Google's gone too Far

No, but when he gave us that article he told us it was not published elsewhere -- we told him we only accept original content -- obviously I should have checked but i have not had that problem with him before.

I took the post down

 

Yeah.. First click on your site http://www.familiesonlinemagazine.com/life-style/holidays/mothersday/667-happy-mothers-day.html and it is an empty page with 3 links, if you don't consider that thin content I don't know what to tell you... I'm not exactly a Google lover but in this case I'm on their side...

 

It goes links to 3 of our pages with Mother's day content -- it's not the problem anyway

 

If you know that you were hit by a thin content penalty, then you are one step ahead right there. Usually, they won't tell you the issue.

There are some programs out there that will help you detect thin content pages. SEO Powersuite, the Website Auditor module for one.

The software will spider your website and analyze different elements. One element is the size of the text or page/word count. You can use this to find all the pages with a low amount of content. Then noindex those thin pages until you can fix them by adding additional content. I would try to make all pages at least 300 words or noindex it.

 

no but he was told we only accept unique content when he submitted, we haven't has this problem with him before, I guess i should have checked more. anyways the article was taken down and Google told me what they are penalizing us for see below.

 

Thanks, but Google was clear they want the pages taken down, but since i don't know which authors were affiliated with
bloggerlinkup, and we have used quite few freelancers over 11 years -- very tough to determine which articles Google doesn't like and balance that against our readers needs. We receive article submissions daily. I'll check out the software you mentioned, maybe it can help me identify the authors.

I think it's a abuse of power for Google to decide certain writers are "bad" and therefore your site is "bad". I don't see how a publisher can be responsible for what writers do on other sites or in other publications. Freelancer writers work for a lot of different publications with a lot of different topics, guidelines and requirements. The example, they gave me showed SEO was mentioned in the writer's bio. I thought that a writer who understands SEO would do a better job on web articles and that it would be more likely to be found by search engines, and that only if they did "black hat seo" it was a problem.

We can only be responsible for what we publish. Being a woman's magazine which competes with other women's publications, quite a bit our content is "light" - home and garden, interior design, fashion, etc.. or could be described as "thin content". Concerning length of articles the majority of our readers do so on mobile phones, long content is not good for small screens - bullet points, short paragraphs work best and score the highest even on Google's page speed and mobile evaluator. Seems no way to win here. We need to do what's best for our readers.

 

That is Google. That is a company. If you don't like it - you can forget about it and make your business. What is wrong with that?
I don`t think that trying to change something is the best way out in this situation. Because we are playing on their field. And they make the rules. Everything is naturally.

It's like to make a petition to God for creation death. Does it make sense?

 

The petition has been an epic fail --- only got 18 signatures!

 

Writing a successful petition takes some time and effort. Good English also helps (i.e., correcting words like "can't not" instead of cannot, and "principal" instead of principle). You may want to consult a professional writer and even a lawyer when drafting a petition. They have tried methods to describe your grievances that attract attention.

FYI, there is a class-action antitrust lawsuit against Google filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the law firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP that may offer you some clues:
http://buysell-browse.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=258897

 

WTF has this got to do with the issue of this thread? The class action is about the google use of the search engine in devices such as the android! Epic fail.

 

The problem with this thread is the petition itself. Have you read it? Besides the quality of the writing, it suffers from logic flaws (i.e., asking that the Google search engine "be classified as a public utility and regulated as such"). Unlike natural gas, electricity, telephone, water, steam and hydraulic power companies (see the list of public utilities on Wikipedia), the Internet itself is not considered a public utility.

This is why you should study what that class action suit is about, learn from those guys, and try to come up with something that may hold water in your case. But I presume that conducting research is way above Agent000's pay grade...

 

They do not have anything remotely close to being near a class action. Their site sucks. Google treated it appropriately.

 

Just clicking at random through your menu and I landed on this link:
familiesonlinemagazine.com/home-improvement/
got this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /home/famili88/public_html/home-improvement/index.php on line 152

I did not find the error on other links that I clicked on at random, but still, there might be some serious issues that are impacting on a large % of your site from displaying properly. You need to look into fixing this before you file a re-consideration request.

Another thing I noticed, is you have too many ads. While your penalty is for "thin content", google also has penalties for having too many ads above the fold. 4 ads per page is simply excessive. Reducing the number of ads wont help you with your current dilema, but will be a step in the right direction.

From the articles and videos I have seen, thin content generally refers to low quality, and or non-original content found in your website. Something where an article is taken from wikipedia, and re-spun to be made "original" can fall under the "thin content" catagory.

I have never heard of that. I would think it is more likely that these people are doing something such as writing original content for you and then re-selling or re-posting spun versions of the articles elsewhere.

 

Sorry for the slow response I have been focused on getting the site's reconsideration request to be accepted. The Good news is that the manual penalty has been revoked. I have yet to see the traffic to return but I'm hoping that will follow soon.

The petition is not a failure I just didn't promote it very much. I have revised it and moved it to a Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/googlegonetoofar ( just did this ).

I agree Google is company and acting like one, but it plays an important role in everyone's lives since it controls the majority of search on the web. That requires a different approach than they have been taking, or I believe it is only a matter of time before the the laws will change and they will be made into a public utility and regulated. So please think about signing the petition to help promote change!

Here are some things I think Google needs to do now:

Tell web owners what's wrong ( manual or machine penalty) - and give them 14 days to fix the problem before they penalize them.

Offer customer service - phone and email support.

No list of "bad" authors, freelancer's write many different types of articles on a wide variety of topics, an unpopular venue should not get them or the sites they write for banned in Google.​

Thanks for all your input.

 

Add count checked out OK, home Improvement is one of the section I had problems with and had to take down. Google laws serious about the gust post authors and their content. Taking them down is the only was I got the penally revoked.

I agree this is not what I considered "thin content". I hope they officially revise their " thin content" definition so people can better figure out what's wrong if they get penalty notice. it is not mentioned anywhere on the link to a a video they sent me in the notice.

 

Actually, they do have something: Google’s MADA (Mobile Application Distribution Agreements) are hidden contracts in restraint of trade that are designed to maintain and extend its monopolies in general search and handheld general search. The same inference could be made about search engine penalties inflicted upon sites that "violate" Google's hidden set of rules. For example, someone could make the case that their website was penalized and/or excluded from search results because they have published links somewhere and Google doesn't want them to do business with those sites. Or they paid someone else for promoting their links. Or... You get the point: restraint of trade.

In this case, asking someone to remove articles from their site because they were published elsewhere as a condition of lifting the search engine ban is also wrong. For what it's worth, when something is being published in multiple sources, it reinforces credibility. Newspapers do it all the time, and they don't incur penalties. Articles can be syndicated, etc. But even more disturbing is the fact that Google appoints itself as judge and executioner of who can publish what. That infringes on... OK, maybe a lawyer can take it from here.

 

I have not faced such problem but its a good initiative from your side.

 

Thanks, but he articles they had me remove were not even published elsewhere on the web. They were just from writers who were part of the the bloggerlinkup ( I didn't even know that - we get submissions all the time). These authors have been targeted by Google as "bad" mainly because ether advertise on odesk, linkedin, etc. that they do SEO articles. Google told me that these guest posts put me in a "bad neighborhood" so we were punished. Some of the articles they pointed out were not top quality I agree, but since we are a lifestyle publication ,we have to have some "fluff" to keep our readers happy, as well as the parenting and health news and advice. We have been accepting guest posts since 2003, most are high quality and well- read. Even removing the links form the guest posts was not enough, we had to take down the content that Google deemed a "thin content".

No positive results yet from doing what they wanted and getting the penalty revoked, Google still not sending us any visitors.

PS I agree with the hidden list being the basis of a monopoly action -- and now a hidden author list too

 

A petitions not even going to remotely make a difference! Especially up against a company like Google, Waste of time!

 

Not true. Google can and does make their regulations available to web masters. While it is sometimes difficult to determine what does or does not violate Google's regs, the information is out there and available for anyone with the tenacity to look for them. What Google keeps hidden is their algorithms, which are also "rules", but rules about how they determine relevancy and what not; these hidden algorithms have very little to do with what does and does not violate Google's website regulations.