I'm getting grey bar for syndic8.com. it was PR7 or 8 the other day when I checked it out. I also checked a few feed pages that had PR that I know of. They are showing as PR0 now!
Ouch: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-05-06-n55.html Looks like their adsense account was banned as well!
Hmph. I just got 5 negative rep points because I posted this in the wrong forum!?! Shouldn't this be in the google forum, since it's a discussion about google banning the biggest syndicated news site on the web? edit... (I think it was 5. I could have sworn I had 88 points, now I have 83).
Well I thought it made very interesting reading, especially as I know someone doing something very similiar. I liked the article, google ban a website then surely news of that should go in the google forum?
OK... now that I'm done whining... Apparently wordpress had a similar problem with getting caught spamming. Here's the official statement from them: http://photomatt.net/2005/04/01/a-response/ And a statement from the "advertiser" http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/04/01/wordpres.shtml And here's a blog entry with a response from the guy who runs syndic8: http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/05/04/syndic8s.shtml Basically, they had a bunch of text links on their home page which let to a bunch of "spammy pages" - things like mortgage, etc. The text links were not hidden, like the Wordpress fiasco, they were out in plain site. They were making cash on adsense. Apparently google caught wind of it and gave them the boot. They are no longer indexed. It's a pretty crazy power that google wields. This website may have just been crushed. oh... and p.s. can someone please move this discussion into an appropriate thread. It really doesn't belong in "website reviews"
I think there are several 'high end' sites banned by Google last few weeks. I feel this has very high news value for Google SEO.
I see the subdomains are still carrying AdSense though - maybe it would be more of a punishment to close the AdSense account, or put a freeze on any clicks coming from those subdomains?
That's what I call "Brazen." Maybe those guys read that "Wired News" article that claimed, "Greg Boser manipulates search engines for a living, and there's little the Googles of the world can do about it", and figured they could too.
First of all, this should be in the google category. Whomever is acting as the forum police that feels it necessary to move a thread and then give negative rep deserves to be keel hauled for being so arrogant and narrow minded. (I'm sure I'll get the red rep for that one shortly) nevetS, I gave you some positive rep for this thread, btw. I, for one, am glad that google is deindexing these kinds of sites. I just wish they were more proactive about se spam and AS abuse.
If you were the owner of Syndic8 what would you do to go about rectifying the situation? Remove the offending pages obviously, ensure it's nice and whiter than white...then what? Magically re-appear?
Everyone desrves a second chance. Funny that "big guns" like syndic8 get a second chance when little guns have their sites dropped or PR zerod out with no clue as to why and no recourse to clean up. Syndic8 has their pr back and are showing adsense now. It seems they apologized, kissed and made up with Google. I feel bad for the guy. His site is a valuable resource and deserves to be in Google index. I didn't see what they had done with my own eyes, but I guess they did more than simply post spammy text links... they had the advertisers content/articles hosted on their own domain (sub-domains) of syndic8. That may be crossing the line, but hey - people make mistakes and deserve a second chance. All people do, not just big guns.