google's thinking is a bit backwards on this, i think.

this guy says he got punished for using manufacturer descriptions, and that he should have rewritten them, but how does that make his site better?

presumably the manufacturers know more about their product than the reseller, so their descriptions are going to be better, right? if everyone has to rewrite them, then the standard is more likely to go down, not up.

if google weights the manufacturer's site over the reseller, because the brand adds more "quality" does that make the serps better? nope. because how many customers want to go to the Levi shop when buying a pair or jeans? not many. they want a reseller -- one that stocks all the brands at once. they dont care whether the snippets are the same as Levi's.

The thing that keeps rolling around in my head is, Google was made successful by webmasters.... not the searchers... ...not "Best Buy" or big box brands... It was made by the geeky professional (weekend website builder) who also worked in corporate America and spread Google because he/she believed in it... and it's rather odd they've decided on a business model which now excludes many of them. In essence they've created a large amount of individuals who may choose to take their loyalty elsewhere if the opportunity presents itself. If not out of need, then merely out of spite. It's a rocky road they've paved for themselves, <snip>.

[edited by: goodroi at 6:01 pm (utc) on Apr 22, 2011]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

But what if Buy.com et al just have better websites? Ergo In Demand and OneWayFurniture could certainly learn a thing or two about their mistakes by studying their similarities. I can easily imagine their bloated navigational structures are problematic (for users and spiders) to say the least.

"We got caught in the fire," says Mitchell Lieberman, chief executive of One Way Furniture Inc., an online furniture retailer in Melville, N.Y., that had revenue of $17 million in 2010.

I think Lieberman here is barking the wrong tree, with duplicate content (descriptions from manufacturer) his business has been getting revenues that he was not deserving to get. So the right answer here is - tough luck, where's YOUR business plant? Did you plan to depend on manufacturer's descriptions and free traffic from G forever?

Lets blame Google here, right :) not the lack of business oversight, with 17 employees he should've been thinking about original content from the get-go. Instead of he chose to roll in dough. Probably is driving 600 Mercedes with that IMHO undeserved money.

presumably the manufacturers know more about their product than the reseller, so their descriptions are going to be better, right? if everyone has to rewrite them, then the standard is more likely to go down, not up.

Well stated. I keep coming back to this issue as both a publisher and someone searching for products/and services. The algorithm seems to be rewarding brands and penalizing resellers but there are plenty of industries and situations where that doesn't make sense for either party. The furniture world seems to be one of them.

Totally- we've been hit , too, as far as I can tell all because of overlooked internal dupe content which we are fixing - I can imagine if you have thousands of pages with content that is dupe - ouch.

I think Lieberman here is barking the wrong tree, with duplicate content (descriptions from manufacturer) his business has been getting revenues that he was not deserving to get. So the right answer here is - tough luck, where's YOUR business plant? Did you plan to depend on manufacturer's descriptions and free traffic from G forever?

im pretty sure that manufacturers WANT shops to use their descriptions. they spend a lot of money on branding their stuff. they come up with selling points and slogans to make their products stand out. if all the shops suddenly started binning their descriptions on masse because of google, that is only going to annoy the manufacturer.

imagine if you submitted an advert to all the newspapers and magazines, and every single one rewrote it before going to print. would you be happy?

because that is what google are asking us to do.

Just because you reword something doesn't lead to better quality... in fact it generally leads to less quality unless you're better educated than the author.

Duplicate content is part of language, even outside of the web. That's the reason we have fads, and idioms. Using duplicate content as a "quality" measure is irrational. You can take a single sentence and move a single word around to get multiple meanings. We all know, simply adding the word "FAIL" to a picture changes a "upsetting" picture into a "funny" one. Humans aren't binary, we're not spock, and Google's index appears to want to censor humanity's imperfections... which I can only think of one word for: FAIL.

(of course, all these places assume that their business plan should be Google's business plan. Maybe G doesn't *want* to become one big shopping comparison site for everyone else's e-commerce.)

but isn't that exactly what a search engine is supposed to be?

i want to buy a car. i search for all the cars on the web, find all the sites, and make my choice.

but isn't that exactly what a search engine is supposed to be?

I hope not.

Is it normal for the WSJ to not have thier articles indexed? I just searched a line from above --> "in sales since Google adjusted its algorithm, online ergonomic-products retailer " and the article comes up from everywhere except WSJ.

Isn't that indicative of a big part of the Panda issue?

presumably the manufacturers know more about their product than the reseller, so their descriptions are going to be better, right? if everyone has to rewrite them, then the standard is more likely to go down, not up.

The manufacturer may know absolutely nothing about marketing, knowledge that the sellers (presumably) do have. So I would expect that the standard would go up (at least as far as marketing copy).

If 10,000 sellers are using the exact same content as the manufacturer, in Google's eyes, why should ANY of the 10,000 sellers receive any type of "benefit" from just copying the manufacturer's content. The user can get the same information from the manufacturer's site. The sellers who make their own product descriptions are adding value (or they are at least making an effort to add value).

I think Lieberman here is barking the wrong tree, with duplicate content (descriptions from manufacturer) his business has been getting revenues that he was not deserving to get. So the right answer here is - tough luck, where's YOUR business plant? Did you plan to depend on manufacturer's descriptions and free traffic from G forever?

Lets blame Google here, right happy! not the lack of business oversight, with 17 employeeshe should've been thinking about original content from the get-go. Instead of he chose to roll in dough. Probably is driving 600 Mercedes with that IMHO undeserved money.

So only one store sells Nike Air XVII2015 ? What are they going to do, call them Adidas Air not to get banned by Google? This duplicate thing matters only because Google said it matters. There is shipping, service, location etc etc that matter too.

He got traffic because he offered that item for sale, has a warehouse and 17 people waiting for the orders.

This is done by Google on purpose. There a Matt Cutts interview on Forbes saying that they will seek to send more traffic to sites that are larger /spend more money or something like that. Essentially Google is aiming to kill the small site and Walmartize the web.

If 10,000 sellers are using the exact same content as the manufacturer, in Google's eyes, why should ANY of the 10,000 sellers receive any type of "benefit" from just copying the manufacturer's content. The user can get the same information from the manufacturer's site. The sellers who make their own product descriptions are adding value (or they are at least making an effort to add value).

Fine, send them all to Walmart.com and the web will react. As I mentioned above there's other criteria to consider (price for one), paying a dozen Indians to write about furniture they never saw or used is designing for Google and makes the web a poor experience.

Duplicate content is part of language, even outside of the web. That's the reason we have fads, and idioms. Using duplicate content as a "quality" measure is irrational.

Exactly, have one of the Googlebots here describe the 2010 Audi A8. Should Google ban all but the largest car dealer and have people from Michigan go to Texas or CA to buy the cars?

It's not banning. It's not even "punishing." It's promoting those people and companies that do more than everyone else is doing.

If 10,000 sites are doing the exact same thing, only 10 of them can be on page 1. (This fact existed long before Panda.) If 10 of them actually do some extra work to differentiate themselves from the other 9,990, who do you think should get the privilege of being on page 1?

Sure, initially, 10 sites who just write crap rewrites will shoot to the top. But pretty soon some of the other 9,990 will catch on and write non-crap re-writes, which (should) put them above the crap re-writes.

I deal with the same issue in my niche (hotel reservations). There are thousands of reservation sites and affiliate sites that all use the exact same hotel descriptions. Why should my exact same hotel descriptions rank above the thousands of other sites with the exact same descriptions? They shouldn't. That's why I rewrite the descriptions for some. That's why I develop extra content that isn't available on other sites (until it's scraped). That's why I have UCG. I've also spent years building the brand for the site. Those are the reasons why my site is above thousands of other cookie cutter sites. Sure, I also rank behind the Walmarts of the travel industry for some searches. But I don't expect to be #1 for every possible related search.

LifeinAsia, you touched on the problem issues: 1. nonsense content is for search engine, 2. scrappers will take it and three, panda is a sitewide demotion.

Throw some scraps at other sites, not send everything to Walmart & Co.

It's promoting those people and companies that do more than everyone else is doing.

I disagree. Quantity does not equal quality. Manpower does not equal quality. Quality is determined by the usefulness of the content to the user.

If a blog does better at representing a story than a news site using quoted duplicate content, and additional opinion, then it SHOULD outrank the original news source... because it's better.

ascensions, Google support essentially told a blogger not to bother doing a blog about the Barcelona soccer team...unless you can interview the stars and have access to them because it would not be different. That's how insane they have gotten.

I wonder how the tech industry is panning out. When i ran my commerce site we paid big money to have datafeeds for product descriptions because its incomprehensibly expensive to do your own and still maintain reliable data. When people search for computer parts they do so not by description but by comparison of reviews and pricing. If your data is an exception to the "normal" data that has been normalized by manufactures then you're probably going to lose business. All of these descriptions would of course be heavily duped, but as a standard - which they should be so that you know you're comparing the same product.

im pretty sure that manufacturers WANT shops to use their descriptions.

Fyi, some manufacturers REQUIRE IT

some of the brands we carry require us to use their descriptions of a product in order to be an authorized reseller.

Thanks to Panda I've now got a boycott Google graphics and icons database about ready to launch (all free of course). :)

ascensions, Google support essentially told a blogger not to bother doing a blog about the Barcelona soccer team...unless you can interview the stars and have access to them because it would not be different.

IIRC they told him it wouldn't be likely to rank. And if it's no different (and that particular blog was using SCRAPED POORLY TRANSLATED CONTENT by the way) than a million other Barcelona Soccer blogs, then why should it? I'd tell him flat out not to bother, myself.

JohnMu:

I think Squibble's point is worth looking at -- your site is titles "All about FC Barcelona" and you mention that your content is based on what you see in TV. While I can't judge the quality of your content, I would - personally - probably expect a bit more than just TV-based content. That said, perhaps that doesn't apply to the rest of your site, but anyway, I would definitely look into making sure that your content is of high-quality, unique and compelling.

[google.com...]
There's no need for recollections at all ^^ since you can mistake threads. This one wasn't using translators at all.

The second part is for those that splash Google ads all over the place.

There are alot of sites competing for the same queries. Do you travel with this team on every match to compile your reports ? If you do then I would include more detail about that - local pictures perhaps.

What do you offer differently from the others ? Can you get interviews with the players - I mean - they must know you as you have reported on so many of their matches.

And it wouldn't rank" makes no sense. Wouldn't be #1, #40 or #999?

It's just like any other business. They had a good run of luck but depended heavily on somone else. There is nothing bad about the site, but there is nothing special about it either.

I did test their customer service, which was advertised as available, but no one answered. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't do business with that particular site. I'm just being honest...

Seeing a 40% decline in sales since Google adjusted its algorithm, online ergonomic-products retailer Ergo In Demand Inc. in Central Point, Ore., reduced its 17-person staff to five, moved to a 4,500-square-foot office space from one more than double in size and cut $4,000 in monthly software subscriptions.

I like this one, he lost 40% of sales, but cut his office space cost in half. He also fired 70% of his staff. Sounds like the small guy in the warehouse lost out, not the owner.

BillyS, as you know business cuts and investments are all about how confident you feel about the future. Pandalized for 2 months and no end in site, it's hard to feel optimistic and keep expenses high. You never know for how long it will be this way or how much he needs to spendhoping to get some business back. He may have to go bankrupt, for all we know he has business loans and god knows what, so we cant; judge him there.

But on 2/23/2011 his site must have looked pretty good to Google though, but overnight it became a low quality site. Like Turnpike closing your exit all of the sudden and sending people to another store.

There's no need for recollections at all ^^ since you can mistake threads. This one wasn't using translators at all.

Ok, I misremembered. Doesn't change my opinion.

I did test their customer service, which was advertised as available, but no one answered. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't do business with that particular site. I'm just being honest...

What part of 70% of his staff got sacked did you overlook?

I'm sure the handful left are overwhelmed at the moment.

The alexa graphs for the biggest sites in my niche look like the grim reaper passed by them. 60-90% traffic reductions per site and these are huge sites, some of them owned by fortune 500 companies. One site dropped from 25 million uniques per month to 12 million alone.

What's crazy is that these sites have been the industry gold standard even before Google was born. Very high quality sites filled with unique content made by seasoned staff. You would all know them by name. How these sites fit the mold of low quality is beyond me completely.

I cant even imagine how much staff will be let go as a result of this. I dont agree with the whole argument that you shouldnt depend on one source blahblahblah, Google has a virtual monopoly in terms of internet traffic and everyone knows it.

I still see the scrapers, content spinners and shallow garbage. Seems to me only real sites got hit in my niche.

I can only imagine what would happen if the govt did some "electronic discovery" in Googles books.