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
-
Will I be flagged for duplicate content by Google?
Hi Moz community, Had a question regarding duplicate content that I can't seem to find the answer to on Google. My agency is working on a large number of franchisee websites (over 40) for one client, a print franchise, that wants a refresh of new copy and SEO. Each print shop has their own 'microsite', though all services and products are the same, the only difference being the location. Each microsite has its own unique domain. To avoid writing the same content over and over in 40+ variations, would all the websites be flagged by Google for duplicate content if we were to use the same base copy, with the only changes being to the store locations (i.e. where we mention Toronto print shop on one site may change to Kelowna print shop on another)? Since the print franchise owns all the domains, I'm wondering if that would be a problem since the sites aren't really competing with one another. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Are feeds bad for duplicate content?
One of my clients has been invited to feature his blog posts here https://app.mindsettlers.com/. Here is an example of what his author page would look like: https://app.mindsettlers.com/author/6rs0WXbbqwqsgEO0sWuIQU. I like that he would get the exposure however I am concerned about duplicate content with the feed. If he has a canonical tag on each blog post to itself, would that be sufficient for the search engines? Is there something else that could be done? Or should he decline? Would love your thoughts! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cindyt-17038
Cindy T.0 -
Starting over after a Penguin Penalty
Hi, Has anyone tried starting a new domain after being hit with a Penguin penalty? I'm considering the approach outlined here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2384644/can-you-safely-redirect-users-from-a-penguin-hit-site-to-a-new-domain. In a nutshell, de-index the OLD site completely via Google's Removal Tool, and then relaunch old content under new domain. This seems to have merit, unless Google keeps a hidden cache of content (or uses other sources like Wayback Machine). My concern is doing the above listed approach, but Google still passes the old links to the new domain. We have great content, but too much spam (despite me removing a lot of the links + disavow). Any feedback based on experience would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14401 -
Penalties for duplicate content
Hello!We have a website with various city tours and activities listed on a single page (http://vaiduokliai.lt/). The list changes accordingly depending on filtering (birthday in Vilnius, bachelor party in Kaunas, etc.). The URL doesn't change. Content changes dynamically. We need to make URL visible for each category, then optimize it for different keywords (for example city tours in Vilnius for a list of tours and activities in Vilnius with appropriate URL /tours-in-Vilnius).The problem is that activities overlap very often in different categories, so there will be a lot of duplicate content on different pages. In such case, how severe penalty could be for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpuzakov0 -
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 -
Is This Considered Duplicate Content?
My site has entered SEO hell and I am not sure how to fix it. Up until 18 months ago I had tremendous success on Google and Bing and now my website appears below my Facebook page for the term "Direct Mail Raleigh." What makes it even more frustrating is my competitors have done no SEO and they are dominating this keyword. I thought that the issue was due to harmful inbound links and two months ago I disavowed ones that were clearly spam. Somehow my site has actually gone down! I have a blog that I have updated infrequently and I do not know if it I am getting punished for duplicate content. On Google Webmaster Tools it says I have 279 crawled and indexed pages. Yesterday when I ran the MOZ crawl check I was amazed to find 1150 different webpages on my site. Despite the fact that it does not appear on the webmaster tools I have three different webpages due to the format that the Wordpress blog was created: "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/part2leadershi/", "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/page/91/" and "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/category/competent-leadership/page/3/" What does not make sense to me is why Google only indexed 279 webpages AND why MOZ did not identify these three webpages as duplicate content with the Crawl Test Tool. Does anyone have any ideas? Would it be as easy as creating a massive robot.txt file and just putting 2 of the 3 URLs in that file? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
Which duplicate content should I remove?
I have duplicate content and am trying to figure out which URL to remove. What should I take into consideration? Authority? How close to the root the page is? How clear the path is? Would appreciate your help! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Duplicate Content Through Sorting
I have a website that sells images. When you search you're given a page like this: http://www.andertoons.com/search-cartoons/santa/ I also give users the option to resort results by date, views and rating like this: http://www.andertoons.com/search-cartoons/santa/byrating/ I've seen in SEOmoz that Google might see these as duplicate content, but it's a feature I think is useful. How should I address this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andertoons0