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I often do not cover crazy rants found in the SEO/Webmaster forums but I figured I start off the new year with showing you how a single post can ruin the future of a web site forever.
A post in both the Google Webmaster Help and Google News Help forums has a complaint from a site owner.
He wrote:
After finding my website off google index over the last 2 months, I have decided that a little one on one time is needed in the google office in Tel Aviv, I think I need to personally discuss the reasons that my website has been de indexed. I have redone my website, re hosted it 3 times and thrown lots of money at it only to be told piss off, by google. I dont like being told to piss off.
He is upset his site was not accepted into Google News or Google's main web search index.
He said he put a ton of money into it, switched hosts 3 times but still after 2 months, he is not included.
So I took a look at the site, which is named yadisrael.org. The name means hand of Israel but if you look at the site, there is a total of two sentences written on the site, which references a third party site. This is suppose to be a "news" site but it has no content, nothing on it at all.
Here is a picture:
The site looks like it was designed right but it looks like whom ever is responsible for content has not done a thing.
Google wants sites with content, not empty sites. What should Google do with a site like this?
Sure, he isn't doing anything against Google's terms of service, but the site is doing nothing at all. It is like being found naked in front of your whole class.
A post like this, in a public forum, can seriously impact the reputation of the site in the future and the reputation of the owner of the site.
It is embarrassing but I hope this encourages more content and the link helps a bit.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and Google News Help.
Image credit to ShutterStock for embarrassed woman.
Comments:
Anthony Pensabene
01/02/2012 02:16 pm
Those "in power" at G probably have penalized the Webmaster for addressing Google with a lower-case "g" - haha. I celebrate this post, Barry. The webmaster wanted attention, and now he has it. He wanted answers and now, hopefully, this elucidates some helpful options. "You can't always get what you want, [but if you use Google forums to cry] sometimes, well you might just find, you get what you need."
blueapple
01/02/2012 05:22 pm
I amazed! why do people not understand one sentence that is "Content is King"
Digsby
01/02/2012 09:16 pm
Could be just a trick to gain some attention and after that sell the domain or 301 to another url.
Sajeet Nair
01/03/2012 05:24 am
Try searching for "something" and check the first result http://www.something.com/. why cant Google classify this site as Naked Site?
Joejh
01/03/2012 07:24 am
says the link builder :I
Roshkov
01/03/2012 02:01 pm
If google has truly blocked http://yadisrael.org for having 2 lines of content then something is very wrong here...... This should worry every SEO "expert" site:yadisrael.org gives no results, while it has a ranking of 2 on the Google index. A professional webmaster should ask themselves why is this site dead ? I think this review is a little under researched and emotional on the authors part. All you have done is increase his search ranking, and I think he is quite happy about that….
Roshkov
01/03/2012 02:05 pm
site:something.comAbout 314 results (0.22 seconds) content : something
Roshkov
01/03/2012 02:13 pm
yad israel = arm of Israel, a militant insinuation, I would not have posted this... there could be repercussions
Barry Schwartz
01/03/2012 02:15 pm
funny
Roshkov
01/03/2012 02:18 pm
we will see
Barry Schwartz
01/03/2012 02:18 pm
I'll be in Israel in 8 days, so we will see. :)
Roshkov
01/03/2012 02:30 pm
staying is Jerusalem ? or Tel -aviv ?
Barry Schwartz
01/03/2012 02:31 pm
See http://searchmarketingexpo.com/israel
Roshkov
01/03/2012 03:20 pm
You missed a few http://yadisrael.org http://yadisrael.net http://yadisrael.com http://yadisrael.co.uk http://yadisrael.org.uk Just to complete your article...
Roshkov
01/03/2012 03:36 pm
http://freelance.yadisrael.org Dont forget about this
Barry Schwartz
01/13/2012 12:44 pm
FYI, this is a common SEO issue. The same site on multiple URLs. Google will find them to be duplicate content and filter them out because they think it is spam, especially in this case. I am sure Tomer and others can help you with this at SMX issue. So Google filtered out all the other domains and kept the .net version. This helps them keep their index with unique pages. See https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayadisrael.net