Google's gone too Far

I have started this petition http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/803/916/407/ and would really appreciate it if you would sign on -- it is not fair for Google to have a hidden set of rules. Google has become too big and control so much of the Internet it is time we join together and take some control back.

FamiliesOnlineMagazine.com has been online since 2003, we have not violated any Google rules but they have hit us with a "thin content" penalty. We have over 20,000 pages of quality content written by doctors, teachers, family therapist, nutritionists, etc. We have asked them what rule we broke and only get a form letter in reply to our reconsideration request. We tried calling Google headquarters only to get put on hold and then hung up on.

Thanks for reading this. if you have problem I would like to hear about it so we can help each other, pleasePM me.

 

Wow, sorry you got hit hard by a Google update. Unfortunately it's happened to many, many site owners.

 

Haven't heard of Google doing anything like this, doesn't sound right.

 

This is the craziest statement I've ever seen
Do you think Google will reveal their set of metrics on how they rank the websites
You need to have a depth learning on how these search engine behaves

 

Something doesn't sound right here. What exactly did they say in reply to your reconsideration request? I have not seen them use the words "thin content" in connection to a manual penalty. Can you post the email they sent you.

 

how did you get to know about the thin content penalty?

 

The first article I looked at on your site
http://www.familiesonlinemagazine.com/health/familyhealth/412-whey-blood-pressure.html

Seems to have been copied from this article that was published a few years ago.
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/Whey-proteins-show-blood-pressure-lowering-powers

You can't just change a few words around and call it "quality content written by doctors, teachers, family therapist, nutritionists, etc" and expect Google to buy that.

 

@rockgjmom
I'd say do not take it so seriously, but I know you cannot do so.
Surely, copied content wont take you far away and it never did in most cases (especially during last decade).
But, still you do have a point there - they have gone too far!

My personal opinion is just the obvious, shared many times here on DigitalPoint forums - they are just after their stock pricing, hence after their major income(adwords), hence mixing very large companies' sites with some totally shitty results on 1st page (in order not to look so obvious, I mean as they call it "natural") so that they can try to force more small guys use their stupid ads!
I can give you many examples, but guess anyone into online business will be able to obtain them him/herself on own...

So, while there is almost no competition anymore in the SE industry and this shitty(again!), search engine holds the monopoly, the only thing I would advise you is to think off some other marketing channels/traffic sources.
I did not have a look at your site, but in any case you should keep your content unique & upto date - at least for your visitors, no matter where they come from. This will keep 'em returning if they find what they are looking for!

That became way too long, so just for a finish FUCK GOOGLE & their artificially manipulated results!

 

What's funny about Google's "thin content penalty" is that it does not apply to sites that Google owns. For example, Google is part owner of RetailMeNot which has very little content of any kind. Google ranks that site high.

 

That's another good point lol
Maybe this is a bit off-topic, but.... I will not mention the exact site, but while researching some info for a client's site for very, I mean very small/unknown attractions around my hometown(search query not in English), it gave me like 7 or 8 results (in EN) of the same very large travel site + few(2-3) adwords ads on 1st page for same site lol.
It's fuckin' ridiculous... The other few were another very large site(an affiliate of mine) + one shitty site....
Anyway, none of the above had anything related to my search query. Actually even wikipedia was on the 2nd or 3rd page

I myself am not so sure why I keep writing on those very similar topics around here anymore... Guess I started enjoying it... There is a very good expression in my native language - maybe smth like "feed 'em" in a negative way in EN?!

Back to the content, what about google's attitude regarding "unique" content, considering that they own youtube+++++++???

 

Google will hit you with a penality, and will only give you something vague....
google does not owe anyone but their friends and family of google, they are exempt...
everyone else...you more then free to never put up another site...
it is a free market, and google has no obligation to explain anything to you....
and if your 20k pages was of your own work, then you may have been
flying high in google right now, but you decided to go in another direction
so it seems...google is not rewarding for bad behavior on a SE that they own...

 

Good luck with your petition, I'm sure this will change the way that Google's worked for all of these years.
Or you could just fix the problem and file a reconsideration request.

You can sit there and cry all you want but that's not gonna solve the problem. Fix the problem on your site and then file a reconsideration request.

All you are doing is wasting your own time.

 

Did you ever filed a reconsideration request, or have you ever seen such that really worked out?
I haven't, neither would bother to do so if I had to....

 

I have. The thing about reconsideration requests is that you have to actually fix the problem before you file for reconsideration. Asking for reconsideration when there are still thousands of copied articles (I'm extrapolating based on what I saw on the site), would be futile. I'd actually recommend OP to just start over and build a new site with original, well written content. Copying content from other websites on a massive scale is not a good long-term strategy.

 

None of our content has been copied form other sites -- if it 's on other sites it was stolen from us!

 

Can you please respond to this if you want help:

 

Begin forwarded message:

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As for duplicate content it is impossible as far as know to have a site online for the 11 years with-out some. We check before we publish each article but sometimes it just doesn't show up. Duplicate content is not the issue they refer me to Matt Cutts video on thin content which list doorway pages --- don't have those -- affiliate pages --- don't have those -- scrapped content - don't have that --and content generated by automation.

I did finally find out the problem form Google it is that authors that have written for us as freelancers have written some content for bloggerlinkup and therefore we are in a bad neighborhood. I have no idea how to identify which freelancers these are -- nor can I understand if they write a decent article for us how it can be judged on what they have done on other sites. Apparently just taking off bio links isn't good enough they want ht posts down. Seems over the line when they start targeting authors who write an all sorts of topics for all sorts of publications.