Are we starting to see Google turn the screw of “we don’t like you” on blogs? For many months rumours had been flying around that Google was going to purge a lot of blogs, at the beginning of last week I noticed that some of my pages were not getting indexed like they normally would.
example :
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/taking-your-laptop-into-the-us-how-to-protect-yourself.html
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/a-week-in-the-life-of-david-naylor.html
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-wiki.html
None are indexed in Google…
I knew we had done some backroom work on the blog so I checked webmastertools to see what errors it had turned up, and noticed some general errors. Today we have spent most of the day tracking and Greping logs files and server files to find these errors, but really haven’t turned up anything. Other than we are fine in Google’s Blogsearch and Dead in Google Organic? Of course I have had a few emails from people offering me advice lol.
Most people now think that DavidNaylor is banned in Google or at least under a penalty. This doesn’t sit right with me as most people are saying I have either gained too many links over the past month due to the Google and Twitter debate, others feel it’s because of the NON seo posts on a seo blog which again I feel incorrect and I have cited each time, most of the links gained Via the Google and Twitter thing Matt Cutts gained them as well. For off topic posts I pointed out Matt Cutts ranks for Seo Blogs, but his last posts have been :
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/best-yogurt-in-silicon-valley/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-delete-files-from-a-directory-i-own-in-freebsd/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/arrrrr-you-prepared-for-talk-like-a-pirate-day-with-fonts/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/twitter-added-nofollow-to-www-links-in-their-bio-field/ < the one that started all this LOL 
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-user-agent/
I also pointed out in the emails, that if Google is banning me because I SPOKE OUT on certain topics, wouldn’t that be Web Censorship? I understand what Spamdexing is and I understand the T’s and C’s at Google. Anyway I have pulled a few Posts and I’m going to put the Blog on Moderation and pull the full RSS feeds, until I can get to the root of this.
DaveN
22 Comments
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1
15th September 2008 @ 15:43
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Yep - Seeing a couple of my wp sites not listed at all, but they’re still getting traffic.
15th September 2008 @ 15:46
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I mentioned this post to the crawl/indexing team, so they may check it out–thanks for mentioning this.
15th September 2008 @ 15:56
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4
Noticed my most recent post go from page one the day after it was published to not listed in the index at all the next day. Back in there now and ranking again on page one or two…about where it was originally.
I’ll be interested in reading your update. Can’t wait to see if you can get to the bottom of why your pages aren’t being indexed as they normally would…if it’s a bot issue or something more sinister.
15th September 2008 @ 16:19
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5
Google isn’t perfect. The same problems have persisted from months on my own blog. Inconsistant data across several different mediums (Webmaster Central, Tookbar Pagerank, SERP Positions/Rankings/Listings, Google Analytics)has lead me to conclude that these are mearly the imperfections of a machine doing the work rather than a human….of course, none of this would be possible without machines…
15th September 2008 @ 16:25
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stuff like this !
15th September 2008 @ 16:38
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7
I had an issue like this a while back.
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/fresh-content-penalty/
Think it lasted a month or two, then was back to normal.
Similar prob?
15th September 2008 @ 22:35
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8
Dave, don’t know if it’s always done this but -
if you click on your feed item from iGoogle url is
http://feeds.feedburner.com …. /are-blogs-are-waste-of-time-in-google-now.html
and redirects to
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/are-blogs-are-waste-of-time-in-google-now.htmlBUT, once on the page, if you do the Google Toolbar “cached snapshot of page” it shows the
cache:http://feeds.feedburner.com …. /are-blogs-are-waste-of-time-in-google-now.html
doesn’t seem right to me that.15th September 2008 @ 22:50
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9
I was talking to a friend about this subject yesterday as I have a blog connected to the forum. The forum always seems to beat the blog in the results. I certainly hope they are not a waste of time and I would want to take a few samples from a cross section of sites before I could make a call. Maybe it’s time to switch back to a custom CMS to make yourself very “unique” .. In every possible way.
16th September 2008 @ 03:33
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10
I am experiencing the same problem.. But I think they are just being selective. I don’t know all my keywords related to games is not shown in SERp..
But those keywords which are already 1 year old seem to be still in the serp..
But the problem all those keywords which are having a high traffic is now gone in SERP..
I hope the Google webmaster team will do something here.. upon recommendation of Matt Cutts
16th September 2008 @ 08:35
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11
I don’t think its a blog problem - I just noticed a minor site I manage dropped from posn 4 - 5 to 200+, with nothing changing. Webmaster tools reports the dreaded General HTTP error
Nothing wrong with the site, haven’t touched it in many months and its *not* a blog, just some static pages.
The homepage doesn’t rank where it should, and a sub page is ranking above it in the cluster.I reckon its an internal problem with googlebot. Hope they fix it soon
16th September 2008 @ 12:44
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Maybe because you are writing posts that are blatantly designed to rank for current affair topics and SEO keyterms?!?!
16th September 2008 @ 16:30
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13
Seems to be happening a lot… plus, from my recent experience with splogs, G seems to prefer on-topic posts. ie. posts related to the domain.
Perhaps it algo filter to purge spam… lol!
16th September 2008 @ 18:31
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14
One seorefugee member found his blog indexing issue to be related to the switch to adsense for feedburner. (see http://www.seorefugee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10624) Perhaps this will help at least some folks track down their problems.
16th September 2008 @ 20:10
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[...] story: Sphinn - Are Blogs are waste of time in Google now The original article is just below. Are Blogs are waste of time in Google now Check the SPHINN page and look at the comments. Good news for bloggers! __________________ - [...]
17th September 2008 @ 15:49
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For Feedburner users, I
believe there are two settings to check.Choose the tab “Analyze”. From the menu on the left, choose “Feedburner Stats Pro”. For the “Track Item clicks” option, optimize for “Search Engines” (in drop-down); this is NOT the default.
There’s more on this here:
http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78951
In the “Publicize” tab there is a “NoIndex” option in the left menu under the tab. Google was indexing my feed despite this being checked. After 24hrs or so the feed would disappear from the SERPS but the blog page wouldn’t be indexed. I’m using the mybrand option, not sure if this matters. The problem seemed to resolve itself after choosing the optimize for search engines option.
It seems like DaveN isn’t using feedburner right now… but if, as from Jane’s comment implies, he was, this may have been a contributing factor.
17th September 2008 @ 17:16
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Dave is using feedburner at the moment
17th September 2008 @ 18:24
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[...] Naylor asked if Google is starting to hate blogs, based on his blog having indexing issues. He gave several [...]
18th September 2008 @ 05:00
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[...] a large Internet readership. It turns out that a week or so ago noticed that some of his pages were not getting indexed like they normally [...]
18th September 2008 @ 10:26
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[...] Dave Naylor first reported some issues with his blog, I fired up SerpGuard.com to check out his URL. Our tool interacts with [...]
19th September 2008 @ 13:16
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My Wordpress blog /business/website was bumped in feb after sitting in 1st page for 8 months its now page 5/6 and stagnation while all my rivals are sitting on page one
I cant see its coming back so i agree goggle has dismissed blog sites
7th June 2009 @ 13:14
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22
I think it’s more the way you conduct yourself on the web than the fact you have a blog..
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/uk/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hobo-web.co.uk&fr=sfp&bwm=i
DaveN
8th June 2009 @ 09:16
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I’m thinking its a bot problem. Patrick mentioned it at http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/has-google-stopped-indexing-blogs/ and I see the errors along with others in webmaster central. I think Google has a boo-boo.