Deep down I didn't know this. I was assured by several webmasters that I trust that this was approved by Google. Devalue of links is a penality. I wasn't banned but my #1 natural search rank is gone....and under the main keyword I've been removed completely. I've removed the code snip, now digital point has removed me from rotation and I'll be on my way. I think ya'll need to seriously look at this situation for the sake of your own site. My site has been online since 1998, has over 80,000 members with over 1.5 million posts. Its "the" place for the keyword in Google and I'm number #1 - #3 in other search engines...(behind the .gov sites, medical in nature) I can only pray that the penalty doesn't last long and that within a few months I'll have all this behind me. I'll be very upset with digitalpoint coop set up and its major players....if this penalizes me for a long time. My site is my business, revenue, etc. I had NO idea this was not legit.
Anything in SEO is a potencial risk. Co-Op has many benifits and flaws that you personally should have a feel for when optimising your website. You should understand the possible gains and risks when using the co-op. It's not a magical tool that many people wish it was. It's not a gamble either, you could be really successful when the co-op is applied right, but dont be surprised if negative things happen. If you dont think you are experienced enough to know how to use the tool properly just dont use it. There are many negative things competitors can do to your website and you cant do much about it thats far worst then co-op. You just have to to maintain a good website and practice your best methods that you think will benifit your website, other then that I dont know what more I can tell you.
I think you're seeing normal Google fluctuation and not any sort of penalty. Devaluation is not a penalty-- if you were #1 before the co-op then you should still be #1 without the co-op. I realize when you've been cemented to a #1 result for a long time and then you lose it, it feels like a penalty. I've had this happen.... and the site is slowly crawling back to where it once was. I think you've seen a spider failure or filter shift, but not anything affecting your site personally (like a penalty for using the co-op). Just this line says that you're a victim of the new Big Daddy failed spidering. If you suddenly lost 199k pages, but were NOT banned, that is a Google problem, not your problem. Now you've also lost 199k internal backlinks which would likely remove you from the top spots. Here are dozens of other webmasters complaining to Google about the same dropped pages: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/34055.htm
I would love to believe this....but instead of dropping from #1 to #9 or #27 or #500, I am not in search results at all. Although I can find my site using: site: even the title and description of my site is not from Google. They are using my DMOZ title and description which is ancient and not current for our website description and title. I truly believe my site's indexed pages have been removed or hidden intentionally by Google. There is no other explanation for the missing search results and the change in descriptions/title of those links.
Oh, I also wanted to say...yes I was #1 without the co-op. But I think the penalty of belonging to the co-op means that the search results were removed thus, I'm not there to compete with the others for #1 spot much less #20.
Sure there is-- Google is screwed up. They recently changed infrastructures AND spiders/spidering methods. Why would a penalty involve using an ancient DMOZ title/description? Doesn't that sound more like something is screwed up with the engine rather than a penalty? I run a number of sites... I've had one site with this exact same behavior. I bought the site here at DP and have been running it for a few months with totally different content. Now in Google, all of my current pages are buried. When I do a site: command the first pages to come up are all very old and haven't existed for a long time. That is a spider screw up... that is not a proper copy of the site in the index-- just like yours.
In my opinion, it should be the responsibility of the search engine to determine the value for a given link. There are many valid reasons why someone may wish to participate in a "network" that extend beyond Google. By saying that they are banning sites that are in the Co-op, wouldn't that also be saying that sites in the co-op are breaking our search engine, so we have to ignore this data (ban you). I think Google needs to keep working on making their link valuation better, because co-op is nothing compared to what we will see in the coming years.
Yes....this does make sense....and what I hope is going on. What is confusing is that when I notified/emailed Google when I noticed I was missing from search results...and my indexed pages dropping from over 200K to less than 1K, their response: Of course I hadn't cloaked nor sold/bought links to increase PR...but this started the email exchange between me and google which sounded like I was being accused of bad practices...which led me to believe it was all about the co-op simply because it was the only thing on my site that might fit this category. Rather than Google tech people say: Hold yer horses. We've messed up the search results and will fix them shortly...... They alluded to bad practices and requesting I confess in a reply and tell them I have fixed it, requesting reinstatement. This is irritating since the issue may be their mistakes, their errors, their mess....instead of me being a bad webmaster....which I'm not.
In theory, can an individual that is employed at Google manually remove sites from it's index (possibly for his/hers own gain)? We've seen there are rogue DMOZ editors can Google have rogue employees?
Bahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! I laughed so hard and so fast - I think that I almost swallowed my tongue!
Just to say, one of my sites isn't linked anywhere, only got about 500 co-op weight ad pointing to it.. site went from PR 0 to 3 last update
Well there is a certain difference. Most of us already know that sites we actually want to rank well for DO NOT put Coop ads on them. You notice there's no COOP ads running on the bottom of the forum right? No one answers the important questions. Will buying too many links for your site going to penalize you (even related site sponsorships)? Will just pointed COOP ads to your site have a negative affect on your rankings in Google, Yahoo, or MSN?
I have talked to matt a bit in person and also heard him answer direct questions about the dp coop. It is always the same answer =P
I just received an email from Google. Hi Kathy, Thank you for your reply. We appreciate your efforts to comply with Google's quality standards. We have sent your request on to our engineering team who will review your site to determine if it is eligible for re-inclusion. If the website is reinstated, it will appear in Google's search results sometime in the next few months. We appreciate your patience during this process. Regards, The Google Team I don't think they would be sending this to the engineering team to be checked for compliance to be reinstated if this was a Google glitch. Would they? The only thing on my site...that was "iffy" were the coop links....and I've now removed them. I removed nothing else. Is there anyone an expert at Google's quality guidelines who wants to take a look at my site and see if there is anything else? Or does everyone want to keep defending this coop as "okay by Google's standards?" This is hard stuff!