Slashdot Log In
Businesses Scramble To Stay Out of Google Hell
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue May 01, 2007 08:19 AM
from the argh-my-pancreas-the-demons-poke-it-so dept.
from the argh-my-pancreas-the-demons-poke-it-so dept.
whoever57 writes "Forbes has up an article on the consequences of being dumped into a claimed 'supplemental index',
also known as 'Google Hell'. It uses the example of Skyfacet, a site selling diamonds rings and other jewelery, which has dropped in Google's rankings and saw a $500,000 drop in revenue in only three months after the site owner paid a marketing consultant to improve the sites. The article claims that sites in the supposed 'supplemental index' may be visited by Google's spiders as infrequently as once per year. The problem? Google's cache shows that Google's spiders visited the site ss recently as late April. 'Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site's pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible--because site operators often don't know what they did to get placed there.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Informative)
- Keep using the same domain name. Right now changing your domain name incurs a huge penalty from Google. You will lose 90% of your traffic for 8 months.
- Use unique titles and meta descriptions for each of your pages. If the titles and meta descriptions on two of your pages are the same, one or both of the pages will likely go into Google Hell
- Don't buy links to your site to boost your pagerank from unrelated sites. If Google sees links to your site on the same page as links to Viagra sites, you will likely get a spam penalty.
- Ensure that your content is original and unique. If you use syndicated content, or syndicate your content to other sites, Google will realize that the content exists in two places and put one of them into Google hell.
If you do get into Google hell:Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
do not hire idiot consultants to raise your pagerank.
Which is not technical advice but should cover whatever fool stuff someone might try.
I have to say, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the guy. He tried to cheat, and when it backfired, he goes crying because he can't get un-blacklisted. Well, sucks to be him, but it certainly serves google's purposes (and the health of the internet as a whole) well.
Pre-emptive strike: I believe, in principle, on strong public oversight of corporate decision-making.
The *exception* is anything that might be considered an editorial decision, the dispensation of advice, etc. If it's not a tortious lie, they have a right to say (to recommend, to blacklist) whatever/whomever they want, because I have a right to choose to whom I will listen.
If you don't like what google does, you don't have to use it - but you can't force them to change what-they-say because you don't like it that other people listen to them.
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone comes up with a better search engine that also gains equal or near-equal footing with Google, then you can worry less about them, but I think it will be a VERY long time before anyone doing business on the internet can afford to ignore Google.
So while a business as a whole might decide not to purchase advertising via Google, and may not use Adsense, very few businesses can afford to ignore the monster that is Google.
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm saying is that this should not open Google (or Zagat) to any requirement for editorial transparency. If people trust information source A, and information source A doesn't recommend you, well, that may suck, but you should not have any recourse to demand an explanation - because your *potential customers* have the right to go to any source of information they want for advice, and your *potential customers* are not forced to use google.
This may in turn force businesses to do all sorts of things, but that's capitalism for you - your business does not have a right to succeed.
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
When businesses whine about Google, who they're really whining about is their customers, because their customers are the ones deciding to go to Google (or Zagat, or the New York Times theater reviews, or whatever) and use that as part of their decision-making.
Parent
Re:That's not what google is for (Score:5, Insightful)
Google search is a tool for selling ads. That's it. It has everything to do with Google getting paid by businesses in return for consideration.
Google AdWords is a tool for extorting money from businesses who are trapped into only having one kind of promotion available. If you don't pony up some cash, you're invisible.
And then it's just a race to see who can pony up the most cash. It'll certainly made Google's job easier when they're just a portal for WalMart.
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't. Nor has Rene who does the other big farmers gripe site.
In my case I had a malformed robots.txt file that excluded google for nearly the entire site (oops). Fixed that and front page here I come.
To be fair, there is not a lot of competition for the sucks sites, and none of us will pay for SEO, thus the field is level.
-nB
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
<Mr. Burns voice> Excelent. </Mr. Burns voice>
Parent
Must have happened already, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly -- I'm surprised this hasn't come up more.
It seems that if I want to deep-six your site, which might mean your entire business and/or livelihood, all I need to do is find the most inept link spammer I can, and pay him a pittance to whore your site's URL all over the place, on tons of spamblogs and Viagra pages. All of a sudden, Google will notice, can your page off of the search results, and you're hosed.
I've got to imagine that this has already happened; heck it seems like a fairly good extortion scheme: pay us or we'll linkfarm you until Google notices and your competition slaughters you. It's like SEO, only in reverse.
Parent
Re:Must have happened already, right? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
I doubt it (Score:4, Interesting)
I was highly backlinked by spam sites after a bunch of bots ran through the fields of my DMOZ mirror. My rank in Google went way up.
I got into Google Hell for not doing a proper redirect from an old domain. I basically flooded the new domain with traffic from old unrelated sites that had gone under from a server crash. About 6 months later I was back out. I don't have nearly the traffic but I still rank decently.
Google is not stupid. They're going to take a lot of factors in before punishing you. I imagine this clown did a cocktail of stupid things and rightfully ended up hosed.
Parent
Google Official Response (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Google Official Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Google Official Response (Score:5, Insightful)
I read all these articles about companies who think it's their right to have a high ranking in Google's search. Google is supposed to be helping ME find things I'm looking for. Kudos to them for tossing "search engine optimized" sites into hell. If they don't like it, they can go pay for legitimate ads somewhere.
Hey Google, we really need a button to exclude all sites selling stuff from searches. I hate having to wade through a pile of e-commerce sites when I'm looking for INFORMATION.
Parent
Re:Google Official Response (Score:4, Informative)
Here is the link to this particular response:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-hell/ [mattcutts.com]
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Funny)
A player gets out of Google Hell by...
(1) Throwing doubles on any of your next three turns. If you succeed in doing this you immediately move forward the number of PageRank ratings shown by your doubles throw.
(2) Using the "Get Out of Google Hell Free Card"
(3) Purchasing the "Get Out of Google Hell Free Card" from another e-business and playing it.
(4) Paying a fine of $50 before you roll the dice on either of your next two turns. If you do not throw doubles by your third turn, you must pay the $50 fine. You then get out of Google Hell and immediately move forward the number of PageRank rankings shown by your throw.
Even though you are in Google Hell, you may buy and sell on e-Bay, buy and sell houses and hotels (in Second Life) and collect revenues.
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sort of an obvious solution.
Parent
Re:My tips on Google penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sort of an obvious solution.
Agreed. Perhaps more to the point, maybe they shouldn't have been depending on the free advertising provided by Google in the search results as their primary source of customers.
Seems that the real lesson here is that you shouldn't build a business on shaky marketing, and search results -- which are basically the internet equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising -- are pretty shaky. It might get you started and off the ground, but you shoudn't depend on them always being there, and you need to have a plan for staying in business if they suddenly go away. Otherwise, you probably don't deserve to be in business, and they'll be plenty of other sites to take up the customer eyeballs.
Parent
Sounds like the system works just fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's obligation is to serve the consumer doing the search with the most accurate and fair results possible, not to ensure that sleezy companies paying big $ to "consultants" who game the system maintain their sales.
For shame, Forbes!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like the system works just fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sounds like the system works just fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not get started on relying on a third party (Google) whom you have no contract with for a large percentage of your business. That's got to rank up there with Stupid Business Models 101 in my view.
Parent
That's 35 grand poorly spent (Score:5, Informative)
Marketing Consultant (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds to me like they should have hired a more professional consultant, it seems to me thats who the company should immediately be blaming rather than Google.
*Caring* (Score:5, Funny)
Dante (Score:3, Funny)
Business model relying on free service? (Score:5, Insightful)
So.. (Score:4, Insightful)
At what point is this guy any sort of victim when he knowingly exploited the system for his own gain and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
New Business Model (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Gather home pages of major competitors
3) Add links to these home pages on disreputable web sites
4) Watch their traffic go down.
5) Watch your traffic go up.
6) Profit
Just cant figure out where the "..." fits into this one.
Play By The Rules (Score:5, Insightful)
I am by no means an SEO expert... but I've had VERY good luck with google indexes for the small sites I build for people. I've even gotten some business from it, because people some how think I'm some sort of genius. So what's my secret?
I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AT GOOGLE FOR WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO AND I FOLLOWED THE RULES
If you simply follow the rules that google lays out, you won't get sucked into google hell. If you try and game the system by paying for consultants to "juice" your site, you gambled and lost. Bottom line: Don't be evil, and google will not punish you
Re:Play By The Rules (Score:5, Informative)
My personal check-list for this kind of thing is..
1) Make sure that the site design is sensible and contains valid html + valid css. (if used)
2) Make sure that all the text is relevant and not overly complex for the sake of it. (nice clear simple language..)
3) Have a site map. (A normal one - I don't know if google sitemaps, i.e. the xml stuff you can add to your site are useful)
4) Use all the useful meta information, (description, abstract etc..)
5) Make sure that the links on site (internal and external) are valid and go where you think they should
6) If you use a CMS or any content generation (i.e. data driven sites) make sure that the generated page addresses are neat, rewrite them if neccessary (possible). www.whatever.com/about.html is better than www.whatever.com/generated/pages/index.php?page=a
7) Update the content on your site on a regular(ish) basis.
8) Never ever let an SEO company that claims it an get you X hits per day/month anywhere near it, most SEO techniques involve gaming search engines in one way or another, whether through comment spam, blog spam, dodgy link farms or other nefarious methods. If an SEO company comes to you and says it will look at the layout/content of your site to optimise it to your sites demographic (by cleaning up the language or the code) you should be golden, anything else is a disaster waiting to happen. You should launch your site expect a few visitors and if it is a useful and usable site, then your user base will find it, as they find it, the links and traffic will come naturally.
One quirk that I noticed a while back whilst writing a company site that listed news headlines from a couple of news agencies, was that the site was appearing in conjunction with some weird search terms, like "$companyname terrorists" and "$companyname organised crime". Its not just the search terms you want to be associated with that will work - but anything that is available on your site, dynamic content and all.
Parent
Push vs Pull and Demand Density (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is evidence of a couple phenomena in modern business:
The first is what I guess I'll call push vs pull, and that's the difference between business that cater to people who have a specific need "Hey, I need food, so I'm going to look for a place where I can get it" and businesses that create things they try to sell that people don't necessarily need but will buy on impulse - for instance, those businesses that are always sending fliers in the mail to get you to buy things you might not otherwise need.
The other issue here is what I would call demand density - if a business has to be online to reach people across the globe, that means that demand density is very low. However, a grocery store has very high demand density - advertising is only necessary (if at all) over a very small geographic location because the market is local.
Now, I'm not sure if I fully understand all the pros and cons of trying to support businesses with very low demand density - is society as a whole better off with the mechanism to provide goods and service to very disperse locations, or is the effort required to distribute the goods / services over such a large location really worse than not supplying that demand and eliminating the transportation / communications infrastructure overhead?
More to the article's point, though, if I had to depend on a search service to get my business revenue, I would rethink my business plan. While I understand the ideas behind 'global economy' I am still a bit conservative in my belief in the merits of self-sufficiency; relying on a search service means that my business would be at the mercy of that service which I may not be able to control. Control is fairly important in businesses, I would think.
Re:Push vs Pull and Demand Density (Score:4, Interesting)
The "low demand density" type of businesses may be hyper-specialists: They produce something that is so unique that while few people will buy it, those that do need it are willing to pay very good prices for that sort of product.
Armoured cars are an example of a product like this. An average person is not going to buy one of these products, and it is likely that you will only find a very small number of businesses who even sell these kind of vehicles, which are all custom manufactured as well.
Or to be highly specalized, a manufacturer of aviation-grade O-rings. If you have developed a process that improves the operating environment that these products can work in, you have something that is indeed very valuable.
The problem as illustrated in this article is that the businessman who is the focus of the article does not sell a product which is on the leading edge of technology, nor is it unique from the thousands of jewelry stores that you can find in small towns. While gemstones and jewelry have enough value that shipping these items anywhere in the world is trivial compared to the cost, the competition for such a product is so large that there really isn't any substantial value gained by going with any particular jeweler, especially for an on-line purchase.
This is exactly why he ended up in Google's "link hell". There is nothing that he is doing which is unique.
If this jewelry business specalized in something which is of a regional flavor, such as south-western USA jewelry (heavy in silver and turquoise) or set up some legitimate information pages that would add value for somebody coming to visit his website, such as original content describing the process of making jewelry and obtaining the gemstones, there may be some reason to have people link to this website. And push up the rankings in a legitimate fashion. But as just another place to buy gemstones and jewelry, there is nothing remarkable that can't be done directly by DeBeers or genuine gemstone wholesalers.
This businessman was also ripped off by this so-called internet consultant who tried to game the system without doing any real good to the content of the website. The $35,000 that was spent on the consultant could have been better spent in so many ways that it boggles the mind. Hiring a recent college graduate with an English degree (aka somebody who supposedly can actually write reasonable prose, and not some geek who can't use grammar worth a damn) to do some genuine scholarly research and fill up a website full of content about the jewelry industry would have been something very worth while. There are so many things that can be done to enhance a website to legitimately improve page rankings and make you stand out that you have to wonder why people engage in spamlinking at all.
Parent
Insequitir (Score:5, Insightful)
Why sites go in Google hell is a total mystery.
Story 1: A guy sold diamonds on his site. One day he went to Google hell, but he had no idea why. Why is Google not telling him? He had no idea why this happened... ok... ok... so he paid 35 grand to a SEO "expert" who filled his pages with trash. He removed the trash and few months later he went out of Google hell. To this day he doesn't know how he went out of Google hell.
Story 2: A guy had a site with lots of visits from Google. One day, he went to Google hell, but he had no idea why. Why is Google not telling? Ok... ok... so he had paid for a ton of links from spam sites, and he had to email each of the sites to get the links removed. Few months later he went out of Google hell, and this guy also has no clue what helped him.
Summary: It's a total mystery, that Google hell, I tell you.
Uh Duh?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Both of the "businesses" seem shady to me anyways, and their practices on optimization only appear to confirm that. They got caught, Google did what it's supposed to do. Now they're being punished.
Sure, they may have reversed any of said optimization, but as the article even says, it can take 6 months to a year to be indexed again anyways. So take two of these and call us in a year...
Inverse (Score:4, Interesting)
Skyfacet's consultant didn't improve their rankings at all, instead causing them to plummet. One wonders just how lucrative this sort of thing is? After all, if this consultant has done this for them, perchance he/she/they have done it to others? Perchance it would be a good idea to a) sue them, b) report them to BBB, and c) begin a this-google-consultant-sucks.com website.
From Google's Webmaster Help Section (Score:3, Informative)
Spending money the wrong way (Score:5, Interesting)
I have zero sympathy for unscrupulous businessmen who try to game the system, get caught, and then whine about it. Kudos to Google for playing hardball and fighting to keeping their search engine useful and relevant instead of letting the spammers ruin it.
As a Webmaster (Score:5, Interesting)
Google can do whatever the hell they want with their search index. Why on earth any company would place themselves entirely in someone else's hands, particularly someone else who doesn't have the slightest care in the world what happens to your business is really beyond me.
Any sane business person should enjoy search engine traffic when they have it, but place themselves primarily in the position where they don't need it. Relying entirely on an independent company with it's own interests for your business survival is beyond stupid.
Terrible business model (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand that proper advertising is expensive, I've got a failed business of my own due to not being able to put the necessary money into it, but guess what? That's business. You pick the risks you're willing to take and deal with the results. Basing the majority of your business on search result ranking is low cost (unless you pay an SEO expert $35k which would have been better spent elsewhere, like real advertising, or a new car, or a 35,000 cheeseburgers from a fast food value menu) but high risk due to the constant changes.
Been in Google's shoes, threw in the towel. (Score:5, Interesting)
All of a sudden, over a period of a couple of months or so, the "request" page started getting flooded with suggestions for "new" free web hosting sites that seemed awfully similar, and offers to exchange links, and what in retrospect were obviously the work of the kinds of parasites that Google's been fighting. Pretty soon maintaining the page wasn't fun any more, and I quit updating it and eventually took it down.
Given that Google has to automate this process, I think they're doing a pretty good job.
Google is becoming irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
What this will mean is that we'll be on a user-ranking system like Digg or the like since the users can vote a topic down if it's spam and it gets buried almost immediately(well within a couple hours as compared to days/months/years) but since Google isn't prepared for that type of system, they will soon find themselves overwhelmed with spam.
I have at least one site that was permanently delisted by Google for some unknown violation and yet I get just as much traffic without them as I did with them. I don't think they're evil nor am I against them but if they don't wake up soon they're going to lose this game, not to Yahoo or other search engines, but to the spammers themselves.
Forbes is the real story (Score:5, Insightful)
Forbes is just trying to put some negative publicity onto Google any way they can. As many have already pointed out, no sane business model relies entirely on the search results from another business that has no vested interest. Anybody working at Forbes knows as much, and yet we have an article talking about "Google's gulag".
The real information here is from in between the lines. A power struggle behind the scenes, currently Google is the target of some negative image campaigning. What I'm interested in is, where that pushing originates. Who 'owns' Forbes and is pushing for bad press for Google?
Re:Forbes is the real story (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole financial community hates Google.
The feeling started when Google snobed them for the IPO (they went with a public auction, preventing the financial institution to get their hands on the first dibs). Google even kicked them by selling shares with a voting power 10x less than the founder's shares.
It went worse when Google refused to post any indication of their growth or results past what the stock exchange require (no analyst hint, no prevision). And to compound all that, Google has exceeded the analyst expectations everytime, making them miss the best sale date.
Basically, Google has shown over the year it does not need the financial community as much as they need it and they still resent that.
Parent
Re:Business meets technology (Score:5, Insightful)
If they please their customers with the best possible results they will make more money. If they allow themselves to be gamed, searchers will go elsewhere and Google will lose money.
If you don't like that, go start your own search engine.
BTW, they have been sued over this kind of thing and they have always won. The ranking is their opinion and they are entitled to it.
Parent
Re:Business meets technology (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not even close to true. Your customers are, without fail, the people that pay you (or at least, the people you're trying to convince to pay you). Searchers are Google's product; advertisers are Google's customers.
This is no different (in this respect) than radio and ad-supported television: your listeners/viewers are the product you sell to your advertisers.
Don't ever think that Google wants to make you, the searcher, happy - they want to make their advertisers happy. If the best way to do that is by making you happy (and so far, it pretty much has been), then lucky for you. If it isn't, tough cookies: you're not the one keeping the cooling on.
Parent
Mystery Solved (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent