Google Says Pages are "Low Quality", so They DROPPED completely from SERPS.

[Ta1212]

I saw a few client sites of mine drop about 50+ spots from the 2nd page in the past few days, and I knew something was up. Then, in Google Webmaster tools, I find the following message from Google regarding each of these rapidly dropping sites:



Dear site owner or webmaster of xxxxxx.com
We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, we detected low-quality pages on your site which do not provide substantially unique content or added value. Examples could include thin affiliate pages, doorway pages, automatically generated content, or copied content. For more information about unique and compelling content, visit http:.....
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team"
---END MESSAGE----



These sites were NOT spammy sites, nor did they have any adsense, or affiliate ads AT ALL. They did, however, shoot up quite rapidly in search engine rankings, as a result of fairly diligent SEO efforts.


Have you ever had this happen to you? Were you able to bounce back, and if so, how long did it take you? I've been doing this for a very long time, and have never ran into this issue.



These particular websites are in a niche in which they each have a good amount of original content, and some aspects that are the exact same real estate properties in which they are listed under appropriate regions and categories. I think this is what is triggering the "low quality" content. The sites do share common property listings with similar descriptions, but this content is less than 1/3 of the site's content... and the rest is mostly original, with various Wikipedia information cited in regional information pages.



The BEST part...One of these websites was JUST about to hit Page 1 for a ridiculously tough keyword. We win some.. we lose some, huh? I'm confident I'll bounce these back up soon enough.



Thanks in advance for the feedback!

[paulgl]

I'd say you need to take a hint and drop the SEO business
like a bad habit.

You come here to argue against google?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Good luck on resubmitting them.

Don't hold your breath about bouncing back. The
sites have been de-indexed. The one and only
true penalty.

Paul

[tim_buchalka]

I think your definition of what is spammy and what Google say are different.

Take a real good impartial look at your content. Is it something that someone would really want to read?

Google are pretty clear on the type of content they want.

Take a look at this google article form their senior engineer.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites

Can you honestly say you content meets with all this criteria?

These two points come to mind (from the above link).

1. Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

2. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

I'm suspecting you got busted because the content is not as good as you think.

Not too late to change it, so don't give up.

Good luck hope you get it sorted.

[paulgl]

You're speaking as if something major is not wrong.

The sites were obviously junk and/or using junk
tactics.

Paul

[tim_buchalka]

Originally Posted by paulgl

You're speaking as if something major is not wrong.

The sites were obviously junk and/or using junk
tactics.

Paul

While you probably right, there is no certainty of it without looking at the site and assessing the backlinks, etc.

In any event major problem or not, it is usually recoverable if you are prepared to put some work into fixing the issues.

If the tactics are at fault, then obviously you have to stop using them. If it's the content, fix that.

The fact is you can get re-included in Google search engines results if you clean up your act and then re-submit your site.

[Ta1212]

Tim, I've spoken to a few people who have had the same response as you. Since these are not affiliate sites, and they are not really selling anything at this point, it will be completely feasible to re-do the content and structure to appease Google.

[Ta1212]

An important note: These sites haven't been de-indexed.. just dropped from serps for all of it's previously ranking keywords. Interesting. I've had colleagues get completely "sent to hell" and I do agree with Paulgl that you have to be putting out some serious junk for that to happen. It seems pretty hard to get the axe like that.. you'd have to be doing some very careless things. (which these colleagues were totally doing). I actually had a friend TRY to get a site de-indexed to see how tough it was, and it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

What confused me was that Google still wants me to resubmit for consideration. Why would they say that if the sites and their pages are still coming up in Google? Simply to consider ranking them for anything again? That does make sense...

In my 12 years, this is a first..

[MagnusOMX]

Originally Posted by paulgl

I'd say you need to take a hint and drop the SEO business
like a bad habit.

You come here to argue against google?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Good luck on resubmitting them.

Don't hold your breath about bouncing back. The
sites have been de-indexed. The one and only
true penalty.

Paul

I certainly agree! You said all there is to say here, I guess...

[Ta1212]

They haven't been de-indexed. Not yet at least..

[retsek]

Is your site using a butt ugly theme that thousands of other internet marketers use? Does it have a great design and provide a good experience for the visitor. Are navigational links easy to find.

You can't look at content alone.

And they won't bounce back. While these penalties are timed (6 months? 1 year? 2 years?), they don't bounce back to any position they had before unless you clean them up and do the recosideration request as suggested. And even then, don't count on any links built previously to provide any value to rankings.

[tim_buchalka]

Originally Posted by Ta1212

An important note: These sites haven't been de-indexed.. just dropped from serps for all of it's previously ranking keywords. Interesting. I've had colleagues get completely "sent to hell" and I do agree with Paulgl that you have to be putting out some serious junk for that to happen. It seems pretty hard to get the axe like that.. you'd have to be doing some very careless things. (which these colleagues were totally doing). I actually had a friend TRY to get a site de-indexed to see how tough it was, and it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

What confused me was that Google still wants me to resubmit for consideration. Why would they say that if the sites and their pages are still coming up in Google? Simply to consider ranking them for anything again? That does make sense...

In my 12 years, this is a first..

Don't listen to the nay sayers in this thread. These people have no real idea what they are talking about.

Even sites that have been de-indexed completely can come back if you are prepared to put enough time into it to fix the issues that caused Google to de-index them and to then re-submit.

Of course whether it would be worth doing this as opposed to just starting again on another domain is another question.

In any event this is not the case here as you mention you have not been de-indexed. I suggest focusing initially on building a great site with loads of great compelling content ignoring the backlinks completely (for now).

Do some internal linking using the keywords you want to rank and maybe remove any forms of monetization from the sites for now and then re-submit.

It will most likely take a while before they again appear in the search engines.

Did you look at that list from google I supplied the link to? Make sure you really feel you are meeting those guidelines.

Incidentally its likely your backlinks aren't the problem. If it was backlinks related then it would be possible to take down your opposition by pointing "bad" backlinks at them.

The only exception to this was if you had a link farm of some description and Google have figures that out (and attributed all those links to you).

But general backlinks would be unlikely to have caused this, they will just be ignored.

Focus on the user experience and content.

Good luck!

[peatermead]

I agree with you completely but some people only say negatives.

BTW I like your signature. It resembles to C.P.P!

Originally Posted by tim_buchalka

Don't listen to the nay sayers in this thread. These people have no real idea what they are talking about.

Good luck!

[MagnusOMX]

Originally Posted by tim_buchalka

Don't listen to the nay sayers in this thread.

You are right about that. Doing mistakes, as most of us has done (me included), is part of the learning process. We should of course be open to answering questions if we know, or think we know, the answers. I am sorry, Ta1212, my post above did not add any value what so ever to this thread.

Originally Posted by tim_buchalka

Incidentally its likely your backlinks aren't the problem. If it was backlinks related then it would be possible to take down your opposition by pointing "bad" backlinks at them.

Absolutely right. That would be the easiest way to bring down a competitor.

[yukon]

If your sites/pages are still indexed then nothing is wrong.

Build better on-page SEO & better external links. Page titles & unique canonical URLs are also important, to keep pages from looking like on-site duplicate content.

[GyuMan82]

I think we need to see some urls