Autoblogs May Be KILLING YOUR TRAFFIC!!

[ttomp13]

Autoblogs May Be KILLING YOUR TRAFFIC!!

Recommended Read --->

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/postpanda...s-amp-partners


UPDATE -- Matt Cutts himself has confirmed that this IS A PROBLEM.

The next update will target a common webmaster complaint related to the original Panda/Farmer update: sites that scrape and re-publish content and are out-ranking the original source of the content.
“A change has been approved that should help with that issue,” Cutts said.


Lol... So go ahead and tell me I am wrong. While you're at it, you can call up Matt Cutts and tell
him he is also wrong. Can't get any clearer then that.






UPDATE of MY FRIEND'S TRAFFIC (note: traffic is low for today, 'cause it's only 3:00 AM)




Long Story Short -

* My friend has been working his butt off to write articles and rank well within Google.

* A few months back, my friend's traffic went from 1,000 uniques a day, to about 500.

* A few days ago, my friend comes to find that another webmaster is copying his
content with what appears to be an auto blog.

* My friend contacts the owner of the auto blog. The owner removes my friend's
content, and bam, my friend's traffic jumps back to normal.

* By the way, this auto blogger had 0 backlinks to his site, and a Page Rank 0.

* My friend has tons of unique backlinks, and a PR 1.

* My guess is that Google was crawling that auto blog, before my friends? This is still
totally wack. I mean, my friend missed out on so many sign ups.

* But here's the true question... How many of YOU could this also be happening to?

[Mike McAleer]

i totally agree that autoblogs really do suck!

never used one never will!

[Ralf Skirr]

A way to reduce republishing content is to NOT offer full text RSS feeds. If the feed offers an excerpt only, only part of your article shows up on the autoblog, and it will link back to your site.

Professional autobloggers can still get the full article without linking back, but the majority of unprofessional autobloggers will just help your site with an exerpt and a back link.

Ralf

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by Mike McAleer

i totally agree that autoblogs really do suck!

never used one never will!

So I guess this is how we destroy our competition... We set up autoblogs
to steal their content, so they get penalized... Because that is exactly what
happened to my friend.

[matt5409]

thing is if the autoblog is linking to the original article, all's well!

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by matt5409

thing is if the autoblog is linking to the original article, all's well!

It was linking to the original, and all still wasn't well. The big G thought my
friend had duplicate content, not the autoblog.

[Ralf Skirr]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

It was linking to the original, and all still wasn't well. The big G thought my
friend had duplicate content, not the autoblog.

Ah, another one contributing to the duplicate content myth...

[matt5409]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

It was linking to the original, and all still wasn't well. The big G thought my
friend had duplicate content, not the autoblog.

nah, there's no such thing as duplicate content (at least, from experience and the words of those who've rigorously tested). I put this down to coincidence.

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by matt5409

nah, there's no such thing as duplicate content (at least, from experience and the words of those who've rigorously tested). I put this down to coincidence.

How can you guys say this, when my friend's stats clearly show an increase
in traffic, once the auto-blog removed all of his articles?

Kyle Carson from Wealthy Affiliate even agrees that this is a PROBLEM. Wake
up, folks. Duplicate content penalties DO exist.

Originally Posted by Kyle Carson

Yeah, this may be an issue with being first to market.

Some autoblogs may have been stealing the content and getting ranked quicker, thus making Google think that your friend was the "DUPE" content.

Google will continue to push duplicate content further away from the top rankings, with the first to market content gaining the highest authority. This is something to consider with all of your writing!

First, you shouldn't copy.

Second, you should have URL's that benefit you within your content if it does get copied by a scraper.

Third, you should make every effort to get your content indexed in Google as soon as your submit it.

Cheers,

Kyle

If you are NOT indexed within Google first, and someone takes your article and
posts it on their site, and they ARE indexed first, then when you finally are
crawled and indexed, that article on your site will be seen as duplicate content.

If this pattern repeats, Google will continue to see your content as duplicate
content, unless the autoblog articles are deleted, or unless you begin to get
your site's articles indexed first. Even if you do manage to finally get your
site's articles indexed first, the auto-blog will still rank for all older articles,
as they will still be seen as duplicate content. (Even with more backlinks).

[matt5409]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

How can you guys say this, when my friend's stats clearly show an increase
in traffic, once the auto-blog removed all of his articles?

Kyle Carson from Wealthy Affiliate even agrees that this is a PROBLEM. Wake
up, folks. Duplicate content penalties DO exist.



If you are NOT indexed within Google first, and someone takes your article and
posts it on their site, and they ARE indexed first, then when you finally are
crawled and indexed, that article on your site will be seen as duplicate content.

If this pattern repeats, Google will continue to see your content as duplicate
content, unless the autoblog articles are deleted, or unless you begin to get
your site's articles indexed first. Even if you do manage to finally get your
site's articles indexed first, the auto-blog will still rank for all older articles,
as they will still be seen as duplicate content. (Even with more backlinks).

I don't believe for one second that duplicate content penalties exist. Think about it - people have been referencing others ideas and words forever, and if one links to an original source, this establishes a reference. It's only when people steal content, forget the original and promote it as it's own when it MIGHT become a problem.

[matt5409]

Also, if dupe content penalties exist, article directories would never have even reached the levels they're soared.

[Rank Higher Make Money]

Originally Posted by Mike McAleer

i totally agree that autoblogs really do suck!

never used one never will!

same here. unique content - always (maybe outsourced, but hey...)

[Rsberg]

Wow....more perpetuation of that silly myth.

Thats about all I can say here.

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by Rsberg

Wow....more perpetuation of that silly myth.

Thats about all I can say here.

LOL. Saying this is a myth is like saying the Mav's didn't win the NBA Finals...
The traffic doesn't lie.

Before you jump down my throat, why don't you at least read the explanation
below. Also, if you don't believe me, then know that Kyle Carson of Wealthy
Affiliate agrees. If an auto-blog is indexed with your content first, then there
will be a PROBLEM.

But let me clear this up...

Your site will NOT be penalized if other people steal your content, UNLESS the
auto-blog content is indexed within Google first. In which case, your site WOULD
be seen as posting an article which has already been posted, and because of
this, your site's article will NOT rank within the search engines, because
to Google, your article is duplicate content.

This may not be in ALL cases, folks. When it comes to Google, nothing is
certain. But in THIS case, my friend was having his articles stolen for about
6 months. Because the auto-blog's content was REPEATEDLY indexed FIRST, Google
believed that my friend was posting duplicate content. And for that reason,
my friend didn't rank within Google for any of his new articles. Furthermore,
some of his older articles also dropped in the rankings.

When you typed in the exact-match title for my friends article titles, the
auto-blog would appear in the Google Results. If this is happening to you,
then you're getting cut short on traffic, BIG TIME.

[digitalproductreporter]

Duplicate Content is NOT a myth

to the OP, here's your proof it's not a myth and a reason your friend is getting those results

Coming Soon: Google Panda Update 2.2

Improved Scraper Detection

The next update will target a common webmaster complaint related to the original Panda/Farmer update: sites that scrape and re-publish content and are out-ranking the original source of the content.
“A change has been approved that should help with that issue,” Cutts said.

[AutoBlogged]

It would be absurd for Google to penalize a site just because it didn't index their content first. The web is full of legitimate duplicate content and there's no way they could automatically know which was first or if one is more relevant than another. Take, for example, AP news articles which are carried by thousands of sites. Google doesn't just try to pick one as more important and penalize the others.

Most likely the reason why the autoblog was ranking higher is because autoblogs tend to have a higher keyword density because they are pulling many articles with the targeted keywords. Also keep in mind that just because the toolbar shows a PR for a page, that isn't an up-to-date value, the current PR could be higher.

As far as this panda 2.2 update goes, that seems to be a penalty for sites that show signs of being scrapers. It could be an attempt to detect certain signatures of scraper sites, but it certainly wouldn't be a penalty for duplicate content in general.

[GetMoreTraffic]

No, Duplicate Content is not a myth. I would explain, but I am on my way to find the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot...

[vilroot]

now autoblogs i'm using just for backlinks indexing

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

Because the auto-blog's content was REPEATEDLY indexed FIRST

...you need to ask why Google doesn't give a crap about indexing your friend's blog, when they are all up in this autoblog's house raising the roof.

Clearly the problem is not your content. It is something else.

[sscot]

Originally Posted by Rsberg

Wow....more perpetuation of that silly myth.

Thats about all I can say here.

People think in such a way because they feel little illegal or unethical involvement inside the term "duplicate contents".

[Dean Jackson]

I had a junk blog to test the "Duplicate Content Penalty" theory... and that's all it is - a theory.

And if you want to know more about this, I recommend checking out SMS warriors book (forgot what it's called)... I believe it was Google Value Optimizer or something like that.

Come on warriors, this should be common knowledge now.


Get in touch with her to find out where to get it.

Dean

[Ralf Skirr]

Your site will NOT be penalized if other people steal your content, UNLESS the auto-blog content is indexed within Google first. In which case, your site WOULD be seen as posting an article which has already been posted, and because of this, your site's article will NOT rank within the search engines, because to Google, your article is duplicate content.

Guys, stop posting stuff you read somewhere and never really verified. If people follow your wrong advice you're hurting their rankings for years to come.

No offense, I know you mean good, but you seriously need to ask yourself if what you're posting is verified and true.

Just that something sounds reasonable to you doesn't mean it is true.

Having your content indexed first does in no way guarantee your site to be listed on top of all sites showing the same content.

I have tested this, and I can assure you: it is very doable to take content that is indexed somewhere already and get it to rank higher on a site that published it later.

Ralf

[Rsberg]

Originally Posted by sscot

People think in such a way because they feel little illegal or unethical involvement inside the term "duplicate contents".

It's only illegal or unethical if the content is stolen from the originating webmaster.

A lot of people don't realize that many of the article directories they submit their articles to allow for this (syndication), read the fine print in the TOS - Ezine is a perfect example of this.

In this example the OP never states where the offending autoblogger got the content from. He does say though that the content was removed quickly and without issue (no arguements) when asked to do so. It stands to reason that the autoblogger might have gotten it from a source that allows for this. Maybe not, but it is a possibility.

Just because someone is an autoblogger doesn't automatically mean they are stealing content, there are several different sources to get content from that is within the sources TOS. People should take a bit more time reading the TOS of the sites they submit content to before they start screaming it was stolen when they find it somewhere else on the net...just a thought...

[bcagle]

Well, that stinks. I posted a nice long reply to the first post (the one with the image shots of the stats) and like any good responder I was trying to quote the message I was replying to, and I got slammed and told I cannot post a message with links and images (because I am relatively new).

Well, It wasn't ME, it was the 'quote'.

Anyway, so much for the accolades. I will say thanks for the stats. Maybe some out there will figure out using bots to take shortcuts only cuts your credibility with your clients.

Thanks

[GameVoid]

I won't say that the OP is wrong but I will say that the sample size is way too small. I can look at the graphs for my sites and see large swings of 20-30% in traffic across the span of a month, so showing me 7 days worth of traffic data doesn't convince me.

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by GameVoid

I won't say that the OP is wrong but I will say that the sample size is way too small. I can look at the graphs for my sites and see large swings of 20-30% in traffic across the span of a month, so showing me 7 days worth of traffic data doesn't convince me.

ALL of my boys rankings went from being not visible, to being on page 1 of
Google in a day.

Example Keyword #1 - The auto-blog was ranking on page 1 for my boys
keyword. Auto-blog removed content, and my boy jumped up to #3 in Google.

This happened with almost ALL of my friend's keywords, but obviously ranking
position varied.

[BigGameHunter]

Its not what we know that gets us in trouble... Its what we know that ain't so that gets us in trouble!

Duplicate content in Google's eye originated with the same article on the same site for the purpose of keyword spamming. A few years ago way before Panda... spammers would write keyword rich articles they wanted to rank for. They decided if one article was good... ten of the same article was better. Google realized what the spammers were doing and created a policy...not a penalty. There policy was to ignore any duplicate article pass the first one on the same site.

Putting an article from another site like CNN on my site is called syndication. You never hear of a syndication penalty. That's because it is perfectly fine. The associated press puts out articles and the news services copy them on their sites all the time.

As far as the results your friend saw first hand may make anyone think the duplicate penalty was real and the cause the result. But there were a lot of variables that could be responsible for this result i.e. do you know the exact time and date your friends articles were indexed by Google? It could be Google just indexed the articles on your friends site and all the results were a great big coincidence.

How did you check his rankings before and after site owner 2 removed the articles? If you checked through your browser your results would have been saved in Cache and his site would come up high in the rankings on your computer because you was on his site. Did you use Scroogle to actually check the ranking before and after?

Site owner 2 removed the articles he could have fallen because of his lack of authority not because of duplicate content.

How you do the research is as important as the results we see. While doing research test, test, test and test again to make sure your results are accurate.

Hope this helps everyone.

[Rsberg]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

This happened with almost ALL of my friend's keywords, but obviously ranking
position varied.

I think regardless of what anyone says you’re not going to change your position or mind so does it really matter, not really.

Having said that...


The important thing here is your friends rankings came back, that’s good.

Regarding your assumptions...

Do you or anyone else besides Google really know that it was because of a "penalty" that somehow went away in a matter of minutes or even a day? This happened simply because someone else deleted some content, I doubt it.

There are far too many unaccounted for variables and possibilities...Google being the main one, no one knows what they are doing and sometimes it seems they don’t either.

1. In fact you said "almost all" of his KWs came back into the SERPs, if it really was a penalty then why didn’t ALL of them come back when the offending content was taken down?

2. Also, we all know traffic can fluctuate from day to day, month to month and so on. I've had sites average traffic for weeks and then drop suddenly to stay that way for a couple days...then bounce back or go even higher (which is precisely what your friends did).

3. Your friends traffic spiked shortly after to over 1000 per day...could he have added some backlinks/off page SEO recently that just got picked up, maybe new content got indexed...etc etc.

There are just too many things at play here to positively nail it down to an absolute must be one thing doing it type of situation.

Sorry, I just don't buy it and I doubt many others do either, but it looks good in print and sounds even better to the autoblog haters out there.

Best of luck to you and your friend,
Robert

[guitarjosh]

Originally Posted by BigGameHunter

Its not what we know that gets us in trouble... Its what we know that ain't so that gets us in trouble!

Duplicate content in Google's eye originated with the same article on the same site for the purpose of keyword spamming. A few years ago way before Panda... spammers would write keyword rich articles they wanted to rank for. They decided if one article was good... ten of the same article was better. Google realized what the spammers were doing and created a policy...not a penalty. There policy was to ignore any duplicate article pass the first one on the same site.

Putting an article from another site like CNN on my site is called syndication. You never hear of a syndication penalty. That's because it is perfectly fine. The associated press puts out articles and the news services copy them on their sites all the time.

As far as the results your friend saw first hand may make anyone think the duplicate penalty was real and the cause the result. But there were a lot of variables that could be responsible for this result i.e. do you know the exact time and date your friends articles were indexed by Google? It could be Google just indexed the articles on your friends site and all the results were a great big coincidence.

How did you check his rankings before and after site owner 2 removed the articles? If you checked through your browser your results would have been saved in Cache and his site would come up high in the rankings on your computer because you was on his site. Did you use Scroogle to actually check the ranking before and after?

Site owner 2 removed the articles he could have fallen because of his lack of authority not because of duplicate content.

How you do the research is as important as the results we see. While doing research test, test, test and test again to make sure your results are accurate.

Hope this helps everyone.

That's about as well put as one could. I've been following this thread and laughing.. as I always do with the "duplicate penalty" myth. I make 100% of my $$ with duplicate content.. and I make a lot. I don't "steal content" from blogs. I syndicate.. just like google news does on their own site. Learn the difference. Get rid of your foolish presumptions about duplicate content and join the winning team.

If you think a silly google update will hurt my sites, go learn about creating arrays and a simple php str_replace function.

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by Rsberg

I think regardless of what anyone says you’re not going to change your position or mind so does it really matter, not really.

Having said that...


The important thing here is your friends rankings came back, that’s good.

Regarding your assumptions...

Do you or anyone else besides Google really know that it was because of a "penalty" that somehow went away in a matter of minutes or even a day? This happened simply because someone else deleted some content, I doubt it.

There are far too many unaccounted for variables and possibilities...Google being the main one, no one knows what they are doing and sometimes it seems they don’t either.

1. In fact you said "almost all" of his KWs came back into the SERPs, if it really was a penalty then why didn’t ALL of them come back when the offending content was taken down?

2. Also, we all know traffic can fluctuate from day to day, month to month and so on. I've had sites average traffic for weeks and then drop suddenly to stay that way for a couple days...then bounce back or go even higher (which is precisely what your friends did).

3. Your friends traffic spiked shortly after to over 1000 per day...could he have added some backlinks/off page SEO recently that just got picked up, maybe new content got indexed...etc etc.

There are just too many things at play here to positively nail it down to an absolute must be one thing doing it type of situation.

Sorry, I just don't buy it and I doubt many others do either, but it looks good in print and sounds even better to the autoblog haters out there.

Best of luck to you and your friend,
Robert

Hey.

I appreciate your response. I have been "in the game" since 2008, and would
have likely given the same response to someone who posted a thread
similar to mine. If you knew me in person, you would know that I am the type
of guy to admit when he is wrong.

But I have been in the game long enough to know that my friend wasn't
experiencing any of the variables that you speak of. (Although, you
may have been in the game longer). Matt Cutt's has confirmed my theory
that auto-blogs will sometimes outrank the original source of the article,
which is obviously a problem.

In this case, my friend called up the auto-blogger, told him to remove the
stolen content, and sure enough, my friend jumps back in the rankings.

You have to understand that when you typed in my friend's article titles with
quotes, the auto-blog was appearing in the results, and not my friend.
Google doesn't like to display more than one of the same article in the search
results. In this case, my friend's articles were seen as the duplicate articles,
and the auto-blog's articles were seen as unique.

For every article my friend wrote, if you typed the title with quotes into
Google, the auto-blog would appear in the results, and my friend would not.

That's why I KNOW FOR SURE that my friend was experiencing the duplicate
content.

Again, Matt Cutts has indirectly agreed with me on this statement, and
Kyle Carson has directly responded, and agreed with me.

[Rsberg]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

You have to understand that when you typed in my friend's article titles withquotes, the auto-blog was appearing in the results, and not my friend.

I get what your saying...repeating it every time you post wont change my opinion on it, even if it's in bold print.


I have outranked many of the original content sources myself, but I think there are other reasons for it. Like being seen as more of an authority on the topic due to the rest of the content on my sites...not just that one article. Possibly having better on page and off page SEO (especially for the related KW)....the list goes on and on.

As I said, the most important thing here is that you and your friend are happy his ranking returned...whatever the reason.

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by Rsberg

I get what your saying...repeating it every time you post wont change my opinion on it, even if it's in bold print.


I have outranked many of the original content sources myself, but I think there are other reasons for it. Like being seen as more of an authority on the topic due to the rest of the content on my sites...not just that one article. Possibly having better on page and off page SEO (especially for the related KW)....the list goes on and on.

As I said, the most important thing here is that you and your friend are happy his ranking returned...whatever the reason.

Lol... Doesn't make sense, man. You're saying that if you're more of an
authority, you should outrank the original article source? Anyway, this guy's
auto-blog had page rank 0, and NO backlinks. This was one of the first
things I checked.

But if MATT CUTTS can't get you to change your mind, then you wouldn't
believe me if I said fire is hot, and ice is cold. Oh well. I know what happened,
and those who believe MATT CUTTS know what happened. I'll leave it at that.

[Stuart william]

Its always good option to create unique content for your site, auto blogging is not going work for long term.

[brettb]

Arrgh, this duplicate content penalty myth won't go away.

I too found an autoblog stealing my entire blogger blog, suffice to say I've stopped my RSS feed showing the entire post!

[ysb888]

Sure, Google is not always smart.
I see a blog which is written about Cambodia news (ki-media dot blogspot dot com) and most of their content are duplicate because they take from other news site but they still rank good for those keyword. lol

[warfore]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

...you need to ask why Google doesn't give a crap about indexing your friend's blog, when they are all up in this autoblog's house raising the roof.

Clearly the problem is not your content. It is something else.

Agree completely...why is the site slow to be indexed? There are many ways to get your newly published articles quickly indexed. Don't blame the autoblog...get your stuff noticed and established as the authority.

[Channing]

I gave up on autoblogs. Too worried Google will spank me. So now I have WPRobot...Developer's License no less...just parked in a folder on my computer. It would still be good as a news aggregator or maybe to pull video from youtube and post original content with the video. But I've started my domain selling website and don't have much time for it now. Ah well...

[Rsberg]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

Lol... Doesn't make sense, man. You're saying that if you're more of an authority, you should outrank the original article source?

In typical autoblog hater fashion you've spun the intent of my post to fit your own agenda...

Originally Posted by Rsberg

I have outranked many of the original content sources myself, but I think there are other reasons for it. Like being seen as more of an authority on the topic

When I said "think' (instead of know) and "like" I was presenting it as a possibility, not a certainty. I will be more clear this time so there are no misunderstandings...

A possible reason that autoblogs can be seen as more of an authority (especially to a spider) is that...

Autoblogs typically have much more content, content from different sources, different types of content, content offering different viewpoints which leads to many more related KWs...etc. This is what you do not understand! If you do understand it then you're obviously not willing to admit the power that can have when the site presents the content properly and actually offers value to the reader (as opposed to some autoblogs that just throw a bunch of crap together).

Your friends site could have had 500 original articles on it, all well written and informative (although I doubt it had even close to 500) and it may not have mattered. The point I’m trying to make is that a well organized autoblog filled with quality content can deliver value to the reader that most regular blogs can't. An autoblog can have 2000, 5000 or even more articles on it. It will also most likely have related videos from YouTube, Yahoo Answers content, RSS feeds from other blogs, Flickr photos, news feeds...the list goes on and on. This is what can possibly make an autoblog an authority site in the eyes of a spider, even over sites that originally post the content. Look at all the popular news sites that syndicate content from other sources...same thing, look at Google itself...syndicating content (like snippets from an RSS feed) from across the globe to the entire internet.

I'm not advocating autoblogging or saying that the autoblog in question was "better" than your friends site. I am simply trying to offer one possible explanation as to why the autoblog outranked your friends site with the same content. I’m not even saying that this is for a fact THE reason it happened but it is a possible explanation, one out of thousands...

You're absolutely convinced that there's only one possible reason this happened and it's obvious you hate autoblogging and this is why I think you ignore the fact that there are so many other possibilities, so many other unknown factors...just so many things that could be part of why it happened. Yet according to you there could only be one reason...

This is the last post I make here. I've listened to your viewpoints and even agree with some of the things you've said (more the ideology behind them) but you are so blind to anything that opposes your idea or anything any one else has to say that this has become pointless.

This thread wasn't meant to be a discussion, it was meant to be an anti-autoblogging rant from the beginning and since you won't even acknowledge any other possible explanations you've succeeded in what you set out to do.

Best of luck with your IM
Robert

[ttomp13]

Originally Posted by Rsberg

This thread wasn't meant to be a discussion, it was meant to be an anti-autoblogging rant from the beginning and since you won't even acknowledge any other possible explanations you've succeeded in what you set out to do.

You're right, man. This thread wasn't meant to be a discussion. This thread
was created to inform people that if their traffic has suddenly dropped off, and
auto-blogs are stealing their content, the auto-blogs could very well be the
reason.

There's A Simple Check You Can Perform To See If Auto-Blogs Are Jacking Your Traffic.

If you think that this has happened to you, simply perform a search within
Google for your latest article titles in quotes. Your title will need to be
something unique. For example: "How To Get Rid Of Acne: 22 Tips and Tricks."

If the auto-blog appears over yours for article after article, or if your article
is nowhere to be seen, then you have a problem.

Resolving the Issue

As Matt Cutts said, Panda 2.0 will address this issue. If you want to take
matters into your own hands, you can contact the webmaster. Alternatively,
you can make your RSS feeds into partial feeds to prevent auto-blog software
from jacking your complete article.



If anyone has any questions, I am always willing to help.

Kind regards,
Taylor Thompson

[dagaul101]

I think this is a good thing, nothing worse than having your original content superseded by a scrapper