Google dropped my site

[flyingpylon]

My Indianapolis 500 Tickets site had gotten indexed by Google (90 pages or so) and given a PR of 3. Then all of a sudden it was gone completely- 0 pages in the index, no PR, etc. That happened a week or two ago.

Is this normal? Can I expect it to come back soon? The odd thing to me is that my other ticket sites are still in the index and have PR. At what point should I be concerned?

[incka]

For that to happen google must have banned your site. Did you use anything such as invisible text or repetition of words such as 'tickets tickets tickets tickets tickets'?

[flyingpylon]

I have used typical SEO techniques but certainly nothing that spammy.

The interesting thing is that my other two ticket sites are almost exactly the same except for the event name used. They appear to be fine, for now at least.

I suppose I'll have to email Google and see what they say.

[nohaber]

flyingpylon,
it might be "duplicate site" detection. Google has a very interesting patent on detecting duplicate and almost duplicate pages. They use it for various reasons.

When a page is detected to be the same or almost the same as another page both pages are labeled as "duplicates". If 2 sites have too many duplicates one of the sites may be dropped. Also duplicate pages may be spidered less frequently etc etc.

The patent is too broad and technical and I can't give you exact guidelines (the algo can be implemented in a number of ways). The algo detects for example if you replace a word with a synonym. I suggest that you rewrite the texts of all the sites to be different and expect a delay for the next crawl. By different I mean different ORDER of words and at least 20% difference in the words themselves.

If you have a good programming background I could elaborate on the detection algo. You can read the patent yourself.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by nohaber
...I could elaborate on the detection algo...I'd like to hear you elaborate if you don't mind.

[MarkB]

How old is the site?

This happened to me, and then the site reappeared a few weeks later.

[flyingpylon]

The site is just about a month old. I'm hoping it will come back soon since it's focused on an event that takes place at the end of May. (though I'm still building it, shooting for more traffic in future years)

[chromate]

Send google a mail if you're concerned. They'll tell you if it's been banned etc.

It's probably nothing though. My dating site is STILL no where to be seen in the results. I'm getting literally zero traffic from google despite having a PR6 and everything looking like it's set right.

[Chris]

Something to ponder on the topic of duplicate content.

There are probably over one hundred sites with the complete works of shakespeare online, and yet my site is still listed. For these pages, say Act 1 Scene 2 of Hamlet, 90% of the text will be the same for all the sites.

I really sort of doubt Google has an automatic duplicate content filter, or atleast, if they do, that it is very very complex. Duplicate content is one form of spam that has excelled since Florida. There are all sorts of examples of pages with duplicate content existing.

[nohaber]

Having duplicate content is normal, but if you have 2 sites with practically near-duplicate pages AND link structure, it might be an indication of spam.

Surely google is very careful not to kick out a good site.

[Chris]

Another example is if you do most coupon searches.

Look for the ones with the format like "Dell_coupons.asp" at the end of the url. Capital company name, underscore, coupons. Then either .asp or /.

http://www.smartqpon.com/Dell_coupons.asp
http://www.1-online-coupons.com/Dell_coupons/
http://www.discounts-coupons.com/Dell_coupons/

Bunch of multiple domain spam run off the same database. Not yet caught.

[incka]

I've noticed them, they use a similar design, with a grey silver bar at the top...

[flyingpylon]

I got banned.



Hi Paul,

Thank you for your note.

Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the
quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank. We cannot comment
on the individual reasons your page was removed. However, certain actions
such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search
engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose
of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index.
Please read our webmaster guidelines at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html for more information.

Regards,
The Google Team


It really sucks that they won't tell me why. That's just stupid.

[GCT13]

Sorry Paul, your situation is inexplicable.

And I'm sure we all could come up with many, many more sites that are exceedling worthy of getting "blocked" from the index.

[incka]

Yes, such as that search engine called barbarica... It's at the top of loads of popular keywords...

[chromate]

Sorry to hear that. The email google sent is a little odd. I think they tell you why you got banned...


Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank.

But then they go on to talk about hidden text etc, which has nothing to do with assigning PR. Looking at your site, the only thing I can possibly think they wouldn't like is your the script used in your links page. I know that there shouldn't be a problem with this really, But I can't think what else it could possibly be that they think may affect PR. Also remember that they have probably "auto detected" the thing that they don't like. This would be something that they could pick up on automatically?

Is it possible to get the site un-banned? Or is it banned for good? I guess it would be hard to get it un-banned if you don't know what's wrong with it anyway. Out of interest, do you still get visits from googlebot? If you're still being visited, I would think that if they discover the problem has been removed, then they would un-ban you? Dunno.

I was worried about my dating site, but Google told me it hasn't been banned or penalized.

[incka]

Chris got a site he bought unbanned, so perhaps you can get it unbanned...

[flyingpylon]

I'm pretty sure the problem is duplicate content. I've read through their list of "quality issues" and it's the only one that could possibly fit. If you take a look at all three of my ticket sites, they're obviously being run by the same script, just that the name of the event is changed for each one. This was honestly done more for convenience than for search engine manipulation.

The only thing I can figure is that Google doesn't like the fact that not only is some of the content the same, but the navigation structure is the same as well.

I have a plan B, but it's going to take me a few months to implement it. And it's too bad that it happened right now... I was planning to start some major work for the site during the Month of May and this whole thing has taken some of the wind out of my sails. It's somewhat depressing, actually.

[incka]

Games2Go & 3BGames have the exact same content, but google doesn't seem to mind...

[chromate]

If the navigation structure is the same, then this could be the problem. I would just make some changes to the navigation. Wouldn't be too hard, would it?

[chromate]

I would also stick your three similar sites on different class C IP addresses as an extra measure.

[flyingpylon]

I could change the navigation structure somewhat with some work (due to the way things are set up, it's not as easy as it would ordinarily be). I'm not going to put them on different hosts- it's just not worth the effort or expense.

I think what I may end up doing is integrate them into a larger site I'm creating. But I'm not 100% sure about that just yet.

I appreciate everyone's comments.