stevesdata
Regular Member
- Nov 3, 2008
- 357
- 140
Found this on axed thin aff sites: (It says BANS but applies to other thin aff niche stores too)
Why Does Google Deindex a BANS Website?
If you were looking for the golden answer to why sites are being deindexed, you have come to the wrong place! The truth is... we can all make educated guesses, but until someone from Google steps up and says "This is Why..." (which will never happen) nobody will ever know the exact reason. One thing for sure, it's more than a manual review at this point, as it would take quite a team of reviewers to find and deindex so many sites in such a short time!
One of the things that caught Dave's eye, was the text that is common to all sites. Things like "Time Left" and others like "See more Item on eBay", could be built into the G algorithm, and used to flag sites for further review. From that point, an engineer could review several of the sites in the flagged queue, find additional common ground between all of the sites, and ultimately tell the search index to ignore these sites. Dave is definitely on the right track in narrowing down what may be causing the flags in the Google Algorithm, so I started checking my own sites... looking for the common ground!
What I found was not dramatic, but there are several things to consider when you review your own. In my case, I have several BANS 3.0 sites with common text deindexed. BUT... at the same time, I have some 1.3 and 2.0 sites, with the same exact text that are still in the index!
My Own Site Observations
We have all heard this 100 times... focus on the content and you will be fine right? Maybe not! Many of us have tons of unique content on our sites, yet they were still dropped. Which led me to look at the sites still in the index, versus those that were dropped! Between Kim and Myself, we started with "many" sites... and have cut it back to less than 20, some by choice... others by the deindex nightmare!
Varying Factors among Dropped Sites
1. Unique and Relevant Content
Some of the sites dropped had ALOT of unique content, others had none! The most curious factor I found on this topic was in a few older versions of BANS stores (1.3 and 2.0 bans) I still have jockeying around, that have NO original content at all, but are still indexed just fine and bringing visitors on a daily basis!
2. Hosting
Some of the sites were on one hosting plan, others on different accounts. To me, this means they were not all related to the hosting account by IP or DNS and dropped for that specific reason.
3. Themes
Some of the sites dropped had the same theme as some that are still fine! If it were the same theme on all sites, I would know it was related. This takes Themes out of the equation on my sites.
4. Text on Page
Some common text was found on both dropped and still fine sites! Seeing the same text across both dropped and listed sites, tells me this was not the only factor in the drops.
5. Inbound links
Some of the sites had high numbers of links, others had few or none!
6. Blogged about Them
While some of the deindexed sites have been blogged about here, others have not! Additionally, some of the sites I HAVE blogged about, are still fine!
Common Factors on Dropped Sites
1. Same Backend Software! (BANS 3.0)
2. ALL customization was done inside the BANS admin! (Show this, hide that etc)
3. ALL sites had high numbers of 302 errors in the site logs! (This is found in BANS 3.0 stores)
While there may be other common and different factors such as the paypal icons, ebay links etc... within just a few hours, I narrowed the ONE common factor to all of my sites that have been dropped.... they ALL had BANS 3.0 on them! Literally NONE of my pre-3.0 stores are deindexed! I DO have several BANS 3.0 stores that still do quite well, but they are highly modified from the download package you get when you upgrade or buy the product new, and ALL of them have a blog on the front or backend!
Take an inventory of your own sites... do you have any BANS 2.0 stores still? If so, are they still indexed? If you want to see a few examples of the very poorly built and never updated BANS 1.3-2.0 stores I have that are still in the index, just shoot me an email and I will send back a link! If you remember one of my original How-To series from August of 2007 at the kids college fund site, you will recall that I gave away a website about Grill Auctions... the winner NEVER updated it and abandoned it shortly after giving up on BANS in early 2008. It is still BANS 2.0, still setup for CJ, and still very indexed! It also gets about 120 daily visitors still!
Trying to Make BANS 3.0 Work
At the opening of this post, I mentioned that I built a new site a few weeks ago, based on the same review format of the Hybrid Golf site. The site is BANS ONLY and uses BANS 3.0 as the backend. Aside from those two factors, it is highly modified in the index.php and frontcontrol.php files. The site is Titanium-Drivers + .com (I didn't link on purpose)** and has only been publicly viewable for about 2 weeks, and never been linked from an outside source. The ONLY method I used to get the search engines to index the site was to submit the xml sitemap to each. It is listed in my Google tools account, etc.
My Conclusion
While I cannot say with 100% certainty that the newest version of BANS (3.0) is the main reason that sites are dropped, regardless of quality... it is one of the blaring common factors! Sites that survived the algo drops, are either VERY full of unique content... or highly modified versions of the software within the php files that drive it!
In my opinion, pre 3.0 sites are still just as vulnerable in the longrun... but it was during the bans 3.0 heyday that Google stood up and took notice of Build a Niche Store. Could it be that they havetheir algo tuned for 3.0 and not previous versions? In my opinion... yes!
Why Does Google Deindex a BANS Website?
If you were looking for the golden answer to why sites are being deindexed, you have come to the wrong place! The truth is... we can all make educated guesses, but until someone from Google steps up and says "This is Why..." (which will never happen) nobody will ever know the exact reason. One thing for sure, it's more than a manual review at this point, as it would take quite a team of reviewers to find and deindex so many sites in such a short time!
One of the things that caught Dave's eye, was the text that is common to all sites. Things like "Time Left" and others like "See more Item on eBay", could be built into the G algorithm, and used to flag sites for further review. From that point, an engineer could review several of the sites in the flagged queue, find additional common ground between all of the sites, and ultimately tell the search index to ignore these sites. Dave is definitely on the right track in narrowing down what may be causing the flags in the Google Algorithm, so I started checking my own sites... looking for the common ground!
What I found was not dramatic, but there are several things to consider when you review your own. In my case, I have several BANS 3.0 sites with common text deindexed. BUT... at the same time, I have some 1.3 and 2.0 sites, with the same exact text that are still in the index!
My Own Site Observations
We have all heard this 100 times... focus on the content and you will be fine right? Maybe not! Many of us have tons of unique content on our sites, yet they were still dropped. Which led me to look at the sites still in the index, versus those that were dropped! Between Kim and Myself, we started with "many" sites... and have cut it back to less than 20, some by choice... others by the deindex nightmare!
Varying Factors among Dropped Sites
1. Unique and Relevant Content
Some of the sites dropped had ALOT of unique content, others had none! The most curious factor I found on this topic was in a few older versions of BANS stores (1.3 and 2.0 bans) I still have jockeying around, that have NO original content at all, but are still indexed just fine and bringing visitors on a daily basis!
2. Hosting
Some of the sites were on one hosting plan, others on different accounts. To me, this means they were not all related to the hosting account by IP or DNS and dropped for that specific reason.
3. Themes
Some of the sites dropped had the same theme as some that are still fine! If it were the same theme on all sites, I would know it was related. This takes Themes out of the equation on my sites.
4. Text on Page
Some common text was found on both dropped and still fine sites! Seeing the same text across both dropped and listed sites, tells me this was not the only factor in the drops.
5. Inbound links
Some of the sites had high numbers of links, others had few or none!
6. Blogged about Them
While some of the deindexed sites have been blogged about here, others have not! Additionally, some of the sites I HAVE blogged about, are still fine!
Common Factors on Dropped Sites
1. Same Backend Software! (BANS 3.0)
2. ALL customization was done inside the BANS admin! (Show this, hide that etc)
3. ALL sites had high numbers of 302 errors in the site logs! (This is found in BANS 3.0 stores)
While there may be other common and different factors such as the paypal icons, ebay links etc... within just a few hours, I narrowed the ONE common factor to all of my sites that have been dropped.... they ALL had BANS 3.0 on them! Literally NONE of my pre-3.0 stores are deindexed! I DO have several BANS 3.0 stores that still do quite well, but they are highly modified from the download package you get when you upgrade or buy the product new, and ALL of them have a blog on the front or backend!
Take an inventory of your own sites... do you have any BANS 2.0 stores still? If so, are they still indexed? If you want to see a few examples of the very poorly built and never updated BANS 1.3-2.0 stores I have that are still in the index, just shoot me an email and I will send back a link! If you remember one of my original How-To series from August of 2007 at the kids college fund site, you will recall that I gave away a website about Grill Auctions... the winner NEVER updated it and abandoned it shortly after giving up on BANS in early 2008. It is still BANS 2.0, still setup for CJ, and still very indexed! It also gets about 120 daily visitors still!
Trying to Make BANS 3.0 Work
At the opening of this post, I mentioned that I built a new site a few weeks ago, based on the same review format of the Hybrid Golf site. The site is BANS ONLY and uses BANS 3.0 as the backend. Aside from those two factors, it is highly modified in the index.php and frontcontrol.php files. The site is Titanium-Drivers + .com (I didn't link on purpose)** and has only been publicly viewable for about 2 weeks, and never been linked from an outside source. The ONLY method I used to get the search engines to index the site was to submit the xml sitemap to each. It is listed in my Google tools account, etc.
My Conclusion
While I cannot say with 100% certainty that the newest version of BANS (3.0) is the main reason that sites are dropped, regardless of quality... it is one of the blaring common factors! Sites that survived the algo drops, are either VERY full of unique content... or highly modified versions of the software within the php files that drive it!
In my opinion, pre 3.0 sites are still just as vulnerable in the longrun... but it was during the bans 3.0 heyday that Google stood up and took notice of Build a Niche Store. Could it be that they havetheir algo tuned for 3.0 and not previous versions? In my opinion... yes!
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