1. Home
  2. Forums Index
  3. Search Engines and SEO / Google Search and SEO 12:16 pm May 21, 2026

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

Message Too Old, No Replies

Penalization ranking

Texts translated from italian to English

         

Bmindalex

3:37 pm on Jan 1, 2020 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Hello everybody,
my name is Alessandro and together with my wife Marianna I have been running a widget planning business for two years, dealing mainly with foreigners who are planning to need a widget in our country.

We entrusted our SEO implementation to an agency and they immediately gave us an editorial plan in order to publish articles in regards to the widget sector.
The first six months (from April to September 2019) we achieved interesting results.
Our keywords that we have worked on the most and that interest us more are
"widget service Country"
"widget service Region"
"widget service City"
"widget service Location"
"widget service Location2"

Around last October (I believe due to the latest google updates) the keyword "widget service Region" from position 27 disappeared from the top 100 positions, and the keyword "widget service City" from position 12 passed to position 40.
The keyword "widget service Country" has remained unchanged. We do not understand why it did not appear in the top 100 positions even before the google update….
However the agency did not explain us the reason.

In any case, our concern mainly concerns the keywords "widget service Country", "widget service City" and "widget service Region".
Regarding "widget service Region" we are surprised that we have totally disappeared from the top 100 positions.
With "widget service City" we arrived at the position 40 (in September we were at position 12).
However, we don't understand why the keyword "widget service Country" has always been excluded from the first 100 position ranking of Google.

The SERP results to which I refer concern the research carried out by the USA (area from which we obtain more customers).
To monitor the situation we use a serp bot service.

Could you give us some useful advice on what happened with these three keywords in particular?
The company that follows us has failed to give us convincing explanations.

We were told that there were dubbed keywords on the website but we wonder why they didn't notice it before.
We have now removed the dubbed keywords and a month has passed since then, but we have not seen any improvements for the keyword "widget service Region".

We have seen an improvement only for "widget service City" but only for 6 positions (from 40 to 34).
For "widget service Country" nothing has changed.

To conclude, there is also to consider a possible mistake that we made.
In writing these articles from April to September 2019, we often copied texts from other websites written in italian and translated them with google translator into English by making small changes to the text and then posting them in our blog.
Initially google did not penalize us for this, indeed it made us go up a lot in the ranking. But then what happened?

Is it possible that Google is now able to trace the original text in Italian and penalize me because I translated it into English and posted it on my website?

In any case, to intervene on this possible problem we have tried as much as possible to modify the texts already written on our blog making them as authentic as possible.

Thank you very much for your valuable support
Alessandro


[edited by: not2easy at 5:50 pm (utc) on Jan 1, 2020]
[edit reason] Added spacing, anonymised specifics [/edit]

not2easy

6:04 pm on Jan 1, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Hi Alessandro and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

At first glance it would appear that creating more unique content would be helpful because Google can spot copied content. They are moving more toward the use of AI to make it easier to spot duplicate articles after being translated and even spun because that has long been an issue online.

The initial boost is common also and what some seo specialists count on to get paid. It is fairly simple to get a short term boost. Long term success needs more work. One thing I would suggest is taking your own photos of events and scenic places. That would make your content more unique when used with descriptive textual content to go with the images.

SweetPotato

7:38 pm on Jan 1, 2020 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



It's very easy to get a Google penalty now.
Besides the content of questionable originality did you or the SEO company also created links to help you rank?

tangor

6:12 am on Jan 2, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



@Bmindalex ... glad to have you join us at Webmasterworld!

You will hear, from time to time, that content is king ... this merely means that content that is new, fresh, and compelling will drive more traffic than any other kind. Evergreen is content that IS KING and DOES NOT CHANGE, and which is difficult to improve because it is already "complete".

As for plagiarizing via google translate, other than the usual ethics you have the added layer of likely rough or illogical translations that actually come back to haunt you. Translate is imperfect at best and gibberish at worst.

Might cost some money, but your best bet is human translation ... and that only works if the translators are truly fluent in both origin and target languages ... and if you wish to make it UNIQUE to your site, they can also rewrite-spin into NEW WORDS..

Get that going and there's a real future ... else the site will be only one of a million or so "taking the easy way"...

Good luck!

Bmindalex

2:04 pm on Jan 2, 2020 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



I want to thank you all for your help. I really appreciate.
Tangor thank you for your help. By the way I want to tell you that when I used google translator I used to modify the text every time, I never took it thus and simply and posted it.
Besides, I was totally aware of the fact that google translator is imperfect at best.
The truth of the matter is still the one I mentioned in my thread. How is it possible that I had a keyword ranked at the position 27 and in some days disappeared from the first 100 positions?
If the content is the king... how is that possible that for 6 month I had this keyword ranked at the 27 position and then disappeared. I mean, are there maybe other reasons?
SweetPotato as far as I know the agency did not create any links. What are these links?
Thank you Not2easy we are planning to do some shootings.

RedBar

3:49 pm on Jan 2, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



However the agency did not explain us the reason.

Quite possibly they simply may not know. Why is that? Because many sites have been demoted over the years for absolutely no known reason whatsoever, it''s not necessarily a penalty, Google's algo has bugs, it always has had and unless you can get the attention of someone senior to manually sort it then you're snookered!

"widget service Country"
"widget service Region"
"widget service City"
"widget service Location"
"widget service Location2"

I do hope that you're not simply relying on the titlebar for these terms? You do have plenty of applicable and unique on-page text to support these widgets?

One of the best widget supports are unique images and videos, in fact they are almost crucial these days for healthy rankings. At one time hosting one's own videos was enough however with G's obssession with YouTube promotion it's better to host with them since, as anyone will tell you, G hardly ranks any other video hosting service.

There may also be another reason and that is G plus localisation.

The USA G.com SERPs overwhelmingly favours USA company sites and blogs, registered in the USA and hosted within the USA.

One only has to check G's SERPs in any other G.tld to see its preference for USA sites, it's blatant and overt manipulation, nothing less.

Bmindalex

8:31 pm on Jan 2, 2020 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



@Tangor thank you for your help. By the way I want to tell you that when I used google translator I used to modify the text every time, I never took it thus and simply and posted it.
Besides, I was totally aware of the fact that google translator is imperfect at best.
The truth of the matter is still the one I mentioned in my thread. How is it possible that I had a keyword ranked at the position 27 and in some days disappeared from the first 100 positions?
If the content is the king... how is that possible that for 6 month I had this keyword ranked at the 27 position and then disappeared. I mean, are there maybe other reasons?
@SweetPotato as far as I know the agency did not create any links. What are these links?
@RedBar thank you for your help. Could you please explain me better what did you mean by "I do hope that you're not simply relying on the titlebar for these terms? You do have plenty of applicable and unique on-page text to support these widgets?"

RedBar

9:43 pm on Jan 2, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Could you please explain me better what did you mean

Google went past the simple titlebar widget keyword1/2/3 a long time ago unless you are just displaying images. You need to get your on-page h1/h2/h3 headings to marry-up with your on-page widget descriptions.

I have thousands of widgets and every widget has its own dedicated page, I ensure that my text is about my widget, my images and videos are about my widgets, I do not mix-up widgets on a page unless they are a variant of the widget or extremely closely related.

My widget information is evergreen, it's as pertinent now as it was 50 years ago and will still be valid in another 50 years, I never rush constructing a page, sure I use my own stadardised template yet everything is dedicated and unique to that specific widget and hopefully, yes still a little bit of hope is required, all the search engines know that.

tangor

3:31 am on Jan 3, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



More specifically, if a site is not actually offering NEW, FRESH or UNIQUE content g will at least give the site a shot for a period of time to see if there is any OTHER residual benefit to be found.

Unless there is NEW content, unique to the site (even if poorly written), there's likely to be little love ... and keywords alone will NOT rescue you any longer.

Entities and Salience will be the new tracking factors in 2020 forward...
 

Join The Conversation

Moderators and Top Contributors

Hot Threads This Week

  1. Home
  2. Forums Index
  3. Search Engines and SEO / Google Search and SEO 12:16 pm May 21, 2026