

Hit by a Google -50 penalty - cupcake_death
http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/10721901433/a-google-50-penalty-hits-explore-to-we-think
Ouch... for a bootstrapped startup, but, we see light at the end of this tunnel.
======
blauwbilgorgel
There are both architectural errors with this website and original content
issues.

I see no brazen violation of the Webmaster Guidelines demanding a penalty. As
far as I know, manual penalties (and their cause) get communicated through
Google Webmaster Tools.

What I do see is architectural issues.

<http://www.explore.to/usa/ks/alma/>

Is an empty page, that is linked to from the homepage. For listing websites:
Don't put up pages for which you have no content.

The search result pages are indexable too. Even though the post claims they
have blocked these pages in robots.txt, they aren't:

hxxp://www.explore.to/listing/usa/ks/alma/see/arts-entertainment-
events/arcades-amusements/

(Won't link as to not pollute your index).

These pages wreak havoc on your crawl budget.

Then on to the issue of original content:

<http://www.explore.to/listing/2/the-vagabond-miami.html>

This isn't content that will ever perform well in search engines. I'd even go
so far as to say these results pollute the search results. They are an address
and hopefully a tiny copied description. What added value does this have for a
visitor? What added value does this have for a search engine to present high
up in the results?

Look at how Yelp or LinkedIn got people to enter content on their listing
pages. Or even Yahoo, look at all the widgets added to listings, to increase
the content size and relevancy.

You even use Facebook comments (which are not crawled all that well by
Googlebot, seeing they are javascript and reside on the Facebook server, not
yours). Any user generated content to make pages more unique, you freely
donate to Facebook, instead of adding it to your pages in plain text.

Conclusion: No (manual) penalty, but bad non-engaging duplicate content
listings combined with a poor site architecture that allows zillions of page
combinations with meager to no content on them. The issue is confounded by not
making sure your site is canonical:

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-
your-canonical.html)

Site architecture and SEO is massively important for the success or failure of
these kinds of websites, and both seem quite poorly thought out at a glance.

If the site is young, the initial boost in rankings (honeymoon period), will
decay overtime and settle together with your page authority, content quality
etc. If you see a decrease in visitors, you could attribute it to this initial
popularity, instead of a penalty. Current visitor numbers might reflect your
content / site quality a lot better.

Look at how SEOmoz helped Yelp produce a solid strategy:
[http://www.quora.com/How-do-StackOverflow-and-Yelp-
achieve-s...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-StackOverflow-and-Yelp-achieve-such-
high-search-results-What-kind-of-SEO-are-they-doing)

~~~
a5seo
All, please re-read the point about content in JavaScript NOT being crawled.
Yes, this is true. Accept it, move on, and don't waste hours or days debating
this with your SEO or product manager.

Google will parse js to find links to index, but don't count on getting credit
for any content you put in there.

------
Jabbles
The post links [http://www.explore.to/listing/usa/me/see/restaurants-
food/br...](http://www.explore.to/listing/usa/me/see/restaurants-
food/brazilian-restaurants/) as an example of a page that he is not sure
should be classified as a "doorway page". I would be annoyed if Google
returned that if I searched for "Brazilian Restaurants in Maine", because it
has no content.

Google's users are looking to find information, not looking for a place to
contribute it.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
The article's guess is correct: I don't see any manual action on this site,
but our algorithms don't think explore.to is a great site.

Jabbles is certainly right, and listen to blauwbilgorgel too--it's good
feedback from typical Google users. When I clicked down randomly, I got to the
category "Body Shops in Bowers, Delaware" only to see "No results were found
for the search criteria you requested, we have included web search results for
your query" with a link to Google's own search results:
[http://www.explore.to/listing/usa/de/bowers/see/auto/body-
sh...](http://www.explore.to/listing/usa/de/bowers/see/auto/body-shops/)

Users dislike landing on pages with no content, and they also dislike landing
on search results from Google's search results--especially if it's Google's
own search results.

Once you've removed the no-content pages, you still have many issues. I
searched for pizza in New York and the #1 result was in Florida. That's poor
quality, but even your #1 listing for pizza in New York had no original
content. It was just an address, a phone number (which I had to click again to
get?), and a map. Everything looked autogenerated. No reviews, images,
comments, hours--anything, really.

So my advice to you would be to step back and ask yourself, "What separates
explore.to from the thousands of other sites that just grab or license data
from Acxiom or other yellow page data providers? Why would anyone searching on
Google want to land on my pages instead of other the tens of thousands of
other yellow page sites on the web?" Then concentrate on really pushing on the
areas where you can add value for users.

~~~
cupcake_death
We've reorganized our backlog and really appreciate the time taken to
highlight those areas we need to place the most resource and focus.

------
ceejayoz
The "fingers walking" logo they're using is a trademark of the Yellow Pages,
so I expect them to get hit by a bank account -$millions penalty shortly, too.
Logo theft from a litigious company = bad idea.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
That caught me off-guard as well.

But from Wikipedia/Yellow_Pages:

    
    
      The term Yellow Pages is not a registered 
      name within the United States and is freely used by many 
      companies.
    
      AT&T ... never applied for a trademark on the logo. While
      they eventually received a trademark on a different 
      version of the logo, the version with the three fingers was 
      not considered by AT&T to be proprietary and they in fact 
      allowed any telephone directory to use it.

------
chopsueyar
It is more fun when you are banned from AdWords and have no recourse.

Google will actually refuse to take your money.

At least with the organic stuff, you can modify your site.

------
cupcake_death
Thanks everyone for the valuable feedback. All the comments here have been
taken on-board and are part of the new highest priority for the backlog.

------
Hisoka
I've had cases where I've had sites penalized for no good reason. Sometimes
Google makes mistakes. Plan B, for me would be buy another domain (maybe an
old one with some Google juice), and transfer all the content to that one.
Plan C would be to redesign your business model so it places less importance
on SEO, and more on recurring traffic, and traffic from other places

------
markokocic
Sites with grey font on grey background, similar to the one posted here,
should be algorithmically removed from search index, since it is malware that
is trying to harm it's visitors eyes.

