Today I noticed that google banned templatemonster.com see here http://www.google.com/search?q=site...ient=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:tr-TR:official do you know it's reason?
We're contacting you with bad news: our website, www.TemplateMonster.com, has recently been banned by Google search engine. We have no idea how this could happen, but one of the reasons could be so-called "duplicate content penalty" caused by our ready-made affiliate shops. The point is that there are thousands of our affiliate shops in the Internet, and 90% of them have the same content and the same direct link to the Template Monster website. So Google could consider that we create numerous sites in order to increase our link popularity and pagerank. We're trying to restore our existence in Google, and one of the steps we are taking is to get rid of the unnatural links (including links from affiliate shops). Thereupon, we ask you to do the following: Remove the direct link or change it with your affiliate link, or if you don't know how to do this, simply download the updated affiliate shop from your affiliate account: https://secure.mytemplatestorage.com/personal/sample-shops/ Thank you for understanding. Best regards, Support Team www.MyTemplateStorage.com
Oh yeah, that makes sense now that I've read that. Thanks oggin. Kinda cool if you think about it, not for them of course, but I mean in a world where we're so used to the 'big guys' getting preferential treatment, Google seems to provide a pretty even field.
Was that really the reson they got the ban? Since Template monster was the original site and didn't link to their affiliates can they get a ban this way? In other words I could duplicate my rivals sites and get them banned?
I guess templatemonster has nothing to worry about even if they get banned from google becuse they have hundreds of affilates out there and are the main source of sales BUT what if the affilates get banned becuse of duplicate content? that might be an issue
oh yeah, I remember "there's nothing anyone can do to hurt your rankings" or words to that effect from google webmaster guidelines
I doubt Google has banned them due to duplicate content! Maybe de-cached or the offending pages de-indexed, but I doubt the whole site gone, na-da, na-da, nothing!!.. Thats a whole different story... I think Google has pulled the plug manually on template monster - wouldn't like to be one of their affliates linking to them right now though
Unforunately I am one of their affiliates but they seem to think that the ban was caused by the numerous unnatural links to their site generated by their cookie cutter ready made affiliate shops they provide their affiliates. Luckily I do not use one of these and have not (at least yet) seen any issues on my end and their products take up a very small portion of my site. Will be interesting to see how or even if this gets resolved.