GOOGLE blacklists Natural News...Part 2

I feel that the real question here is the neutrality of Google.

Indeed it doesn't sound rational business wise to censor a site with 7 millions visitors per month with connections with way more bigger websites in the alt-right sphere who will be more than happy to paint themselves as martyrs. Plus being a pro-Trump site as I read (haven't been there, haven't done that. Neither a reader or a detractor), I guess the site is much safer than a couple of months ago regarding legal actions for "fake news spreading". So it doesn't really make sense if it is a Google decision to preemptively ban this website for fake news.

Concerning shady blackhat SEO tactics, while I am not really an expert, I can see that it is a quite strong webiste with the biggest part of its traffic being direct traffic and Google counting for less than a third. It sounds that their business plan is not to spam Google like there is no tomorrow.

IMO, it is illustrating the war against alternative media and maybe the open conflict between the new administration and the Silicon Valley (remember twitter threatening to ban the president elected if he promotes hate speech on his tweets (WTF!).

It sounds that Google feels really indestructible but if not, it is really a clumsy move for their business. The day internet users will feel that Google is treating results with a political bias, it would certainly mark the beginning of the end. It doesn't take that much effort for users to type blabla.com instead of google.com.
 
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There's a simple way to settle the "there's no politics involved" question about Google's action. A lot of people are aware of Natural News and its articles, and with the research or medical sources cited by it to advocate for alternative health concepts and products.

Let several of them put up new authority sites with no monetization aspects, that restrict the advocacy of alternatives to ONLY those claims specifically backed up by certified doctors and peer reviewed medical studies, drawn from the best referencing done by the site over the years. If Google proceeds to deindex even these well-documented sites, that don't even hawk products, we'll then know the issue is politics, and marginalizing reasonable alternatives.
 
I just got back from a seminar that the ol lady wanted to attend. She is a big fan of alternative medicine and looking for a solution for stroke related neuropathy. This seminar was about using alternative stem cell therapy for unapproved practices. Some which do work, the majority of which are scams. This being Utah, I expect a lot of quackery. However, testimonials in place of legitimate research should be a big red flag. I guess when people are desperate, they shut off their thinkers, and some people are simply unable to think critically.
 
zebrahat said:
Surprised there was no update provided on this story. Google has reversed its ban of the Natural News site due to an immense public backlash:

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-03-...s-who-defend-and-protect-human-knowledge.html
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No, he was uncensored bc he fixed his website and complied with G's terms of service once again. He said he was forced to do it.

He admitted to breaking the TOS on his site. Then he pretends like he's a victim when they unlisted him, and he has to play by their rules bc they're forcing him to. Wtf.

Now it's back to him being a martyr for a nonexistent cause - bc that's what drives traffic and makes him money.

I really need to capitalize on these people.
 
alwaysinvisible said:
No, he was uncensored bc he fixed his website and complied with G's terms of service once again. He said he was forced to do it.

He admitted to breaking the TOS on his site. Then he pretends like he's a victim when they unlisted him, and he has to play by their rules bc they're forcing him to. Wtf.

Now it's back to him being a martyr for a nonexistent cause - bc that's what drives traffic and makes him money.

I really need to capitalize on these people.
Click to expand...

What exactly was he doing?
 
alwaysinvisible said:
No, he was uncensored bc he fixed his website and complied with G's terms of service once again. He said he was forced to do it.

He admitted to breaking the TOS on his site. Then he pretends like he's a victim when they unlisted him, and he has to play by their rules bc they're forcing him to. Wtf.

Now it's back to him being a martyr for a nonexistent cause - bc that's what drives traffic and makes him money.

I really need to capitalize on these people.
Click to expand...

He is a con artist with scams going back to the Y2K scare era.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
What exactly was he doing?
Click to expand...

They were violating G's TOS. Links were being sold for link juice, they had a redirect code in their site and I do believe multiple adsense codes were being used. This was freely admitted by the owner himself. I can't find the post where he basically said he tidied up his website to comply with the TOS.

http://www.webconnoisseur.com/blog/seo/why-natural-news-was-blacklisted-on-google/

This goes more into it. I need to find that post.

Edit:

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-...he-entire-naturalnews-com-website-insane.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-...nks-in-violation-of-webmaster-guidelines.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-...al-news-statement-from-the-health-ranger.html

Gotta hand it to this guy: he really knows how to twist people into a frenzy. He's a guru marketer if I ever saw one.

Every post about Google is so over the top and ridiculous. It plays on people's fears and negative emotions, then gets them to whip out their wallets and buy his products to support him.

Bet he made a windfall during the few days this happened.
 
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bartosimpsonio said:
What exactly was he doing?
Click to expand...

NaturalNews Blogs
Through a malicious censorship campaign that delisted all of NaturalNews.com and Blogs.NaturalNews.com, Google has now forced NaturalNews to remove all third party ad scripts from blogs.naturalnews.com content.

This is a necessary step for Google to restore the search engine visibility of all the site content, including Blogs.NaturalNews.com.

We believe this action by Google is heavy handed and rife with anti-competitive overtones, yet it is what they have forced us to pursue in order to reverse the complete blacklisting of the entire website.

Regrettably, this means your custom ads can no longer appear on your blogs articles. We have been forced to remove them entirely. We strongly regret having to take this action. It has been forced upon us against our will.

In addition to what's mentioned above, Google also identified that some bloggers on Natural News were "selling outbound links" where they were collecting money to write stories that would place outbound links under a blogs entry. This practice is unethical and unauthorized by Natural News, yet it was taking place without our knowledge. We have taken steps to ban those few bloggers who were engaged in this practice. Importantly, the "outbound links" issue was NOT the justification used by Google to censor the entire Natural News website. That issue only affected blogs alone. But it does indicate that a few bloggers were wildly abusing the Natural News blogs opportunity for their own personal gain while jeopardizing the search engine visibility of all the other bloggers.

We greatly appreciate our honest, thoughtful bloggers who contribute to Natural News and help educate the world about natural health. We don't want to see them punished by the actions of a few other bloggers. We are currently exploring ideas for how to structure our blogging operations to protect the "good" bloggers while banning the "bad" bloggers. We will keep you posted on what we develop along these lines.

-Mike Adams
 
alwaysinvisible said:
They were violating G's TOS. Links were being sold for link juice, they had a redirect code in their site and I do believe multiple adsense codes were being used. This was freely admitted by the owner himself. I can't find the post where he basically said he tidied up his website to comply with the TOS.
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So he was doing blackhat stuff with Adsense. Black hat is a crime around here? With over 5.7 MILLION visitors a month, you do know NN doesn't actually need Google to survive, don't you? All the violations justified was a suspension of NN's adsense account (which is just one of its monetization sources, BTW), or merely a notice that the site was in violation---not the outright censoring of an entire site that is in high demand.

And we all know of many, many cases where Google NEVER relists a site after it bans it, even after the site makes the adjustments. It was the public backlash that caused this reversal, not just changes the site made. Google used routine TOS violations as a pretext for outright censorship of a top 10,000 Alexa site. They were looking for an excuse to do, as they have a documented history of structurally marginalizing alternative perspectives through a host of such disguised pretexts. Google tends to back down only when there is mass pushback to their bullying.
 
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alwaysinvisible said:
They were violating G's TOS. Links were being sold for link juice, they had a redirect code in their site and I do believe multiple adsense codes were being used. This was freely admitted by the owner himself. I can't find the post where he basically said he tidied up his website to comply with the TOS.

http://www.webconnoisseur.com/blog/seo/why-natural-news-was-blacklisted-on-google/

This goes more into it. I need to find that post.

Edit:

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-...he-entire-naturalnews-com-website-insane.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-...nks-in-violation-of-webmaster-guidelines.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-...al-news-statement-from-the-health-ranger.html

Gotta hand it to this guy: he really knows how to twist people into a frenzy. He's a guru marketer if I ever saw one.

Every post about Google is so over the top and ridiculous. It plays on people's fears and negative emotions, then gets them to whip out their wallets and buy his products to support him.

Bet he made a windfall during the few days this happened.
Click to expand...

Thanks for researching and finding all those posts. But I gotta say that's still kinda strange.

Having multiple adsense codes in one site is OK. Some forums even do it as a way to reward posters (donno if Digital Point still does it, but others do).

Maybe link selling but how would Google prove it? And as we all know and as his post above mentions, google doesn't care that all those big sites have editors openly selling links for hundreds of $. (Maybe not just the editors, but who knows, maybe some of these big sites are in on the link selling themselves ;) ?)

So I honestly do not see where the Google TOS violation is and why over 400 thousand pages suddenly went back to the index just like that.

Strange things be happenin.
 
The paranoia here is so real I could eat it.

@zebrahat First off, G does not have a legal obligation to list any website.

Second, they directly told him (and he admitted it) that if he fixed the violations they'd restore his site.

He fixed them. His site was reindexed.

He did all that bitching, moaning and pissing but in the end, HE CAVED. He gave in to Google's demands, fixed the errors and got his site indexed again.

So if he doesn't need G to survive, then why the hell did he give in to them? I'd have told them to go fuck themselves and went about my business.

I'm well aware that a site can grow and thrive without G. I run two sites whose sole sources of traffic are forums and little known social media sites. They do just fine and aren't listed in G anywhere.

Oh but he's being bullied right? Or was he trying to do the bullying and failed? Bc by giving in to G - fixing the errors on his site - he just gave them more of the corrupt power that he claims they have.

He shouldn't have done dick. If he believed in his cause so much, and really believed he was right, he wouldn't have caved.

I'm actually disappointed he did. I hate that site but people need to stand up for what they believe in.

@bartosimpsonio *sighs* If there were no violations then he wouldn't have fixed his site to comply with their demands so he can be reindexed. Simple as that. But as he admits to violations, and gives in to their demands, he validates their claims.

As for having his whole site deindexed, G can do whatever they want. It's their search engine. That's exactly why we need to stop obsessing over it and relying on it.

I swear this is so weird. I'm usually the emotional one and now I'm the logical one.

Anyway, this is my last reply here. I'm done.
 
alwaysinvisible said:
@bartosimpsonio *sighs* If there were no violations then he wouldn't have fixed his site to comply with their demands so he can be reindexed. Simple as that. But as he admits to violations, and gives in to their demands, he validates their claims.

As for having his whole site deindexed, G can do whatever they want. It's their search engine. That's exactly why we need to stop obsessing over it and relying on it.

I swear this is so weird. I'm usually the emotional one and now I'm the logical one.

Anyway, this is my last reply here. I'm done.
Click to expand...

I think you're 100% correct in most respects.

I was just trying to understand what, technically, he did wrong. I've never even been to NN before this whole circus, I have no side on this.
 
Also one more thing: Google does NOT usually revert penalties overnight.

Anyone here who's been manually penalized knows that. Sometimes it takes 3 weeks (when it's a light penalty), and even then, pages start to slowly show up again and spread among datacenters.

With this guy I checked site: and it was zero, then overnight I checked again when I saw a particular reply in this thread and it was back there....so it was fast, by all measures it was a fast penalty reversal by Google.

I recall they banned Ebay and it took a WHILE for Ebay to be back in the SERPs. Even for a big site (this site is not even 0,1% of Ebay), this was fast.

This guy may have "caved in" or "fixed" (what?) but ...the whole story is weird.

Again I have no sides in this. Google can shoot the shit if they want to inside their own search engine far as I care, but as an observer of search for the past 20+ years this thing was definitely out of the norm.
 
alwaysinvisible said:
The paranoia here is so real I could eat it.

@zebrahat First off, G does not have a legal obligation to list any website.

Second, they directly told him (and he admitted it) that if he fixed the violations they'd restore his site.

He fixed them. His site was reindexed.

He did all that bitching, moaning and pissing but in the end, HE CAVED. He gave in to Google's demands, fixed the errors and got his site indexed again.

So if he doesn't need G to survive, then why the hell did he give in to them? I'd have told them to go fuck themselves and went about my business.
Click to expand...

There is more gullibility going on here about Google's motives than paranoia. Given the massive overpunishment of banning hundreds of site pages over a handful of questionable 'violations,' it's safe to say Google was not going to re-index them, absent the public outcry, or threat of major legal action. NN knows this, as does anybody else who had to fight bullying and damage to one's business from the likes of Google, YouTube, Paypal et al.

Just because a party like NN is well off as a site, doesn't mean it didn't get mugged. But it does mean they might have the resources to fight back. Adams didn't cave, he forced GOOGLE to cave. He complied with G's complaints to help set up a lawsuit he would have almost certainly won against them (for tortuous interference with his business and online reputation) if they didn't restore. That's why they backed off.
 
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