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Deindexed from Google
Why might a site get deindexed from Google?
I found the perfect example today in Google Groups. This example not only has a site to look at but it also has a response from Adam Lasnik that tells a deeper tale. In short, a site gets deindexed for two basic reasons:
- It has no value to visitors.
- It has no value to Google.
How does it get de-indexed?
- A human editor
- Google algorithms
The site owner for Alken M.R.S Publishing (click the link and take a look) is not having a nice day. Alan did as many people who dream of making money online, built micro sites on many subjects to harness organic search engine traffic for “keywords” (made for adsense). He was over at Google Groups looking for help and thinking it might be some sort of technical thing when in reality (as confirmed by Adam Lasnik) his content was de-indexed because it had greedy intent. Now we are talking, getting deindexed for greed, that has a nice ring to it eh?
Anyhoo, here was Adam’s (Google’s) response:
I think it’s time for some tough love here, Alan.
Imagine this scenario. You walk into a store and some guy — surprisingly the owner — grabs you by the shoulder.
“How’d you like some beer? Oh, hey, we also sell coffee. Hmm… you don’t want something to drink? We specialize in air purifiers, too! And you know what… after you drink some beer next to your new air purifier, I bet you could use a date, right? No, no, not the eating kind… I’m talking a really nice lady! And if she ends up stealing your identity, well, no problem! I sell Identity Theft protection services… and… wait! Wait…come back!!!”
How much would you trust that guy? Or his store? Sure, he may have small leaflets on a zillion topics, but he’s not an expert in any.
If you, as an independent observer, came across such a store online, would you trust it anymore? If not, why should Google see this as an important and relevant site?
The reductions in rankings you’ve experienced are not going to be reversed by simple technical or structural changes. You may wish to focus your efforts, add compelling, original, and substantive content or tools, and *then* file a reconsideration request.
I have been following Matt Cutts, Adam Lasnik and others around on the internet studying their responses for a year or more now. You can learn more about what not to do from these guys than anyone. This also should give you a glimpse into the future, how do you survive such an onslaught to your content? Simple, if you want to have multiple websites or micro sites do them on subjects you truly understand and are passionate about and it will show, get greedy and become a content spammer and you will suffer tough Google love.
Want to read the entire thread? Go here. (wish I had more time to track these threads cuz they are super educational and must make the “probloggers” of the world extremely nervous, I like that!)
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July 10th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I wish this were true. But then why are so many crap sites till ranking at the top of the SERPS?
July 10th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Got an example xensen?
July 10th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Not really, I’ve never collected them. There’s a SEOMoz thread here, but it’s a year old. There’s the usual complaining at Webmaster World. There are recent complaints from Michael Gray about Wikipedia ruling SERPS (here and elsewhere, and also his search for Argentina. Not that it all proves a lot. But I have felt frustrated at times when I’m trying to find some basic piece of information and the top pages are all commercial sites or adsense sites or wikipedia stubs. Are you saying that you don’t see this? Going forward I will try to collect some examples.
July 11th, 2007 at 3:49 am
xensen - I see all kinds of things but quoting other SEOs that have financial gain and reputation to aquire by bitching at Google does not prove a bad SERP. The reality is that Google is cracking down on Made for Adsense sites and dreamy eyed content spammers. Of course it hurts, I got a site that completely dropped off the map yesterday and it is forcing me to really look at what my true intentions are.
July 11th, 2007 at 6:35 am
if google were cracking down on MFA sites then about.com or answers.com would be toast, and they aren’t. They are cracking down on smaller people who are trying to build MFA empires and become the next about.com .
So I agree nothing too amazing about that site that it deserves to rank but there are thousands of pages in wikipedia and about.com that don’t deserve to rank either but still do. So what we really have is an unequal application of justice. Little guy gets busted a dozen people bitch about it life goes on. Wonder what would happen if about.com, answers.com or the wiki got torched, think Google wants or needs that attention … think it will have a positive influence on their stock price …
July 11th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Well, I’d say that’s good then. I’m glad to hear it.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Michael - Just like yourself Wiki, About.com and others are great at attracting tons of links making you safe from things like supplemental results and not ranking for stuff. The only thing that could take Wiki (and you) out is a manual ban. The guy in the post above was most likely removed by a human editor.
You and I do agree on the “unequal application of justice” thing, I think About.com sucks, it is like lame blogging network of greed.
July 17th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Looks like the thread in Google Groups is no longer available and Alan’s site is back in the index…
July 17th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Interesting find Sergi, Alan seemed to be an ok guy, his content was empty but not like the traditional MFA (auto-generated) stuff. Maybe Google is letting the content into the index to let the people decide (via backlinks) since it is not currently judged on it’s quality and accuracy alone.
Glad I raised the flag if it helped open a debate anyhoo!
*sigh*
November 10th, 2007 at 3:43 am
I wish my site was the same - judged on links, not on content, Aaron!
April 1st, 2008 at 3:39 am
i am glad to hear that google is deindexing greedy site’s pages and penalizing duplicated content sites too… whenever i create a new post to my blog, with in a while it gets duplicated and it gets better ranking then me in google for my post content. can you please let me know where should i report it in google?
November 24th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I’m glad to here it too, however the thing that really erks me about this is google always seems to do this de-indexing thing to my site but never to any of my competitors.
It would be great but it seems futile unless it’s fair for all. Two months ago I had 10000+ pages indexed this month 300, my competitor had 60,000 then and 60,000 now and all they are doing is putting the profiles in sub domains. I thought that google/human google would eventually catch that but I guess not so now I’ll have to do it too.
November 25th, 2008 at 7:01 am
but how to get back in google serps?
November 25th, 2008 at 8:25 am
rr1024 and informixx - to get more pages indexed you need more pagerank, to get more pagerank you need more people to link to you in a natural way, to do the best with what you have remove all sources of duplicate navigational links on your domains. rr1024 - i removed your URL from my comments, your site is very unprofessional looking and might even use frames?
both of you have duplicate content/navigation and could use a more refined website to do better.