1. We don't expect our SEO to outrank the original source, I was very clear about that in my original post. SEO is a tool to be used among many other tools to ensure that content is properly "classified", nothing more than that. When a search engine visits, you want that search engine to immediately know what any given page is about, and we do that very well.
2. The Vodafone image concern I don't understand - we identified Vodafone as one of the main entities in the story (Vodafone shut off service to Egypt), and that is why the image is showing up there. If you visit the Renesys blog (the original source) you will see that Vodafone is mentioned there. The Vodafone image is not an ad, it is there to identify what the story is mainly about - context.
3. Regarding adding insight, opinion or value - we believe that the role of algorithmic news aggregation is not to have an opinion, but instead to uncover news that you may not otherwise have been aware of, give you context in the form of links to the main entities in that story, or other stories on the same topic. We believe we do that very accurately, and are always working on making it better and smarter.
4. Regarding the comparison to Techmeme - everyone has their favorite aggregator, and I am a big fan of Techmeme as well. I would, however, point out that Techmeme also displays ads in order to make a living, and they also have "content pages" that you can find through Google search. Indeed, virtually all aggregators run ads against the aggregated content they display on their sites, and all aggregators have "content pages" above and beyond a homepage.
The issue I am trying to uncover is not whether you like our sites or not, but rather what exactly we have done wrong, when compared with other aggregators, that caused us to not just have our pages bumped down in ranking, but to be totally de-indexed and have our PageRank stripped away (from a respectable 5 on Celebrifi). That, and to understand better what the future of content or news aggregation might be - should we expect all aggregators to become de-indexed? Are there guidelines that should be followed, or changes that should be made, to not fall afoul of Google? Are all aggregators on a level playing field, or will the lesser-known ones be shut off while the chosen few with established brand names survive?
These are valid concerns, not just for us but for many others in this space, and we are more than prepared to put in whatever changes might be needed to get back into Google's good books.
Like I said, and others have said as well, value is in the eye of the beholder - if you follow your own logic, then every single aggregator, including the likes of HuffPo (something like 60-70% of their content is little "curated snippets" from around the web), are ruining the internet. There is very little "truly original" content out there, virtually every single blog rehashes the content of others. Is Techmeme of no value? Is Digg of no value? Is Topix of no value?
Also, we do actually produce some original content, we have a small staff of writers who create "featured posts" every day - sold ourselves a little short there.
Since Matt is responding here, I figured this is worth a shot, no harm in asking. Matt, would love a response from you if you get a chance, since the Webmaster Tools appeals process gives no insight whatsoever to our situation.
Following on from one of the comments here, namely the idea that "value is in the eye of the beholder", I'd like to raise our own plight. I run a number of aggregator sites - the largest and oldest of them being celebrifi.com, which was a PageRank 5 until Google de-indexed us in December (along with some of our other sites, but interestingly not all).
A little background - the purpose of the sites is to aggregate, organize, rank and add context to what's happening in the news, with each site focusing a specific vertical. Think Techmeme, but with more context.
I'll be the first to admit, there is no original content, but I strongly believe that we "add value" by figuring out what exactly is going on in any given story or blog post.
We add value to publishers, by always linking to the original source (indeed, many publishers directly request that we add their feeds to the sources we track), we respect copyright by only displaying a short snippet of the original text and only displaying thumbnail images and we add value to users by giving them easy access to a lot more content on the same topic/story, all in the same place.
Google's Quality Guidelines clearly state that duplicate content is penalized, and that is totally fine with us, but is it right to totally de-index a site for duplicate content? I wouldn't even want to rank above the original source for any given piece of content, as I respect the hard work that writers and publishers put into creating quality content, but aggregators who add value have a role to play in the content ecosystem. Digg, for example, uses the "wisdom of the crowd" to aggregate and rank content - hence adds value. Topix takes a local approach to aggregating content, and uses comments to rank content - hence adds value. We take a verticalized approach to aggregating and ranking content, and hence I believe that we add value.
As mentioned above, we got de-indexed in December, and despite going through the appeals process, fixing a few things on our end to do with sitemaps, and clearing out some older "low quality" sources that we were tracking, we received no clarity into what our crime was.
Matt, I'd like to raise this issue with you - both as it relates to us, but also as a general industry question - are all aggregators going to be de-indexed? And if not, which aggregators are and which aren't? What is the criteria, and who decides? If its algorithmic, then I am very curious to know what on our sites triggered the de-indexing? And even more curious to know why some of our sites got de-indexed, and some didn't.
I have great respect for Google's efforts to clean up spam and low-quality content - and would always expect to see original content ranking higher than aggregated content. But to completely de-index an established aggregator site and strip it of its PageRank seems very draconian.
I would love to hear your/Google's position, and look forward to some more clarity on both our situation, and the future of news/content aggregators.
1. We don't expect our SEO to outrank the original source, I was very clear about that in my original post. SEO is a tool to be used among many other tools to ensure that content is properly "classified", nothing more than that. When a search engine visits, you want that search engine to immediately know what any given page is about, and we do that very well.
2. The Vodafone image concern I don't understand - we identified Vodafone as one of the main entities in the story (Vodafone shut off service to Egypt), and that is why the image is showing up there. If you visit the Renesys blog (the original source) you will see that Vodafone is mentioned there. The Vodafone image is not an ad, it is there to identify what the story is mainly about - context.
3. Regarding adding insight, opinion or value - we believe that the role of algorithmic news aggregation is not to have an opinion, but instead to uncover news that you may not otherwise have been aware of, give you context in the form of links to the main entities in that story, or other stories on the same topic. We believe we do that very accurately, and are always working on making it better and smarter.
4. Regarding the comparison to Techmeme - everyone has their favorite aggregator, and I am a big fan of Techmeme as well. I would, however, point out that Techmeme also displays ads in order to make a living, and they also have "content pages" that you can find through Google search. Indeed, virtually all aggregators run ads against the aggregated content they display on their sites, and all aggregators have "content pages" above and beyond a homepage.
The issue I am trying to uncover is not whether you like our sites or not, but rather what exactly we have done wrong, when compared with other aggregators, that caused us to not just have our pages bumped down in ranking, but to be totally de-indexed and have our PageRank stripped away (from a respectable 5 on Celebrifi). That, and to understand better what the future of content or news aggregation might be - should we expect all aggregators to become de-indexed? Are there guidelines that should be followed, or changes that should be made, to not fall afoul of Google? Are all aggregators on a level playing field, or will the lesser-known ones be shut off while the chosen few with established brand names survive?
These are valid concerns, not just for us but for many others in this space, and we are more than prepared to put in whatever changes might be needed to get back into Google's good books.