Are You Seeing What I'm Seeing? Article Directories.

[Allen Graves]

Is it just me, or are all of the ranked articles from goarticles and articledashboard disappearing from the SERPs? I also notice this happening for a few other "prominent" directories.

What's up?

Two questions, do you notice this? and if so, why do you suppose it's happening?

Allen Graves

[pcdoctor]

Good question. Maybe they could be moving servers or I don't know. I'm not sure if articles expire at a certain point.

[Allen Graves]

I don't mean on the directory side...I mean they're losing their positions in Google. Looks to be rather abruptly, too.

AL

[Hamida Harland]

I've noticed it alright - I haven't seen a Goarticles or Articledashboard article on page 1 of Google for a long time. Come to think of it Ezinearticles seems to be the only one on page 1 these days.

Even Squidoo, Hubpages and other web 2.0 sites aren't doing as well as they used to. For instance if you take a look at any of the big product launch keywords e.g. Google Massacre, Affiliate Payload, Google Nemesis etc these terms on Google used to be completely dominated by web 2.0 but not anymore.

[Allen Graves]

That's what I thought too...I just didn't want to be the first to say it. LOL

I'm watching things very closely and, I hate to say it, but I am also losing a lot of articles from the SERPs. I don't know what's going on, man!

Hopefully it's just one of those big Google changes and everything will come back better than ever!

AL

[mmurtha]

Hamoda,

I agree with you totally!

Al and all ...

I am seeing many things get taken out of the serps, not simply articles.

Google's been working on this last update for weeks now.

It could be because of the crappy content on sites/blogs/hubpages/lenses/ and yes even their new knol.

The article directories are loaded with PLR and other regergitated info and nothing is original. I saw this one coming when EZA changed their policies last year or 2, when they stated they will no longer tolorate PLR submissions in any sense of the word.

To be honest, none of the SEs want spammy indexes, and I don't blame them.

All the best ...


Mary

[Dan Grossman]

Originally Posted by Allen Graves

and if so, why do you suppose it's happening?

Because the crap that people spam out to article directories isn't adding value to the web, and search engines are supposed to bring you to the best sites to answer your query. Republished garbage is very rarely the right result. Real authors have known this all along and get their stuff published once on a high quality, high traffic content site (or their own site alone)... and get paid for it, or a good backlink that will count as the duplicated junk gets filtered out and becomes worthless.

[rondo]

My Articledashboard articles are still ranking well. GoArticles never did rank well in my experience.

Andrew.

[dsiomtw]

I'm not an article marketer, but I've been tempted to start a high quality article directory in the past - because 99% of them flat out suck.

Even the "good" ones allow articles that are filled with spelling and grammar mistakes, etc.

I know it must be a tough job, but here are a few examples from your own site Allen...

I went to your site and clicked the Home-Based Business category, and then clicked the first article:

"Make Money Online Like a Guru"
Make Money Online Like a Guru

There are 2 spelling errors in just the first 2 sentences!

The next 2 articles are by the same author, so it's more of the same junk.

The 4th article is "How To Make Quick Cash On The Internet" by Dang Vu:
How To Make Quick Cash On the Internet

Here's the first sentence:

"There are a large number of ordinary people are online everyday in hopes that they will find out the ways to make quick cash to pay for their wants."

This is a joke. No offense to anyone for which English is not their first language, but articles like this simply should not be allowed on a site that is targeted to English speaking users.

These are just the first few articles I looked at randomly, and quite frankly, they all have problems like this. I assume the whole directory is filled with articles like this, with of course an occasional gem here and there.

But let's be realistic. Is this kind of content actually valuable to anyone? I don't think so, and I don't think Google thinks so either. The overwhelming majority of the articles are clearly written for SEO purposes only, with no useful or original content, filled with grammar and spelling mistakes, etc.

Don't mean to rip on you Allen, but ...

Let me put it another way. What percentage of the articles in an average article directory would a serious business/publisher want to publish in their ezine or on their website (because it's high quality content, and not for SEO purposes). I'd say 0.5% of the total articles, maybe.

The rest provide no value, other than maybe to the writer and the article directory owner. I know this, Google knows this, and I think even Allen knows this.

[Tiger]

The google knol (article) service just began recently.


Cutting out competition ( other article directories ) gradually would make it less noticeable to the world rather than doing it all at once.


/Steve

[Dan Grossman]

Originally Posted by Tiger

The google knol (article) service just began recently.

Cutting out competition ( other article directories ) gradually would make it less noticeable to the world rather than doing it all at once.

/Steve

Penalizing the SERPs of an entire genre of websites to benefit its own sites would be something never before seen in the history of Google. Considering the potential legal ramifications and effect on its reputation, it's highly unlikely there's a manual penalty being applied to article sites. More likely the algorithm was just changed in a way that's harsher to all low quality republished content to improve the quality of search results.

[Tiger]

The advent of WEB 2.0 services online, will necessarily negate
the use of static article directories in the future, but not just
at the moment. It must happen gradually.


I believe spontaneously generated user content is the way to be
thinking for the coming years. The partly commercialized
way of creating content for the web at the moment served us
well, but more than likely will become outdated.

/Steve

P.S. After writing this, I got an eyeful of the social bookmarking icons at the
bottom of the page. There are 37 of them ! Dont you wish you owned one ?

[rhondaklewis]

Wow! If google knol is taking out the competition, I have to say they are being very genius about it. I also notice that articles were not showing up. I would look for my articles and they just would not be there, so I checked to see how many enzinearticles were on the first page in my niche and there weren't any. I guess I better start using Knol now.

[sparrow]

Another Google reshuffling has been in the works for a while now I have seen a lot of strange things happening lately.

Some times they work themselve out but time will only tell.

Ed

[Colin Evans]

I don't think it has much to do with the quality of the content, it seems Google has continued to clobber anything which can be gamed/tweaked/fiddled to get higher SERPS.

Web 2.0 sites have long been promoted as ways to get top SERPS so they have been targeted.

Even video sites and PR sites seem to have been clobbered...

It's too soon to tell, perhaps in a few days after the dust has settled we will know more.

[lakshaybehl]

I recently posted a complee new thread about that!

Wonder if you saw that...

==> Ahead of Google Slaps <==

And yes, its the Search Engine's job to advance and serve their "customers" ie the searchers wel, so they want the most relevant piece of information rto appear up there!

So only article marketing could make it a tough nut to crack.

Anyways, I have talked about it in much detail there on the thread! I think that will explain most of it!

Please feel free to ask questions!

-Lakshay
..

[bizlady08]

I don't know, but I kind of like seeing the crappy articles on directories, 'cause that means mine are more likely to get picked up! yes? But when it comes to finding content for my site, I've visited as many as a half-dozen of these directories before finding even one article that I am willing to use...

Originally Posted by dsiomtw

I'm not an article marketer, but I've been tempted to start a high quality article directory in the past - because 99% of them flat out suck.

Even the "good" ones allow articles that are filled with spelling and grammar mistakes, etc.

I know it must be a tough job, but here are a few examples from your own site Allen...

I went to your site and clicked the Home-Based Business category, and then clicked the first article:

"Make Money Online Like a Guru"
Make Money Online Like a Guru

There are 2 spelling errors in just the first 2 sentences!

The next 2 articles are by the same author, so it's more of the same junk.

The 4th article is "How To Make Quick Cash On The Internet" by Dang Vu:
How To Make Quick Cash On the Internet

Here's the first sentence:

"There are a large number of ordinary people are online everyday in hopes that they will find out the ways to make quick cash to pay for their wants."

This is a joke. No offense to anyone for which English is not their first language, but articles like this simply should not be allowed on a site that is targeted to English speaking users.

These are just the first few articles I looked at randomly, and quite frankly, they all have problems like this. I assume the whole directory is filled with articles like this, with of course an occasional gem here and there.

But let's be realistic. Is this kind of content actually valuable to anyone? I don't think so, and I don't think Google thinks so either. The overwhelming majority of the articles are clearly written for SEO purposes only, with no useful or original content, filled with grammar and spelling mistakes, etc.

Don't mean to rip on you Allen, but ...

Let me put it another way. What percentage of the articles in an average article directory would a serious business/publisher want to publish in their ezine or on their website (because it's high quality content, and not for SEO purposes). I'd say 0.5% of the total articles, maybe.

The rest provide no value, other than maybe to the writer and the article directory owner. I know this, Google knows this, and I think even Allen knows this.

[Mac Wheeler]

Has anybody else noticed a problem with Articledashboard articles disapearing? I had a couple of hundred published with them a couple of months back, now they are all gone from my account? I stopped using them because of this, what's the point if they delete them?

[Dan Grossman]

Originally Posted by bizlady08

I don't know, but I kind of like seeing the crappy articles on directories, 'cause that means mine are more likely to get picked up! yes? But when it comes to finding content for my site, I've visited as many as a half-dozen of these directories before finding even one article that I am willing to use...

You don't want to be posting free-to-reprint articles on your site anyway. They're not going to rank well because of duplicate content filtering, and if they're any good and bring in some backlinks to the page, those links are worth less because again the page is known duplicate content.

Buy some unique articles (constant-content.com), or pay a writer to write for your site specifically. It's not that expensive, and having unique, well written content will be so much more beneficial to you in the long run.

It's always, always about adding value to the web...

[Scott Carpenter]

Originally Posted by Tiger

The google knol (article) service just began recently.

Cutting out competition ( other article directories ) gradually would make it less noticeable to the world rather than doing it all at once.

/Steve

According to Wikipedia, Knol is employing nofollow links - outgoing links won't affect SERPs, but the articles are still getting indexed and will therefore affect SERPs. There is some more info on their potential conflict of interest here

[YiKeS]

G`day,

I believe it`s the article directories themselves
and how they`re setup rather than the articles.

What I mean is a large percentage of these "article directories" have that
many fricken ads around the article ... they`re more "ad directories" with
articles than the other way round ... disgusting!

You have the right idea with your directory Allen

I think some submission services may be doing more harm than good also
... last week I was researching this very thing, my partner wrote articles
for a new site of ours and I was tracking the articles ... well most of the
first and second page results for them were on these "ad directories".

I searched two days ago and THEY are gone from the SERP`s ... the
directories without all the ads jammed around the article are there ...

Backlinks are good ... CRAP backlinks are bad ... to many ads surrounding
what is supposed to be quality content is just CRAP ... some of the sites
I saw last week had more ads than the Classified Section of your local
paper ... lol ... jammed above the article, both sides then insult to article
Author injury ... INBETWEEN the end of the article and the resource box

They did it with MFA sites ... I see little difference ...

Christopher J.

[Seattle Mike]

Originally Posted by Christopher J.

G`day,

I believe it`s the article directories themselves
and how they`re setup rather than the articles.

What I mean is a large percentage of these "article directories" have that
many fricken ads around the article ... they`re more "ad directories" with
articles than the other way round ... disgusting!

You have the right idea with your directory Allen

Christopher J.

Ad directories is right! I mean it is one thing to have a few to earn them money but you can hardly read an article on some of them.

That's way more obnoxious than some of the spammy adsense sites we all used to hate. At least they were easy to see how bad the article was, fast.

[bizlady08]

Thanks for the link, Dan--and the advice. I hadn't thought about "overuse" affecting SEO. If you check out my very new site, you'll see I'm slowly building content anyways. I appreciate the advice.

Phoebe

Originally Posted by Dan Grossman

You don't want to be posting free-to-reprint articles on your site anyway. They're not going to rank well because of duplicate content filtering, and if they're any good and bring in some backlinks to the page, those links are worth less because again the page is known duplicate content.

Buy some unique articles (constant-content.com), or pay a writer to write for your site specifically. It's not that expensive, and having unique, well written content will be so much more beneficial to you in the long run.

It's always, always about adding value to the web...

[dsiomtw]

Hey Allen, didn't mean to piss you off or scare you off with my "attack" using your site as an example. I noticed you fixed the spelling errors in the first article I used as an example, and I was hoping you'd return to the conversion to share your further thoughts. I didn't mean anything as an attack on you or your site, but as an article directory owner I think we all do appreciate your insights on article marketing, and it's future going forward.

[eprenuer]

i haven't noticed this, sorry

[Michael Dominic]

A lot of my GoArticles articles disappeared from SERPs. I found it very easy to get ranked high with them but I personally don't mind, it's not the end of the world...

[Christie Love]

This is the very reason why I've narrowed my article submissions to only one directory... Ezine Articles. I would like to diversity more, however my main purpose for submitting articles is to get as much traffic as I can to my sites. And that's by getting them on the first page of Google. It's a shame that only one source is dominating article directories.

I hate putting all my eggs in one basket. But, for the moment, submitting to Ezine solely seems like that best option.

[Dan Grossman]

Would you not get the search traffic directly if you had your own content site on the topic you write about, filled with your unique articles? A single click to your property, without an intermediate click through Ezine Articles? Or do you think your content isn't good enough to garner backlinks to develop the link popularity of your own site?

[Allen Graves]

Thanks for pointing out those articles to me.

Honestly, I'm more worried about the Hurricane that is coming my way.

Tropical Storm Fay Information

I live just north of Tampa, Florida on the Gulf Coast.

I got my search results back last night, THANK GOD! So whatever happened has reversed itself...at least on my domains. But I am still not seeing GoArticles or ArticleDashboard...or even Buzzle or ArticlesBase or any of them lately!

AL

p.s. All I did was type the URL into my post (above) abd the forum software automatiucally linked it with the page's Title text...pretty cool.

[Colin Evans]

You don't want to be posting free-to-reprint articles on your site anyway. They're not going to rank well because of duplicate content filtering, and if they're any good and bring in some backlinks to the page, those links are worth less because again the page is known duplicate content.

Where on earth did find this information?

Have you tested it and proved it to be so?

I ask because my experience has led me to believe the most important factor is the number of links pointing to each page. The more links a page has, the higher it appears in the SERPS.

[Dan Grossman]

Originally Posted by Colin Evans

Where on earth did find this information?

Straight from Google's mouth more than two years ago:
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly dealing with duplicate content

77,000+ results for "duplicate content penalty" (in quotes, exact match)

Those links from the same article published all over the place are virtually worthless compared to naturally placed one-way links from people referring to your site by choice. Google isn't stupid.

[Allen Graves]

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE LINKS GUYS!

It's about the content...period, end of story. Google doesn't give a crap about what the articles link to...they care that the content was republished "naturally."

There's a cat in the bag here folks. I'm tellin' ya.

AL

[Colin Evans]

Dan, if the Google info was true, an article published on your own new website would outrank the same article placed on EzineArticles...

It doesn't happen until your own website exceeds the link reputation of EzineArticles - like I said before, in my experience it's the number of links which counts...

IMO - By going on link reputation, Google neatly sidesteps the cross site duplicate content issue until they have the computer processing power to do so effectively...

[Allen Graves]

Colin...getting back to the theme of the thread...I am thinking that this may soon be a reality...

[Dan Grossman]

Originally Posted by Colin Evans

Dan, if the Google info was true, an article published on your own new website would outrank the same article placed on EzineArticles...

Only if your site had better link reputation than EzineArticles' pages pointing to the article... they see EA and consider that the authority copy. All the sites that pick up your article from EA, though, those links are not valuable and they're not showing up in searches unless you force it (like searching for your title in quotes).

Originally Posted by Colin Evans

IMO - By going on link reputation, Google neatly sidesteps the cross site duplicate content issue until they have the computer processing power to do so effectively...

In a normal search, if multiple copies of the same article turn up, they filter all but what they consider the authority version of that content based (indirectly) on PR. That's why you get unique results when you search Google, and not lists of the same pages filling up the SERPs.

If they can do that filtering on the fly in the few microseconds it takes to respond to your search, of course they have the computing power to filter the value of links from those duplicated pages in PR computations that happen throughout the day.

Plus, why are you arguing with Google on what Google does?

[Colin Evans]

Allen, any system which can be exploited to manipulate Google's ranking will eventually be slapped.

IMO - Web 2.0 sites have been heavily promoted because they can help get your site good rankings, so Google has devalued their influence... I have no proof, just a gut feeling.

Of the keywords I've been tracking, EzineArticles, Squidoo, Hub Pages and About.com now rank fairly close together, but none are on a first page any more - for most of the keywords they now appear on or after page three.

[Colin Evans]

Plus, why are you arguing with Google on what Google does?

Dan, I'm not arguing with Google!

What Google says, what Google does, what others say Google says, and what others say Google does, are all entirely different...

So my experience is the only reality I believe in... Your reality is different, go with it - I'm sticking to mine...

[Brian Tayler]

A sad reality is that the authority of these article directories is non-existant. Anyone can be a "published" author with authority. This really doesn't mesh well with real life, and what people are looking for online.

Google wants to push forward credable authority sites. CNN, C-Net, RollingStone, etc. (you get the picture). The obvious difference is sites with editors proofing articles from paid, reference checked, degree holding, writers. Writers who have authority on there own... only exacerbated by the fact that they are with a respected long standing publication.

Google obviously knows this.

I'm not by any means saying there aren't credable people with really good content on article directories... but you have to make this clear unbiaosed observation... Without wanting to weed through crap and fluff... would you rather an article directory with unverified authors or a publication where it's reputation (and thus it's business) rests on the fact that their authors are credable?

[Colin Evans]

In a normal search, if multiple copies of the same article turn up, they filter all but what they consider the authority version of that content based (indirectly) on PR. That's why you get unique results when you search Google, and not lists of the same pages filling up the SERPs.

Ahh... Now we're getting closer to what really happens - The page with the most incoming links will be the page displayed because it is seen as the page with the most authority.

The "duplicated junk which is filtered out" are the pages which do not have the authority, which unfortunately often include the true original page...

Scraped black hat pages can get the coveted 1st page ranking because the black hatter has a huge linking network at their disposal - they can give any page they want enough authority to get 1st page search results.

BTW - these black hat sites can look more professional than the true original, so to the casual observer the 1st page ranking is deserved, the information is well presented and of good quality - they have no idea the content is scraped...