OUCH!! Is Google Slapping Product Review Sites?

Who cares if the site is de-indexed by G00gle? Does the site still exist? Of course it does.

For a review site, you should be worried about driving traffic from other sources, like articles marketing, video marketing, and social bookmarking. Not SE traffic. The last place I worry about traffic to my review sites are from g00gle. I think people are making a big to do about nothing.

Here is a simple suggestion if you are worried:

Setup a review site
Then pound EZA with keyword rich articles and send the traffic to the review site.
Done

It is this simple.

I wanted to post some rant (attacking lots of people) but I might get in trouble, if someone say to go ahead and post, I will post.

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attack the stupidity....not the people

j

For a review site, you should be worried about driving traffic from other sources, like articles marketing, video marketing, and social bookmarking. Not SE traffic. The last place I worry about traffic to my review sites are from g00gle. I think people are making a big to do about nothing.

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I disagree......we get lots of organic traffic to some of our review sites (400-500) hits a day. That = $$$$

If you dont look at what google is doing and pay attention then I feel sorry for you.

I personally like changes...weeds out the weak.

J

jvmarket said:

I disagree......we get lots of organic traffic to some of our review sites (400-500) hits a day. That = $$$$

If you dont look at what google is doing and pay attention then I feel sorry for you.

I personally like changes...weeds out the weak.

J

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I was just putting a different spin on the situation. There are always different ways around a situation.

I've seen a drastic drop in Google search engine results in July. I primarily promote Amazon products and have rewritten the descriptions provided by them. Unfortunately, I believe I was manually reviewed and deemed a thin affiliate site. This may have something to do with the fact that Google is losing ad revenue and could be de-indexing affiliate sites that do not run Adsense.

Further complicating things I just noticed that amazon has begun banning affiliate from certain states. So far Rhode Island, Hawaii and North Carolina affiliate have been banned. This is due to new internet taxes those states have implemented. In my opinion being an amazon affiliate is a dying occupation.

This post is about flogs and the FTC, Oprah and Dr. Oz taking action against them.
But there is some crossover to Google slapping review sites in the many comments :

Please disregard double post. Bloody servers.

Hmm, Ive seen this news posted on the SEO forums as well. Beware, has anyone here actually gotten their review site banned yet?

If what the OP said was true (and I'm not vouching for it in total) it would further confirm that BH is the way to go, not WH. If you follow the rules, and the gurus, and can get slapped anyway, white hat clearly puts you in a poor position.

The question is not whether or not Google is doing so or is headed towards doing it, the issue is why potentially base a business on another company's current filter and ranking formula in the first place? Black hat allows you to de-couple your marketing from the corporate teet, hence you have better positioning. To heck with the rules and gurus, slap back!

w4rl0rdx said:

Hmm, Ive seen this news posted on the SEO forums as well. Beware, has anyone here actually gotten their review site banned yet?

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Never had a review page banned, and the last one I did for the last big launch was ranked and indexed as normal. I still would recommend that you focus on being unique and offering real value in your review pages.

zebrahat said:

If what the OP said was true (and I'm not vouching for it in total) it would further confirm that BH is the way to go, not WH. If you follow the rules, and the gurus, and can get slapped anyway, white hat clearly puts you in a poor position.

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I disagree. I love BH and use it all the time, but using BH can get you into trouble with not only Google but with your affiliate vendors as well. WH works great in its own ways.

With review pages, it's about standing out and really giving good content. Whenever you see a big launch coming up, if you search for the product all you see are review pages with the SAME content, the SAME bonuses, the SAME copywriting, etc...Everyone uses the exact same "cookie cutter" style marketing. This is what ruins conversions and rankings. Why would Google want to rank you high if you are just the same as everyone else?

You have to give good, quality content, and give real value. The best way to build a following is by not following yourself.

I wasn't saying WH had no value, just that it has numerous 'gotchas' that can make it as problematic as BH. If you have to keep glancing behind your back for new rules coming down from the SEO gods that may suddenly change your 'quality' site to sandboxed, that's the same as revising your BH strategies to workaround new obstacles. An independent IM business needs to be about more than following the guidelines of Google.