out best universities offering online Master's program in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies "/> |
| | | But when I see the page in google search results for (museum studies graduate programs), This is how it appears in the search results. It is showing the breadcrumbs from the page. I am not sure why is google is treating the page like this. It was not like that 5 months back. Nothing much changed in page and google is displaying the page content like this . How can I fix this?0 -
Star rating in Google snippet
I have implemented a star rating from jetpack on my website. But google stubbornly refuses to display stars in the snippet. 2 months have already passed. Maybe I did something wrong? I must say that I did not cheat artificially. https://exoticfonts.com/discord-fonts-generator/
On-Page Optimization | | WayneM.0 -
Content on product category pages - does Google care?
Hi All, I've always been unsure about the importance of content on product category pages. Nobody reads it. If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc. On virtually any ecommerce site, category pages have a paragraph or two of total bla-bla. Does this have any impact on search rankings? More specifically, will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"? Or, will it realize that the searcher intent on this keyword is really just to see a list of chairs, and ignore this content - or at least downplay its importance? WDTY?
On-Page Optimization | | BarryBuckman0 -
Google Increases Titles and Meta Descriptions Length
So, we now know that Google are changing the Title and Meta Desc length limits to 70 and 200 respectively. Does this mean we all need to jump to immediate attention and modify all our current pages OR, do we wait?
On-Page Optimization | | dynamyt1000 -
Hi.. Can a E-commerce site have a Google Authorship.
Hi Can a E-commerce site have a Google Authorship, and if yes i have learned google requires a face for Google Authorship, as they are applying Facial recognition with the authorship. If So, how can an e-commerce website have an individual's face. ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0 -
How to design a site map page for users (not for Google)
I would like to design a site map for my visitors so they can have a quick view on the whole content of the website. 2 questions : 1 - is this kind of site map can help in terms of SEO ? 2 - if so, what are the best practices to design it ? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | betadvisor0 -
Whats the point of Geo Tagging?
Hi from quaint & folksy Wetherby Town UK... Ok so Geo tagging is easy to apply http://www.geo-tag.de/generator/en.html but whats the big benefit? & can any moz guest show me a site that has Geo Tagging and what visible benefits it holds. I mean does a flashing compass or something appear in the serps? Any insights welcome 🙂 p.s No theory answers just some examples woukd be good...
On-Page Optimization | | Nightwing0 -
Does google treat all urls equal?
Sorry for the lame title, i couldn't think of a better one. I want to know if google treats this: http://www.domain.com/products/some-product-name the same as it would treat: http://www.domain.com/?products=some-product-name if not, could you tell me the differences?
On-Page Optimization | | adriandg0