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June 15, 2008
In the past 48 hours, I have received more than 500 emails from readers expressing concern over the future of BANS and condolences over the loss of so many websites from the Google index. Now that I am out of the panic zone, I want to step back through one of my last posts, and clarify just a bit…
Don’t Use Adsense on BANS Sites
In this post, which was really a knee-jerk reaction post, the better way of stating the obvious would have been to say:
“Don’t use adsense on bans sites that don’t offer unique and relevant content to your visitors“
While a few of my sites that are now in the never-lands of nowhere DID have unique content, I can only assume it was not enough. Overall, the predominant content on the sites however, were auction listings generated through BANS and ebay.
I know alot of folks say that adsense sucks on affiliate sites, but let me tell ya… on one of the sites, I have been running adsense for more than 4 years, 3 of which when it was an ecommerce site, then more recently (6-8 months) as a bans site. Gross earnings were actually equal to, or more than that of BANS, which was significant!
Overall, I don’t think any of my sites were deindexed specifically due to having adsense on them, I do however think it made it much easier for the process of locating and eliminating them, from a human review perspective. I am confident there was a human review of the sites, otherwise… everyones bans sites would be down as well.
Each time I added a new domain, whether using adsense or not, I also added it to my portfolio of domains in adsense. It made it easier for tracking, when and if I decided to add the adsense code to the website itself. One look down the list of sites on that specific page in my adsense account shows almost all of the domains that were outed!
Its almost like the human editor looked in the account and with one click of their mouse, marked all domains in the account as spam sites.
Dealing with the Google Effect
Up until now, I have built sites based on what users are looking for. If they were looking for “Big Brown Jinky Giants”, well… I was going to build a page about those things, on a website that was also about those things! That’s what Google tells us to do!
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
The one thing they tell us NOT TO DO is build a site for search engines! Guess what Google… I dont think we have much choice!! I have to rethink everything I have done and redevelop my methods based on the fact that Google exists.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have access to someone from Google who would actually come right out and say: “This” is the reason your site was dropped!? Wouldn’t that help the entire web building community… instead of everyone using their own interpretation of the Google guidelines!
What if I could just type a question in this post:
Matt Cutts, why were the www.GetaRacecar.com or www.HVACSale.comwebsite deindexed and in violation of the Google Guidelines? Both sites do nothing more than organize the listings found on eBay, into categories that are really MUCH easier to follow! I could find 50 rss aggregator sites that do nothing but reorganize rss content into categories easier for visitors to follow! What makes this different?
Do you think it would be answered… don’t hold your breath!
Moving Forward from the Google Effect
In terms of damage, I am looking at dropping about 33-40% of my traffic over all of the sites affected. Bad? Yes,… but not the end of the world. The most important thing to do at this point is simply move on, and try to forget google exists!
Over this next week, the first thing to deal with are all of the sites that were dropped. I will review ALL of them not for traffic or earnings, but my own interest in them. If the subject of the site was something that actually interests me, well… I will probably keep it!
From there… I simply have to make them much better for the visitors they may someday entertain! Even though dropped from Google index, I am not going to drop them myself… rather, I will do what it takes to make them worthy to the world according to Google!
You see… we are all going to benefit, without knowing it, Google has made me a spokesperson of what we need to do to provide useful websites to our visitors! I wonder if they will put me on the payroll?
Mark
17 Responses to “Moving Forward from a Bad Week”
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BANS sites may not have tons of unique content, but lot of times visitors find what they need. And yes, they could have gone straight to ebay to find it there too, but perhaps not as easily, maybe not at all depending on what search terms they entered.
I think our BANS sites do provide visitors something of value and are useful whether we uniquely blab about the products first or not. Will google deindex every commerce site that doesn’t have unique content? A lot of highly ranked sites are nothing but pages of products with product descriptions straight from the manufacturer, nothing unique about that.
But yes, we must move on and persist and try our best to satisfy our visitors and by some miracle, google too.
Good luck, Mark. Hope to see you on the google payroll soon!:)
Sometimes it’s tough being an Affiliate Marketer. From experience, I don’t think getting removed from Google’s index is entirely based on the domain or website solely based upon it being an affiliate website, made for adsense site or a BANS dedicated site. I have seen sites listed in DMOZ get deindexed, but remain in DMOZ or Googles Directory.
Like you said Mark, wouldn’t it be nice for Google to just tell us. I have a couple of sites that still do well, even thought they were de-indexed - they were never BANS sites either. But I made them into a BANS site anyways, what else would I do with it - park it - BAWH!
They were de-indexed when they changed IP’s and domain ownership, so something triggered the de-index. There is also IP Spam that can cause this.
If it happens, move on, you could even use the same template, files and just change things around to get a similar site into Google - if it was doing that well - then change what you thought might of triggered it. BOOYAH.
And - better get a degree in math if you want on that google payroll - or just buy a bunch of their stock - ticker symbol GOOG.
Mark, if I were you I’d email Matt Cutts and ask him. I saw him at the Advanced SMX Conference in Seattle, and although he’s a guru, he’s pretty approachable.
Considering your question would represent the interest of a LOT of people that have BANS sites, he may well be interested enough to respond. It would sure be worth a try!
You may already know this, but you can ask for reinclusion in Webmaster Tools.
Just to be on the safe side, I removed the Adsense from my sites. They weren’t doing much anyway, and I think I will make more money running affiliate ads. Pepperjam is getting some great clients now, and of course CJ has a bunch to choose from.
Best of luck!
Mark:
I have been in the wings following your BANS class and most of the postings. Although I am by no means an expert, I have been in the internet game since Prodigy’s birth in 1983. I have been at odds with the Google monster for years. I own and manage a portfolio of sites and invest in domain names. I started with BANS to monetize some of my domain names.
After seeing your dilemma I looked at my BANS sites to see what has been delisted and why. Well I think I have the answer. It has nothing to do with adsense. The ONLY site I submitted to SubmitEdge was burned.
I may be wrong but in the hundreds of SEO emails I receive they all mention Google’s dislike for paid links, paid listings in directories and the like.
After submitting my site to SubmitEdge I reviewed some of the sites using a who-is lookup and the owner of the directories are the same.
I hope I am wrong, but as others have mentioned, if the issue was adsense related 1) they would cancel your adsense account and 2) from a business perspective; there would be a mass exodus from the adsense program that could and would hurt Google.
Thank you for your guidance and hope this can be resolved.
Bob
Mark,
I still think what happened to you is messed up. What really bothers me is that you are an experienced internet marketer who not only has made a successful living online, but also provides CONTENT upon CONTENT helping people do the same.
I have been to most of your publicly mentioned sites, and they provide great content, and great organization making the buyers experience that much more enjoyable.
Sean hit it right on the button, BOOYAH! Thats as simple as it is, get back up and keep on keeping on…
Google Shmoogle
I don’t see a Privacy statement on the 2 sites you listed above which is now required on all adsense sites, maybe that is why they were nailed.
scubaman
Always something to learn in this business…. kind of scarey for a fairly new IM’er. I was adding adsense blocks to my sites once the indexing had started but I think I’ll hold off until each site has been more established with content, backlinks, and time maturity. It’s certainly not worth a site being de-indexed for an additional smaller stream of income on the site.
Jamie
P.S. Mark, thanks for sharing your experiences, both good and bad.
Sorry to hear of your Google de-listing. It’s amazing really how or why Google take such actions. Fair enough if a site is clearly abusing their terms but when they are not (as it would appear to be with your sites) it is so soul destroying after putting so much work into them. On the few sites I have built I have tried to add as much content as I can and I do not have any Adsense ads on them, although I do have other affiliate ad links. Thankfully none of mine have been de-listed but with Google you just never know.
I’m not an expert on this but to me it would appear that the BANS sites displaying Ebay ads may not be the reason for the de-listing. Our sites are primarily a series of Ebay ads represented in a more user-friendly way and as such are probably of more use to the end-user as they are being directed to their places of interest in a more convenient and quicker way. If this was not being considered as a perceived value to the end-user then wouldn’t you think that Google would have issues with Ebay themselves?
sorry I take that last post back, I see you have it listed on the bottom of the site, I missed it the first time.
scubaman
I have applied for an AdSense acount several times using my BANS sites as my “application” only to be declined every time. The all mighty Google’s answer was something like this:
“The page’s content. Follow Google’s guidelines for home pages, and try to apply again at a later date.”
I interpret this as proof that Google do not like BANS sites very much.
Arthur
Trying to understand Google and what they are up to is as challenging as figuring out what eBay is trying to accomplish with their policy changes.
Ultimately I am assuming they are trying to “kill” garbage sites, of which there are many. But it is really too bad they have labeled BAN as such and left so many others alone. I have been on some shabby looking BAN’s sites, but I have also been on some really nice ones, so they shouldn’t all be painted with the same brush.
Can someone tell me how you figure out if your site is deindexed?
Thanks,
Jeromy
Mark,
Firstly, like many others who read your posts, I was dismayed, disgruntled and worried to read about your de-listing. Personally, I can’t see what’s wrong with what you / we do with BANS and can’t understand why the big G would too - it’s definitely FUGAZI.
As someone who’s just jumped onto the BANSwaggon thinking that I’d finally found something that I could initially do to make some extra money via the web then, hopefully, develop into my ‘proper job’, I am sad to see that maybe I was wrong. Having said that, I’m heartened to see that you’re thinking through this and will be continuing albeit in a different vein. If you’re still going to post to this site then I’ll keep subscribing, keep reading and keep being grateful for your advice.
G.
Oh, and I’ll be removing adsense right now!
This is really not a surprise. Google has always penalized for lack of content (see parked pages). I have slowly been trying to add more and more content to my sites, but alas I haven’t been swift enough to protect all of my domains. I have a couple of Google slapped domains as well.
Once you have been de-indexed, what is the process for getting re-indexed. Besides taking down Adsense.
The more input the better
Thanks all
Hi Again Mark,
I have been holding the number 15 and 19 position for my main search term for weeks and Friday I put up a few relevant ads from Share-a-sale and CJ.
By Sunday evening my main page disappeared from the map and I still can’t find it. Some of my other pages are still holding their positions, but they were mostly for secondary and longtail keywords.Those pages did not have any ads.
I really believe it was caused by the ads, so I pulled them last night and keeping my fingers crossed. If it is what I suspect, I’m glad I didn’t go site wide.
I’m waiting for your entry that all of your sites are back up in the index.
Mike
I just checked http://www.getaracecar.com/ on SmartPageRank.com and there are NO links or indexed pages on Yahoo! (Google at least shows 5 links, although nothing indexed.)
Now that’s scary!
@ Harold -
Still have not gotten any exact clue for the drops from engines… but yes, it is completely dropped from all both G and Y. It is still listed in live/msn…
I have been working with the G Webmaster forum team to try and figure out why.
nothing black or gray hat involved… has me confused even!
Mark