We all know that Google panda comes as a nightmare for many bloggers and many of them has seen big traffic drop. Even my blog got penalized by Google panda and I tried to understand the reasons behind it. Some of them which was easy to realize:
- My old posts which I started in beginning of my career were too small and can’t be considered as quality one.
- Slow blog loading time: This is one signal that Google is focusing a lot. A worked to tweak my blog speed and still working on it.
- Lots of Advertisements: If your blog have lots of advertisements, you might be giving wrong signal to Google about the quality of your site. Try to keep low no. of ads above the fold.
- Indexing useless pages: Though I was not facing problem with this issue but this is for others who are keeping their tags and categories pages as noindex. You should consider keeping your tags, categories and useless pages like Privacy policy and so on as noindex. This will ensure that you contribute only quality articles to Google search.
I have done lots of things after Google panda rolled out and this also included deleting some low quality posts form my blog and removing from Google index. Now here is one major problem which contributed to my traffic drop. I have two blogs (ShoutMeLoud and CallingAllGeeks) which is being copied by many automated blogs and I can see all the posts from my blog on their blog. When first time I realized it, there are almost 5000+ pages who have copied content from my blog. This is huge and no wonder Google started treating my pages as duplicate post and some copied paste blogs have started outranking the original content. Though this is also a huge flow in Google algo, as they are suppose to find such automated blogs and remove them from Index. Anyways, bots can never be as smart as human. I already shared Blog copying article after panda ranking higher.
Anyways, So I started filing lots of DMCA complaint using http://google.com.dmca.html and in last 4 months I have removed over thousands of such copied posts from Google index. I saw a great traffic improvement over the time but the problem remains the same. All new posts were getting copied by other blogs and it become a part of my daily routine to file DMCA complaint.
Full feed over Partial feed:
Now here is one interesting find, which I realized after noticing a new blog copying my article. After Panda, I changed my complete feeds into partial feeds and last month I again reverted back complete feeds. This is to ensure that readers will get access to all the content but again duplicate content issue came into the picture. Google started indexing pages again from all blogs copying my posts and then I had no choice but to revert back to partial feeds.
Here is an interesting find which I realized while observing a new blog who started copying posts from my blog. It has copied over hundred posts but Google has indexed only 18 such posts from this copy-paste blog. A quick observation, made it clear that Google has indexed copied posts from this blog (Most of them) with complete content and not partial content. (Remember I changed to complete feed from partial feed).
Also another observation is such blogs actually uses free platform like BlogSpot, posterous, WordPress.com to get a backlink. They republish their post on such free platform with 1-2 line of content and add a backlink to their blog, this helps them get indexed fast and also their ranking improves. This also given me another reasons to believe, social bookmarking is an essential for every blogger.
![Why Partial Feed Option is Essential After Panda Update [ Example]](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20570%20306'%3E%3C/svg%3E "Copying-blog")
Now this is obvious that Google algo needs little tweak to ensure that they will treat original content as original. More over, Google algo should be smart enough to understand when a blog copy posts along with back link to original content, it’s not tough to understand which is original one. I use RSS footer plugin to add a backlink to original post and also to my blog homepage. So if you are also Facing issues like me due to other blogs copying your blog post, I would suggest you to change your feeds to partial feeds. This might not be great reader experience for your readers, but I believe it’s a good idea as this will help you to gain back your lost ranking. Now only this, you should try finding copied posts and use Google DMCA form to report it to Google. (How to request for URL removal from Google). Anyways, if you still facing issues with Google panda and traffic drop, I would suggest you to read following articles:
- How to recover from Google Panda effect
- Recovering from Google Panda
Do let us know what measures are you taking to fight against such copy-paste bloggers. Are you filing DMCA notice by sending Email to host, or you using Google DMCA or you simply ignoring them.
We all know that Google panda comes as a nightmare for many bloggers and many of them has seen big traffic drop. Even my blog got penalized by Google panda and I tried to understand the reasons behind it. Some of them which was easy to realize:
Full feed over Partial feed:
Do let us know what measures are you taking to fight against such copy-paste bloggers. Are you filing DMCA notice by sending Email to host, or you using Google DMCA or you simply ignoring them.
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